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You are here: Home / Not Sure What To Say

Not Sure What To Say

by John Cole|  December 7, 20079:43 am| 52 Comments

This post is in: Outrage

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I really don’t know how to react to this other than to acknowledge that yes, this is what my country has turned into:

The Central Intelligence Agency in 2005 destroyed at least two videotapes documenting the interrogation of two Qaeda operatives in the agency’s custody, a step it took in the midst of Congressional and legal scrutiny about its secret detention program, according to current and former government officials.

The videotapes showed agency operatives in 2002 subjecting terrorism suspects — including Abu Zubaydah, the first detainee in C.I.A. custody — to severe interrogation techniques. The tapes were destroyed in part because officers were concerned that video showing harsh interrogation methods could expose agency officials to legal risks, several officials said.

In a statement to employees on Thursday, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the C.I.A. director, said that the decision to destroy the tapes was made “within the C.I.A.” and that they were destroyed to protect the safety of undercover officers and because they no longer had intelligence value.

Welcome to the DPRK.

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52Comments

  1. 1.

    Michael D.

    December 7, 2007 at 9:46 am

    I saw that on CNN this morning and my jaw just dropped. Then I thought, “Why are you surprised, Michael?”

  2. 2.

    Xenos

    December 7, 2007 at 9:48 am

    This will be the test for Mukasy – is he going to open an investigation that will put Porter Goss at risk of doing time?

  3. 3.

    jenniebee

    December 7, 2007 at 9:52 am

    Just two?

    Well, it seems I’ve misunderestimated them.

  4. 4.

    Wilfred

    December 7, 2007 at 9:54 am

    This will be the test for Mukasy – is he going to open an investigation that will put Porter Goss at risk of doing time?

    No, he’ll investigate the leak.

  5. 5.

    Napoleon

    December 7, 2007 at 10:25 am

    As I told someone this morning, this is the event that will finally make me say in public that I am ashamed to be an American.

  6. 6.

    scott

    December 7, 2007 at 10:29 am

    We don’t call him The Dear Leader for nothing.

    The only thing that differentiates him from either Kim, the live one or his dead daddy, is the lack of On The Spot Guidance.

    Heh heh, I’m an ole Korean hand if you hadn’t guessed.

  7. 7.

    Ed Drone

    December 7, 2007 at 10:46 am

    Their rationale (that the interrogators would be subject to danger if identified) is rendered moot by any of a thousand videos broadcast on our TV sets where faces are blurred out electronically to make them unrecognizable.

    If Fox Five News or America’s Deadliest Police Chases can do that for their broadcasts, the CIA can do it. If they don’t know how, they can hire someone from their local Fox channel.

    The excuse is a crock, and everyone knows it.

    Ed

  8. 8.

    cleek

    December 7, 2007 at 10:50 am

    i’m less surprised by the news than i am to see that other people are surprised. seriously, people: once you’ve decided that torture and indefinite detention without charge is OK, you’ve pretty much turned your back on decency, morality and accountability. what do you expect from the morally vacant ?

    and how can the destruction of evidence of torture be surprising, when they’ve already admitted torturing, defended torturing and advocated for more torture ?

  9. 9.

    Zifnab

    December 7, 2007 at 10:52 am

    I saw that on CNN this morning and my jaw just dropped. Then I thought, “Why are you surprised, Michael?”

    Because they admitted it, rather than lying about the existence of interrogation tapes for the next 50 years.

  10. 10.

    NickM

    December 7, 2007 at 10:55 am

    And see how Malkin spins this: “What did the Dems know and when did they know it?” Pravda might have been equally doctrinaire and disciplined, but weren’t the editors under threat of gulag?

  11. 11.

    Xenos

    December 7, 2007 at 10:58 am

    I don’t know what Malkin gets out of this aside from the perverse joy of a pro bono ratfucker. What a weak argument, too. Shamelessness as a business model.

  12. 12.

    AkaDad

    December 7, 2007 at 11:17 am

    I think the Democrats understand, if we want to deter this type of behavior, a memo with harsh language must be sent to the CIA director.

  13. 13.

    NickM

    December 7, 2007 at 11:26 am

    I think the Democrats understand, if we want to deter this type of behavior, a memo with harsh language must be sent to the CIA director.

    Because, clearly, if there were laws about this kind of thing, this kind of behavior would stop.

  14. 14.

    cleek

    December 7, 2007 at 11:29 am

    a memo with harsh language must be sent to the CIA director.

    exactly. and maybe, if they’re really mad, they can threaten to hold preliminary hearings.

  15. 15.

    PGE

    December 7, 2007 at 11:29 am

    The CIA has thousands (probably millions) of files, the release of which could endager undercover officers. Presumably, they think they can keep those files secure. But it’s beyond their ability to secure these tapes, short of destroying them. Yeah, right. This would be a pathetic, laughable argument if it weren’t another indicator of what’s become of this country.

