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CIA Confirms 12 Destroyed Videotapes Depicted "Enhanced Interrogation Methods"

Friday 06 March 2009

by: Daphne Eviatar  |  The Washington Independent

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In December 2007, former CIA director General Michael Hayden testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee about the destruction of CIA interrogation tapes. (Photo: Susan Walsh / Associated Press)

    The CIA has reportedly just confirmed - conveniently late on a Friday afternoon - that 12 of the videotapes it destroyed while its interrogation methods were under investigation and the subject of a pending lawsuit depicted the "enhanced interrogation methods" that detainees' advocates were worried about.

    The American Civil Liberties Union reports that as part of its lawsuit seeking information on detainee abuse, the government today provided new details about the content of interrogation videotapes destroyed by the CIA - specifically, that 12 depict so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques." In court documents, the government also said it would produce a complete list of summaries, transcripts or memoranda related to the videotapes by March 20. However, the inventory of tapes provided to the court is so heavily redacted that it's virtually all black ink.

    "The government is needlessly withholding information about these tapes from the public, despite the fact that the CIA's use of torture - including waterboarding - is no secret," said Amrit Singh, staff attorney with the ACLU in a statement released today. "This new information only underscores the need for full and immediate disclosure of the CIA's illegal interrogation methods. The time has come for the CIA to be held accountable for flouting the rule of law."

    In December 2007, the ACLU filed a motion to hold the CIA in contempt for its destruction of the tapes in violation of a court order requiring the agency to produce or identify all records requested by the ACLU. That motion is still pending.

    Earlier this week, the CIA acknowledged it destroyed 92 tapes of interrogations. According to today's documents, these tapes all related to just two detainees; 90 involved one, and the other two tapes showed the other. The tapes were not identified and processed for the ACLU in response to its Freedom of Information Act request back in 2005 seeking information on the treatment and interrogation of detainees in U.S. custody. The ACLU notes that the tapes were also withheld from the 9/11 Commission, which had specifically asked the CIA to hand over transcripts and recordings documenting the interrogation of CIA prisoners.

    Legal documents in the case are available here.

  

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Comments

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Golly! Only 12 tapes

 Sat, 03/07/2009 - 15:48 β€” Anonymous (not verified)
Golly! Only 12 tapes depicted torture. I guess the other 80 tapes were just Disney movies. Yay!

Why in the world would it

 Sat, 03/07/2009 - 16:15 β€” James Lascko (not verified)
Why in the world would it take well over a year for a Judge to rule on a single motion? It's becoming more and more obvious that our courts ARE NOT interested in a conducting fair and open trials, but are actually accomplices to the criminal act by purposely dragging their feet while covering up any official wrongdoing. These tapes would have proved the inhumane treatment accused people received at the hands of those in power. Who do you petition for Justice when the courts themselves are nothing more than politicized dens of inequity?

What Did We Become Under

 Sat, 03/07/2009 - 16:47 β€” Anonymous (not verified)
What Did We Become Under BuSh....??

Secret police will always do

 Sat, 03/07/2009 - 17:10 β€” peterjkraus (not verified)
Secret police will always do what secret police are known to do. There are no "good guys" or "bad guys" here: just sadists with fascistic tendencies who love to hurt people.

Yeah, for special viewing in

 Sat, 03/07/2009 - 17:13 β€” Anonymous (not verified)
Yeah, for special viewing in the Bush/Cheney libraries.

and this bunch SAY they

 Sat, 03/07/2009 - 17:38 β€” DNoland (not verified)
and this bunch SAY they believe in God. What god is that?

It is time to disband the

 Sat, 03/07/2009 - 17:53 β€” Natasha (not verified)
It is time to disband the monster we call the CIA and perhaps start something new and transparent. It is crazy to have federal agencies that aren't accountable to even Congress. Their budgets are for huge secrets. It's a huge "trust me" from an agency which assassinates government leaders and foments revolutions in other countries as well as many other heinous crimes.

Now that Leon Panetta has

 Sat, 03/07/2009 - 19:01 β€” L**2 (not verified)
Now that Leon Panetta has taken over the CIA, I would have expected a lot less redacting. He should order an immediate and rapid review of the redacted documents with a firm deadline and hopefully un-redact a lot of the black ink.

Special prosecutors.

 Sat, 03/07/2009 - 19:02 β€” Steve Newcomb (not verified)
Special prosecutors. Now! The rule of law is not optional. It's required for survival.

