LA TIMES: The facts behind the CIA tape inquiry = Torture Evidence Destroyed

[L. Coyote]

Holy Horse Puckey, Batman, there ARE Facts??
WOW are the facts ever in need around here!

This article focuses on the issue of ongoing trials and false information by the government in securing convictions.

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The facts behind the CIA tape inquiry. A preliminary investigation has begun into whether the agency acted illegally in destroying video of interrogations. By Times Staff Writers - Dec 9, 2007 - http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-interrogateqa9dec09,1,3993528.story?coll=la-headlines-nation

The Justice Department and CIA have announced a preliminary investigation into whether CIA officials obstructed justice or engaged in an illegal coverup by destroying videotapes in 2005 that showed the interrogations of two terrorism suspects.

Here is what's behind the inquiry.

...........

Q: When were the tapes destroyed?

A: The CIA destroyed the tapes in late 2005. ... Congress was adopting new restrictions on the use of harsh detainee treatment ..... At the same time, domestic U.S. prosecutions of terrorism suspects -- including Zacarias Moussaoui and Jose Padilla -- were underway. An issue in those cases was what other suspected terrorists had said about the defendants while under interrogation. ....

.........

Q: Are the tapes germane to trials of suspected terrorists?

A: Possibly. Attorneys in the case of Moussaoui, who is serving a life sentence, want the judge to review the issue. Padilla faces sentencing in the near future. More important, the CIA initially told U.S. prosecutors that no such tapes existed, an assertion provided to judges in sworn legal documents ....

In courts, judges may be asked to rule whether the CIA acted improperly in not revealing the existence of the tapes and whether they might have affected the outcomes of trials.

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This thread is spinning off of another, focused on the crimes of lying to Congress

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, It is a Crime to Lie to Congress, and the Torture Cover Up Conundrum.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2435841

Excerpt:

NUMBER ONE: It is a crime to lie to Congress. Therein lies the inception of the real story.

NUMBER TWO: The Intelligence Community (read Bush Administration) is required by law to inform Congress of its war crimes, like torture!

There is your conundrum in raw formulation. Screwed if you tell on yourself, screwed if you did not.

[L. Coyote]

1. Tues. Senate Intelligence Committee: CIA director to testify about destroyed tapes

CIA director to testify about destroyed tapes
Sun Dec 9, 2007 6:25pm EST - http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN09337668


WASHINGTON, Dec 9 (Reuters) - CIA Director Michael Hayden will testify before Congress on Tuesday amid Democratic fury over the spy agency's destruction of videotapes that showed terrorism suspects being interrogated using harsh techniques.

Democratic Sen. John Rockefeller of West Virginia, the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on Sunday Hayden would appear before his committee to talk about interrogation and techniques.

"Were there things on those tapes that they didn't want to have seen, that didn't conform to what the attorney general would allow them to do?" Rockefeller asked on CBS's "Face the Nation." "Were they just trying to bury the general subject?"

....

The White House has said President George W. Bush, who has repeatedly denied accusations by other countries and rights groups that the United States tortures detainees, did not recall being told about the tapes or their destruction.

Sen. Joseph Biden, a Delaware Democrat and presidential candidate, said on ABC's "This Week" that an independent review of the affair may be necessary.

.........

[C_U_L8R]

2. Exactly. There needs to be War Crimes investigations.

Covering up a War Crime is just as bad as the act itself.

Let the tribunals begin.

[L. Coyote]

5. Will this come down to punishing those who destroy tapes, not torturers??

Up is still down and down is still up, and do not believe otherwise until the Junta is over.

[C_U_L8R]

8. There's only one way to find out

subpoena the whole bunch of them...
everyone who watched the tapes, who participated in the tapes
and destroyed the tapes. Certainly the victims should testify as well.

Shine a bright light on the rats and let the truth come out.

[Octafish]

3. That's obstruction of justice.

Torture is against the law -- U.S. law and International laws to which We the People are signatories.

Monkey and Unka Dick wouldn't be going to prison, could they?