  16. 16.

    Dug Jay

    December 7, 2007 at 11:32 am

    This step was only taken after consultation with a bipartisan group of legislators in Congress. Get over it, dimwits.

  17. 17.

    Robert Johnston

    December 7, 2007 at 11:33 am

    Not even a little surprising given the culture of lawlessness cultivated by the current Administration. These guys give corruption a bad name.

    Every person involved in destruction of those tapes, and every person who helped cover it up–yes that includes you, Jay Rockefeller–should rot in prison for the rest of their natural lives.

  18. 18.

    Dreggas

    December 7, 2007 at 11:33 am

    NickM Says:

    And see how Malkin spins this: “What did the Dems know and when did they know it?” Pravda might have been equally doctrinaire and disciplined, but weren’t the editors under threat of gulag?

    Go read TPM, Rockefeller knew about this for a while as did many Congress-critters…

  19. 19.

    cleek

    December 7, 2007 at 11:35 am

    unfortunately, the Dems knew about this already. and, they already wrote their strongly-worded letters.

  20. 20.

    Napoleon

    December 7, 2007 at 11:37 am

    Dug Jay said: “This step was only taken after consultation with a bipartisan group of legislators in Congress. Get over it, dimwits.”

    That doesn’t make it legal, that doesn’t say they approved it (which wouldn’t make it legal if it wasn’t) and in any event they hardly have a right to speak for the entire Congress.

  21. 21.

    AkaDad

    December 7, 2007 at 11:42 am

    exactly. and maybe, if they’re really mad, they can threaten to hold preliminary hearings.

    I’m not sure that’s appropriate during a time of occupation.

  22. 22.

    NickM

    December 7, 2007 at 11:42 am

    Go read TPM, Rockefeller knew about this for a while as did many Congress-critters…

    Yeah, I get that. But Malkin skips past blaming the criminals for their behavior and goes straight to the cops that aren’t doing enough to stop it. Because she likes the criminals and will blame the cops any chance she gets. Don’t you see the problem there?

  23. 23.

    grumpy realist

    December 7, 2007 at 11:52 am

    The reason why we’re not supposed to care about this is because (wink, wink) we know it’s only being done to Scary Brown People, and we’d never be picked up by accident.

    Sheesh. I’d have more rights under the Inquisition. And I’m not joking.

  24. 24.

    Dreggas

    December 7, 2007 at 12:07 pm

    grumpy realist Says:

    The reason why we’re not supposed to care about this is because (wink, wink) we know it’s only being done to Scary Brown People, and we’d never be picked up by accident.

    Sheesh. I’d have more rights under the Inquisition. And I’m not joking.

    Being that I am currently reading a book about medieval society and specifically the laws both under feudalism and the inquisition I would concur. Funny how kings now called tyrants even banned torture and issues proclamations banning it as did the church even specifically mentioning the act of “water torture”.

  25. 25.

    Jake

    December 7, 2007 at 12:15 pm

    Valerie Plame must be laughing herself sick.

    I’m waiting for some fRighty to say that the CIA’s destruction of the tapes PROVES you can’t trust the NIE.

  26. 26.

    grumpy realist

    December 7, 2007 at 12:33 pm

    Actually, a lot of the stuff we USED to be able to take for granted as “legal rights” (presumption of innocence, right to hear the evidence against one, right to a speedy trial, right to confront one’s accuser) is actually derived from rights people had under the Inquisition. There was so much confusion, abuse, and mess during the Inquisition for the Cathar heresy that the Church laid down some guidelines and then expanded on them over the following centuries. Most of the arguments as to why they existed came from Natural Law.

    Which is why I don’t understand why self-proclaimed “Conservatives” aren’t screaming themselves hoarse about Bush et al.’s throwing out roughly 1000 years of legal tradition.

    Oh, but I must remember: “9-11 changed EVERYTHING.”

    Guess it did, guess it did.

  27. 27.

    Rob

    December 7, 2007 at 1:03 pm

    Go read TPM, Rockefeller knew about this for a while as did many Congress-critters…

    As I understand they were told a year or so after they were destroyed.

  28. 28.

    Xenos

    December 7, 2007 at 1:19 pm

    In the case of Harmon, when was told that they might be destroyed, and she sent the CIA a letter that they should not destroy them. Being that the whole issue was classified, and the Dems were the minority, she did not have any other legal basis to try to stop the CIA.

    Sounds like complicity to me!

  29. 29.

    Xenos

    December 7, 2007 at 1:21 pm

    Man, that was mangled even for me! I picked a bad week to stop sniffing glue.

    In the case of Harmon, she was told…

  30. 30.

    Tony J

    December 7, 2007 at 1:23 pm

    Here’s my question.

