CIA Destroying Evidence of Torture? 92 Interrogation Tapes - Destroyed.

[TheBigotBasher]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/02/torture-obama-administration

The US Central Intelligence Agency revealed today that it had destroyed far more videotapes of terror interrogations than it had originally admitted, resuscitating a Bush administration scandal and increasing the pressure on Barack Obama to support a full investigation of the agency's detention practices during his predecessor's time in office.

Government lawyers acknowledged in 2007 that two videotapes and one audiotape had been destroyed. But new documents released today put the total number of tapes affected at nearly 100. "The CIA can now identify the number of videotapes that were destroyed. Ninety-two videotapes were destroyed," acting US attorney Lev Dassin wrote in a letter to a New York judge.

The controversy first arose during the lengthy trial of the September 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, in which prosecutors first denied, then conceded, that tapes had once existed documenting the questioning of the al-Qaida operations chief Abu Zubaydah, and another unnamed detainee. Michael Hayden, director of the CIA at the time, told his staff the tapes had been destroyed because they "posed a security risk".

But the news prompted accusations that the agency might be destroying the evidence of harsh techniques such as waterboarding, which Hayden later admitted had been used on Zubaydah. George Bush did "not remember being made aware" of the tapes' existence, his press secretary claimed at the time.

As this was under the control of a dick by name and nature, it hardly comes as a surprise. What else has been destroyed?

(edit - changed title to destroyed just in case the post gets deleted)

[Overseas]

1. K&R for the Republican ethics file. //nt

[TheBigotBasher]

2. I used to be convinced by the arguments against trials.

This is changing my mind.

Who agreed that the tapes could be destroyed?

[soothsayer]

3. yet another outrage that we'll lie down and take

[Peace Patriot]

4. I think the right question is, what was the torture really for?

The torturers themselves might not have known, but tapes of what was actually asked and said might lead to the motives of the main Bushwhack perps in what they told the torturers to look for?

My guesses:

#1: Rumsfeld and Cheney were looking for knowledge of their own role in 9/11 and anything that could lead there--money trails, agents in hiding, etc.*

#2: Financial and weapons networks they could take over and profit from.

#3: Any people or groups who could stop them in their various criminal enterprises, for instance, stealing billions of dollars from us in Iraq, re-starting the heroine trade out of Afghanistan, illicit nuke and other weapons trading.**

The scandal of torture itself is riveting--both the horror of it, concern for the fate of the victims, and our country's guilt for this abomination. But, as with a lot of Bushwhack issues, the horror in front may hide a deeper horror (with two main motives--unimaginable greed and coverup).

---------------

*(There is a long, convoluted investigative trail that needs to be followed, which may link the House-run purge of the FBI in the summer of '01 (which Gary Condit was involved in as a member of that committee), John O'Neil (on the 9/11 money trail in Yemen, drummed out of the FBI, died in the WTC on 9/11), the denial by FBI in DC of Colleen Rowley's request for a FISA warrant to get into Zacarias Moussaoui's computer in Aug 01, and the strange story of the FBI and Nicholas Berg (Berg's email address showing up in Moussaoui's computer after 9/11, when it was finally opened). Dead: Chandra Levy (Condit's mistress), John O'Neil and Nicholas Berg (Berg, a civilian electronics contractor, in the infamous beheading in May '04, after he was held for 10 days by "U.S. authorities" in Baghdad, then released onto the street in the midst of the Fallujah uprising). On Berg: the story about Berg's name being in Moussaoui's computer came from Berg's father--he said the FBI visited his son to question him about it (circa '02-'03). Berg told them the unlikely story that he let Moussaoui, a stranger, use his email on a bus on his way to class. If this is true, how come they let Berg into Iraq, to run around freely as a contractor? There were plenty of contractors seeking the U.S./Iraq booty--why let a security risk in?)

(As to Chandra Levy, Gary Condit met with Dick Cheney on the very day that Levy disappeared (5/1/01) and during her very disappearance hours (12:00-3:00 pm)--a subject that has never been investigated. Condit (a "Blue Dog" Democrat and the leader of that faction, who voted two days later, on 5/3/01, with only ten Democrats, in favor of the first Bush/Cheney tax cut for the rich) was meanwhile sitting on the House intel committee, privy to many secrets, during that rather murky but high-profile FBI shakeup that resulted in Mueller being brought in to head it.)

**(The Bushwhacks outed a major CIA weapons counter-proliferation project, headed by Valerie Plame using the Brewster-Jennings front company. These outings not only put all the agents/contacts in the network at great peril, it disabled the network. We've since learned that one of the things Plame was working on was Iran's nuclear capability. The political explanation of these outings just doesn't hold up, if you take the Bush Junta at its word, that it was seeking to stop terrorism (rather than abetting, promoting and using it). Outing the CIA's main eyes and ears in the world of illicit weapons is the last thing in the world they would have done--for any reason--if their motive was our safety. Extrapolating from those outings, and other evidence, backwards to their motives, it is very tempting to conclude that our safety wasn't any consideration at all; and, if that is true--and I believe that it is--what was the torture for?)

[TheBigotBasher]

5. Whoever the order came from to destroy those tapes

needs to be prosecuted. Whether or not that person was the former President or Vice President.