Wagons circled at CIA over tapes' demise

[babylonsister]

Wagons circled at CIA over tapes' demise


EX-DIRECTOR: Porter J. Goss, an official says, advised that getting rid of tapes was “an extremely bad idea.” Yet Goss didn’t punish the man who ordered the interrogation videos destroyed.
The clandestine branch has a fierce instinct for protecting the agency's interests and a reputation for undermining directors perceived as hostile.

By Greg Miller, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
December 24, 2007


WASHINGTON -- Shortly after he arrived as CIA director in 2004, Porter J. Goss met with the agency's top spies and general counsel to discuss a range of issues, including what to do with videotapes showing harsh interrogations of Al Qaeda detainees, according to current and former officials familiar with the matter.

"Getting rid of tapes in Washington," Goss said, according to an official involved in the discussions, "is an extremely bad idea."

But at the agency's operational levels -- especially within the branch that ran the network of secret prisons -- the idea of holding on to the tapes and hoping their existence would never be leaked to the public seemed even worse.

Citing what CIA veterans regard as a long record of being stranded by politicians in times of scandal, current and former U.S. intelligence officials said the decision to destroy the tapes was driven by a determination among senior spies to guard against a repeat of that outcome.

The order to destroy the recordings came from Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., then-head of the CIA's clandestine service, which deploys spies overseas and carries out covert operations.

The service has been blamed for botched operations and spy scandals for decades, from the disastrous 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba through failures leading up to the Iraq war. It is one of the agency's three main divisions; the others are devoted to analysis and to development of espionage science and technology.

But the clandestine service has long been the most influential branch in the agency. It has a reputation for undermining directors perceived as hostile to the service -- including Goss -- and has developed a fierce instinct for protecting the agency's interests.

more...

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-cia24dec24,0,5558164.story?coll=la-home-center

[unhappycamper]

1. Nothing to see here, move along.....

The CIA has been doing this shit forever. Read this:

[ThomWV]

2. Horseshit. Just trying to shift the blame away from those who OKed the destruction

No, it wasn't White House lawyers that OKed the destruction of the tapes, it was some rogue group at CIA. In a pig's ass.

[babylonsister]

3. And Porter Goss is totally without fault. As you say, in a pig's ass. nt

[frogcycle]

4. word is that "rogue" has asked for immunity so he can tell all n/t

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

5. Seriously.

The fact that they feel the need to reach waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back to the Bay of Pigs to tar the clandestine branch makes that clear.

[KharmaTrain]

6. Goss Has A Lot Of Skeletons In His Closet

Remember, Goss departed the CIA in the wake of the Dusty Foggo mess...including reports he was attending those Duke Cunningham poker games with hookers. Foggo hasn't gone to trial yet, but will soon and I suspect Mr. Goss' name will appear in the testimony. His tenure at the CIA was short...a lot shorter than I suspect this regime wanted.

Goss' job was to "shape up" the CIA...politicizing it like this regime had done to the DOD, State Department, Justice Department and so on. He failed and I suspect we'll soon find out all the damage this goon did within the department in the short time he was there.