    They say that they destroyed the tapes in 2005, right? Three years after they were made.

    But that doesn’t explain why they stopped the videotaping in the first place. What was so shocking about the content of these tapes that even the people who’d signed off on the use of torture, the people who’d come up with the idea of videotaping ‘interrogations’ in the first place, decided they’d really better stop making them?

    Given that they were made in 2002, I’m wondering what kind of questions these guys were being asked, and how closely the answers tortured out of them match-up with later Administration talking-points that turned out to be embarrassingly wrong.

    I’m also half-wondering which Administration figures might have featured in the tapes. Kind of just dropping by after a hard day at the Office of Special Plans to, y’know, get to know thine enemy ‘fist to face’, as it were. But that’s a different topic.

  31. 31.

    Fledermaus

    December 7, 2007 at 1:38 pm

    exactly. and maybe, if they’re really mad, they can threaten to hold preliminary hearings.

    And just you wait until Tim Russert hears of this. There will be tough questions come Sunday.

  32. 32.

    Gregory

    December 7, 2007 at 1:39 pm

    this is what the Republican Party has turned my country has turned into

    Fixed.

  33. 33.

    Susan Kitchens

    December 7, 2007 at 2:15 pm

    The tapes were destroyed in part because officers were concerned that video showing harsh interrogation methods could expose agency officials to legal risks, several officials said.

    I heard a snippet about this on the news while driving, and the story said that the reason that the tapes were destroyed were national security.

    So, let me try to harmonize these two accounts. United States’ national security is enhanced by protecting Central Intelligence Agency officials from any form of legal accountability for so-called harsh interrogation techniques, that is, torture.

    So America is more secure when CIA officials are freely able to torture other people. If CIA officials are held legally accountable for torturing, then the terrorists have won.

  34. 34.

    Susan Kitchens

    December 7, 2007 at 2:19 pm

    oops, sorry.

    the reason that the tapes were destroyed was national security.

  35. 35.

    12across

    December 7, 2007 at 4:59 pm

    Gregory Says:

    this is what the Republican Party has turned my country has turned into

    Fixed.

    Of course even the liberal TPM is reporting that the Dems knew about the tapes. Why aren’t you pointing fingers at them too?

  36. 36.

    grumpy realist

    December 7, 2007 at 5:00 pm

    Yeah, well, “national security” really means “anything that could be used as evidence against me.”

  37. 37.

    Tsulagi

    December 7, 2007 at 5:02 pm

    Welcome to the DPRK.

    DPRK? Democratic Peoples Republican Kingdom?

  38. 38.

    Philip the Equal Opportunity Cynic

    December 7, 2007 at 5:04 pm

    But that doesn’t explain why they stopped the videotaping in the first place. What was so shocking about the content of these tapes that even the people who’d signed off on the use of torture, the people who’d come up with the idea of videotaping ‘interrogations’ in the first place, decided they’d really better stop making them?

    I can’t answer that question, but I do have a possibly interesting historical parallel.

    The Brasilian military dictatorship from 1964-1985 was well-known to have adopted torture. What led to individual prosecutions, to my understanding, was the fastidious nature of their documentation of the practice.

    Likewise, in its attempts to redefine torture as not really torture, could it be that the CIA went too far in its fanaticism to show that “enhanced interrogation” was really on the up-and-up? But then, unlike the Brasilian generals, they realized they’d documented their own criminality and proceeded to destroy the record?

    What’s going to be very interesting is the finger-pointing that results once just one tape-destroyer gets thrown in jail.

  39. 39.

    rmp

    December 7, 2007 at 5:42 pm

    Dug Jay, your comment solidifies one of my personal observations about the political process. On the right, there is great uniformity in circling the wagons on any given issue. There is a set of marching orders and they are followed regardless.

    The rest of us treat an issue for what it is. If some democrats that knew of this and screwed up, then they should be held accountable.

    Accountability, …. it’s a good thing.

  40. 40.

    Bruce Moomaw

    December 7, 2007 at 7:36 pm

    My dear John, this is what your country ALWAYS would have been like the moment it was actually significantly attacked by somebody. Americans are, and have always been, a bunch of snivelling rabbits who like to think of themselves as lions. (Of course, the same is true of all other human beings — compare Churchill’s brave words during WW II with the way the British actually behaved on the Isle of Jersey, the one part of Britain to be occupied by the Nazis.) Of course we’re going to panic and squeal for Big Brother to protect us, and realize only too late that Big Brother has an agenda of his own. It’s hardly as appalling, after all, as our routine lynchings of blacks for centuries, or our open genocide during the Aguinaldo rebellion and the Indian Wars, or Woodrow Wilson throwing thousands of people into prison for having the temerity to oppose WW I. This is simply America engaging in its form of Business As Usual, and (to repeat) it’s time that all the misplaced sentimentalists like you woke up and realized that this is what their country has ALWAYS been.

