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Liar-In-Chief: 'No recollection' of torture tapes
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
CNN - Dec 8, 2007
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/12/07/cia.videotapes/index.html
Bush: 'No recollection' of tapes
WA****NGTON (CNN) -- U.S. President George W. Bush "has no recollection"
of videotapes of CIA interrogations of some al Qaeda suspects or of
plans to destroy the tapes, a White House spokeswoman said.
Bush and Vice President Cheney learned about videotaped interrogations
of some al Qaeda suspects on Thursday, when CIA Director Michael Hayden
briefed them about the existence of the tapes and their subsequent
destruction, administration officials said Friday.
The interrogations -- using newly approved "alternative" interrogation
techniques -- of two al Qaeda suspects were recorded in 2002, Hayden
said Thursday in a letter to CIA employees. They were destroyed three
years later when the agency determined they had no intelligence value
and could pose a security risk, he said.
"I spoke to the president this morning about this," White House
spokeswoman Dana Perino said. "He has no recollection of being made
aware of the tapes or their destruction before yesterday. He was
briefed by General Hayden yesterday morning."
The vice president learned about the tapes and their destruction at the
same time, another administration official told CNN.
Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Connecticut, said that was "stretching credulity."
"There's something going on here," Dodd, a candidate for the Democratic
presidential nomination, said on CNN's "The Situation Room. "We're not
getting the full story, hence the reason why there should be an
investigation. It goes to the heart of our national security, our
protection, our safety, our isolation in the world. That's why this is
so im****tant."
Later Friday, two senior administration officials told CNN that
then-deputy White House counsel Harriet Miers was aware of the tapes
and told the CIA not to destroy them.
The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of
potential investigations on the matter, said they believe this is
"exculpatory" for the White House because it shows a top official had
told the CIA not to destroy the tapes. The officials also said the
information about the tapes was not relayed to the president until this
week.
Democrats reacted strongly to the news of the existence of the tapes
and their subsequent destruction, particularly given the continuing
controversy over use of harsh interrogation techniques -- believed to
include waterboarding, a technique that involves restraining a suspect
and pouring water on him to produce the sensation of drowning -- and
whether they constitute torture.
"It is a startling disclosure," Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Illinois, said
Friday on the Senate floor. "The United States of America -- a nation
where the rule of law is venerated -- has now been in the business of
destroying evidence. Evidence of a very sensitive nature -- evidence
which clearly should have been protected for legal and historic
purposes."
Durbin said he was sending a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey
calling for an investigation into whether any laws were broken by "CIA
officials who covered up the existence of these videotapes."
The Justice Department later said it had received Durbin's letter, but
would not comment other than to say it had begun gathering facts. Sen.
Edward Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, joined Durbin's call for an
investigation.
Democrat disputes CIA chief's account
In his letter to CIA employees, Hayden wrote that the leaders of the
CIA's congressional oversight committees were informed of the videos
"years ago" along with the agency's intent to destroy them.
But Rep. Jane Harman, D-California, -- who was the ranking Democrat on
the House Intelligence Committee when the tapes were made and when they
were destroyed -- told CNN that was "not true."
Harman said she'd attended a classified briefing in 2003 that "raised
some concerns in my mind," prompting her to send a classified letter to
the CIA's general counsel.
"Obviously they both remain classified," she said, "but I have raised
with the CIA my view that no videotape should be destroyed. Let me just
leave it there. ...
"Segue to two years later, we have now learned that the tapes have been
destroyed," she said. "I was still the ranking member of the committee,
(and) no one ever informed me that tapes were being destroyed."
Former Rep. ****ter Goss, R-Florida -- who was head of the CIA when the
tapes were destroyed -- was told about the tapes when he served as
chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, a former intelligence
official told CNN. The official said that Goss agreed with Harman that
the tapes should not be destroyed and, when he became director of the
agency in 2004, he let "the appropriate people" know his opinion.
The official said Goss was unhappy when he learned after the fact that
the tapes were destroyed. Goss resigned in May 2006; Hayden was his
successor.
Rep. Pete Hoekstra of Michigan, currently the ranking Republican on the
House Intelligence Committee, was chairman of the committee after Goss
joined the CIA until the Democrats won control of the House last year,
covering the time when the tapes were destroyed. He told CNN he was
never briefed about the tapes' existence or their destruction.
Other senators and representatives added their voices to the calls for
investigations, including House Judiciary Committee Chairman John
Conyers, D-Michigan; Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan; and presidential
candidate Sen. Joe Biden, D-Delaware. And Sen. Dianne Feinstein,
D-California, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that
panel "will be doing their own investigation."
Daniel Marcus, who was general counsel for the 9/11 commission
investigating lapses in intelligence and security prior to the
September 11, 2001, terror attacks, said the commission was not
informed about the videotapes and that the decision to destroy them
"reflected very bad judgment."
Tapes were 'an internal check,' chief says
Osama bin Laden lieutenant Abu Zubayda was one of two al Qaeda suspects
whose interrogations were videotaped, according to a government
official with knowledge of the tapes.
A government official with knowledge of the CIA's interrogation
practices described the detention and interrogation program as "very
tightly held." This was a "highly compartmentalized program," the
official said. "Relatively few" people had "knowledge of or access to"
the tapes even within the agency.
Hayden, who was not CIA director at the time of either the
interrogations or their destruction, said in his letter to CIA
employees that the tapes were made as "an internal check" on the CIA's
use of harsh interrogation techniques, which, he said, became necessary
after Zubayda's "defiant and evasive" response to "normal questioning."
John McLaughlin, who was deputy CIA director when the tapes were made,
told CNN he and then-CIA Director George Tenet were told the
interrogations were being taped after they had already begun. He said
the reasons for the taping were consistent with what Hayden said in his
letter. Neither McLaughlin, now a CNN analyst, nor Tenet were with the
agency when the tapes were destroyed.
Hayden said the tapes were viewed in 2003 by the Office of the General
Counsel and the Office of the Inspector General, both of which said the
interrogation techniques used were lawful.
The agency made the decision to destroy the tapes "only after it was
determined they were no longer of intelligence value and not relevant
to any internal, legislative, or judicial inquiries," Hayden said.
"Beyond their lack of intelligence value -- as the interrogation
sessions had already been exhaustively detailed in written channels --
and the absence of any legal or internal reason to keep them, the tapes
posed a serious security risk," Hayden said. "Were they ever to leak,
they would permit identification of your CIA colleagues who had served
in the program, exposing them and their families to retaliation from al
Qaeda and its sympathizers."
Levin called the security risk concern "a pathetic excuse."
"They'd have to burn every do***ent at the CIA that has the identity of
an agent on it under that theory," he said. advertisement
Hayden, in his letter, said he was providing the background information
to CIA employees because he expected possible "misinterpretations of
the facts in the days ahead."
Current and former government officials said that Jose Rodriguez, head
of the CIA's clandestine service at the time, authorized the tapes'
destruction. Rodriguez, who resigned from the agency earlier this year,
was not immediately available for comment.
*
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