The CIA is in deep legal jeopardy.
Not only has the CIA committed illegal acts on John Yoo's (
et. al.) sycophantic premise of rewriting the laws to protect this administration, the CIA has destroyed this videotape evidence of illegal torture that defense attorneys in at least two court cases had requested to help in the defense of their clients.
In addition, this videotape evidence was secreted from the 9-11 Commission in its deliberations.
CBSDecember 8, 2007
.....
Convicted terror conspirator Jose Padilla's lawyers claimed in a Florida federal court that Abu Zubaydah was tortured into saying Padilla was an al Qaeda associate. The Justice Department dismissed Padilla's allegations as "meritless," saying Padilla's legal team could not prove that Abu Zubaydah had been tortured.
Padilla and his two co-defendants will be sentenced next month. They face life in prison on three terror-related convictions.
Then-U.S. District Judge Mukasey, now attorney general, signed the warrant used by the FBI to arrest Padilla in May 2002. That warrant relied in part on information obtained from Abu Zubaydah, court records show.
In a separate case, attorneys for al Qaeda conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui in 2003 began seeking videotapes of interrogations they believed might help their client. In November 2005 a federal judge ordered the government to disclose whether it had video or audio tapes of specific interrogations. Eleven days later, the government denied it had them.
Gerald Zerkin, one of Moussaoui's lawyers in the penalty phase of his trial, recalled some of the defense efforts to obtain testimony from or video or audio tapes of the interrogations of top al Qaeda detainees. "Obviously the important witnesses included Zubaydah, Binalshibh and KSM (Khalid Sheikh Mohammed). ... Those are the guys at the head of the witness list," Zerkin said. He could not recall specifically which tapes he requested or the phrasing of his discovery requests, which he said were probably still classified.
The tapes also were not provided to the special commission that studied government actions before and after the 2001 attacks. The commission relied heavily on intelligence reports about Abu Zubaydah and Binalshibh's 2002 interrogations.
.....
AG Mukasey, as he is deeply involved in this, should recuse himself from all aspects of this investigation. We need a special prosecutor to take over.
Again, very cynically, to Diane Feinstein and Chuck Schumer, we are paying a tremendous price for your
foolishness.