  41. 41.

    Bruce Moomaw

    December 7, 2007 at 7:41 pm

    How could I possibly have forgotten My Lai and its numerous ilk, for which no one was ever punished?

    By the way, be sure and catch “Hot Air” blaming McCain for forcing the CIA to conceal “necessary lifesaving torture”. The wraps are definitely coming off as to the remaining Bushites’ real position. (Although I do notice that even “Captain” Ed is queasy about this one.)

  42. 42.

    Porco Rosso

    December 7, 2007 at 7:46 pm

    You think a blue dress with dna on it is hard for a President to explain…

  43. 43.

    Bruce Moomaw

    December 7, 2007 at 7:51 pm

    Tony J: “Given that they were made in 2002, I’m wondering what kind of questions these guys were being asked, and how closely the answers tortured out of them match-up with later Administration talking-points that turned out to be embarrassingly wrong.”

    A hell of a lot, in the case of Zubaydah.

  44. 44.

    Rick Taylor

    December 7, 2007 at 8:38 pm

    I really don’t know how to react to this other than to acknowledge that yes, this is what my country has turned into:

    Yup.

  45. 45.

    JWW

    December 7, 2007 at 9:06 pm

    John,

    So what’s your point?

  46. 46.

    Delia

    December 7, 2007 at 9:09 pm

    Tony J: “Given that they were made in 2002, I’m wondering what kind of questions these guys were being asked, and how closely the answers tortured out of them match-up with later Administration talking-points that turned out to be embarrassingly wrong.”

    A hell of a lot, in the case of Zubaydah.

    No wonder the Goopers are so anxious to redo the Iranian NIE. A little waterboarding could do wonders for the threat level its nukular facilities present to us.

  47. 47.

    rachel

    December 7, 2007 at 9:25 pm

    Rep. Jane Harman of California, who was the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee in 2003, said she told the CIA in a classified letter not to destroy the tapes. She was not informed in 2005 when the CIA went ahead with its plan to destroy them.

    The Senate Intelligence Committee did not learn of the tapes’ destruction until November 2006.

    Jane Harman let the CIA destroy those tapes? Um… No.

  48. 48.

    Bruce Moomaw

    December 7, 2007 at 11:38 pm

    Sullivan reports that tonight on Fox News Krauthammer endorsed the 2002 torture as a generalized information fishing expedition for information (which presumably means the justification of generalized military torture, and also justified destroying the tapes “lest they turn up on YouTube”. Combine this with Bryan P.’s statment, and — as I said before — the wraps are definitely coming off what the Bushites really support.

    So, yeah, John, this is what your country has turned into — to the extent that it isn’t what the US ALWAYS was. And you actually think you can do something about it? The panicky public stampede is on.

  49. 49.

    Tony J

    December 8, 2007 at 2:31 pm

    A hell of a lot, in the case of Zubaydah

    No wonder the Goopers are so anxious to redo the Iranian NIE. A little waterboarding could do wonders for the threat level its nukular facilities present to us

    That’s the point that really burns me to the core over this, and I’m not even American. The very same people who have been using their positions within the US Government to legitimise the use of torture looked at these tapes, back in 2002/3, and thought either –

    a) “Shit, we’d better stop making these because there is no way on God’s green earth that anyone could see this and think that torture was something you could defend.”

    or

    b) Let’s keep making them for our more discerning customers, but we’ll pretend we’ve lost them if anyone outside the Circled Wagons of Freedom asks for them.

    Then they kept on torturing people. Knowing it was useless and indefensible. And they’re still going to be in power for another 14 or so months, because you can guarantee that the Democrats in Congress are going to look around in feigned confusion until the MSM buries the topic.

    That just makes me very, very sick.

  50. 50.

    Gary Harris

    December 8, 2007 at 2:38 pm

    The faux reason of Perpetrator Protection is working very well. What about David Frum’s Information that when “Z” was captured, he was given the illusion that he had been captured by Saudis. That he then gave to the “Saudis” his proof of validity, Three Saudi princes secret phone numbers as well as that for the head of the Pakistani Air Force.
    At least one of the princes was in the United States during 9/11. That means that, quite likely, he was on one of the secret FBI planes that took the Bin Ladens to Saudi Arabia during the President’s ordered flying blackout at that time. The story is that after “Z”s capture all four persons were killed in “accidents” within a week.

  51. 51.

    John Rohan

    December 9, 2007 at 3:44 pm

    2 destroyed video tapes = the DPRK? Does “jump the shark” mean anything to anyone? LOL

  52. 52.

    Alex Cacioppo

    December 9, 2007 at 4:58 pm

    Why is it surprising that perpetrators of torture had an interest in covering their asses?

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