Regarding the lying to Congress: They've been doing that since the Supreme Court decided to hear Bush v. Gore.

[pop goes the weasel]

4. can we have impeachment now?

Followed by extradition of war criminals to stand trial in the International Court.

[L. Coyote]

6. CIA photos "show Mr Mohammed's brutalised genitalia." Will the photos be destroyed?

CIA photos 'show UK Guantanamo detainee was tortured'
By Robert Verkaik, Law Editor - 10 Dec 2007 - http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article3239372.ece


Lawyers for a British resident who the US government refuses to release from Guantanamo Bay have identified the existence of photographs taken by CIA agents that they say show their client suffered horrific injuries under torture.

The photographic evidence will be vital to clear Binyam Mohammed, 27, who the Americans want to bring before a Military Commission on charges of terrorism, say his lawyers.

Last week it emerged that Britain had negotiated the release of four detainees who have British residence status but Mr Mohammed, who speaks with a London accent, and at least three others are being held back.

In a letter sent to the Foreign Secretary David Miliband, Britain is urged to ask the US to stop the CIA destroying the pictures.

Clive Stafford-Smith, the legal director of Reprieve representing Mr Mohammed, said that he also knows the identity of the agents who were present when his client was allegedly beaten and tortured. ...

.............

[L. Coyote]

7. Time Magazine Conflates Destroyed Torture Tapes, 'Conspiracy Theorists'

This story is about the grossest and most inhumane of human behaviors, the people who perpetrated such acts, those who lied to cover it up, those who destroy evidence, and the continuing obstruction of evidence. Add the very legitimacy of a war, the lies to go to war, the millions and millions of people affected by that war, hundreds of thousands of people killed by the very same torturers.

All I can say about those who want this issue to be about the Honorable Speaker of the House is that there is one place worse than Time Magazine on this score, and that is DU. Here, the whole matter seems condensed into an exercise at Dem bashing and an examination of whether or not Pelosi should now be impeached. Way worse than Time, if not an exercise is staring at one's own navel and not realizing the rest of the body exists. They are a bunch of damn "conspiracy theorists" in the worst sense of the phrase, either completely looney and engrossed with their navels or doing the bidding of the war mongers to help cover up the immensity of this moment in history and the seriousness of the crimes.

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Time Magazine Conflates Destroyed Torture Tapes, 'Conspiracy Theorists'
By Dark Wraith - 08 Dec 2007 - http://uncapitalist.com/blog/?itemid=1608


Referring to the tapes the CIA destroyed of men being tortured by American interrogators, the title of the Time magazine story on the matter is thus: "The Destroyed Tapes: A Boon for Conspiracy Theorists."

Isn't that just special?! The principal crime is torture; the subsequent crime is destruction of the incontrovertible evidence; and the continuing crime is obstruction of justice in not revealing the existence of the tapes, and then not disclosing their destruction. With all of that as backdrop, Time magazine's editors—noses high in the air of preening respectability—frame the whole, monstrously ugly story as the essential nourishment for all those loony 'conspiracy theorists' out there.

In their faux appearance of objectivity, these same mainstream news media outlets—and not just Time—make little or no effort in their own voices to roundly debunk the utterly ridiculous claim by CIA Director Michael Hayden that the video tapes had to be destroyed lest they be leaked and imperil the lives of the torturers who were filmed executing their craft. Instead, the media uniformly leave that task to quotes by outraged Democrats, thereby framing the matter as a politicized controversy rather than as a pattern of criminal acts that, taken as a whole, constitute a conspiracy in the legal sense of that term, a term Time has ensured carries in the matter the lack of seriousness with which "conspiracy theorists" should be taken.

The august editorial ranks of the mainstream media notwithstanding, however, civil and criminal proceedings are likely to result on the separate acts as well as on the acts as part of an overall scheme: ..............

[SpiralHawk]

9. MIHOP evidence destroyed?

Who knows?

But one thing is certain, they destroyed evidence of how badly Commander AWOL & his republicon homelander cronies failed America on 9/11.