Hayden Waterboarded, the

 Sat, 03/07/2009 - 22:10 β€” Anonymous (not verified)
Hayden Waterboarded, the headline that we need to see to clean up this bunch of inbred sociopaths calling themselves patriots. Destruction of evidence=GUILT

I filed a FOIA with DOI last

 Sat, 03/07/2009 - 22:13 β€” Anonymous (not verified)
I filed a FOIA with DOI last May. CIA was involved in dope/arms/money trafficking through Minnesota - which is still how the CIA gets it's black ops money. They are, individually and collectively, out of control and sick. It's time to expose them, individually and collectively, hold them accountable, and dismantle their covert operations - especially those they conduct on US soil! They're in our Dept of Commerce and Dept. of Public Safety in this state, and I presume every other state. The CIA is a covert action agency that overthrows hostile government. Clearly, since we are so infested with these folks here, they consider us "hostile" or they would not have such a major presence. Jesse Ventura: get the ball rolling by naming names!

The CIA has long been a more

 Sat, 03/07/2009 - 22:16 β€” Robert Walters (not verified)
The CIA has long been a more or less rogue operation -- a sort of government-sanctioned Mafiosi, most frequently operating in the interests of the corporate oligarchy. No matter what legal constraints the Congress seeks to impose, the agency will continue to act extra-legally and extra-constitutionally...that's in the nature of secret police, as someone already pointed out. There are, no doubt, agency employees, including some spooks, who are NOT rogues. But until and unless spooks who break the law or violate the Constitution and/or treaties are prosecuted and punished, the agency won't get 'cleaned up.' Mr. Lascko (3/7/09 - 16:15), there have always been US judges with a fascist bent -- Scalia & Thomas immediately come to mind; probably Mukasey also was so inclined. While I agree with your concern, I have no answer for your question -- within the present judicial system, at virtually every level, there are some judges who would have been right at home in the Third Reich. The vast majority, however, whether conservative or liberal (whatever those labels mean anymore) take seriously the framework of the Constitution and established law, and make a good-faith effort to act within those limits. As for Federal judges, we, as citizens, must prevail strongly on the President to appoint competent, Constitution-loving judges to the Federal bench. That's no guarantee of their future performance, of course, but in any human system, that's about the best we can do.

Is this really a surprise to

 Sat, 03/07/2009 - 22:39 β€” Anonymous (not verified)
Is this really a surprise to anyone? Consider how much was left out the 9/11 commission by the people who directed it. If I had a copy of my own I'd read it just because I cant believe that WTC 7 is simply omitted from the report.Does anyone have a hard copy of the report? Can you verify that for me? Its simply ludicrous how pacified we've become. Why aren't people asking QUESTIONS?? Bush n'CO. should've been impeached long ago (let's not forget they never actually won the election in 2000), but I guess since their out of office now there's no reason to hold them accountable for anything??? What is going on! How much clearer a case for impeachment/indictment, whatever, do we need?? Pick your issue ...Enron, 9/11, the false intelligence, no exit strategy, Valerie Plame, Alberto Gonzales, Libby,....TORTURE!! and just to top it off dick cheney shot a man in the face....

Gone forever? I doubt it.

 Sat, 03/07/2009 - 23:27 β€” Anonymous (not verified)
Gone forever? I doubt it. If someone wanted them scuttled you can bet someone else squirreled em away ...maybe some of the real keepers, just for fun. Dimes to dollars they were digitized, and it's SO easy to make copies of things these days... So with this kind of dynamite, and with all the little fiefdoms, jealousies and personalities in our bloated trillion dollar security establishment, I'd never ever say never folks, because sometimes copies of these sorts of incriminating tapes (memos, emails, recordings etc.) just sort of reappear again, right when they shouldn't. Although if any did show up, the odds are there's enough money sloshing around the CIA many coffers to please and quiet down even the bitchiest staffing enemy or former employee. I don't know about you guys, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

The Bush Mafiosi may still

 Sun, 03/08/2009 - 07:02 β€” Anonymous (not verified)
The Bush Mafiosi may still get away with everything. This country is not good at holding its laders accountable for their criminal doings. They either get pardoned or die after living a cozy, comfortable life. Whenever there is a Republican in charge, We the People end up bloodied, broke and in a depression.

It isn't the spooks... every

 Sun, 03/08/2009 - 13:39 β€” Curt (not verified)
It isn't the spooks... every government has 'em, and the ones doing intelligence may be a "necessary evil". The problem is when the spooks branch out from benign intelligence gathering into covert action and coercive intelligence gathering. This isn't the spooks on their own, they do what they are told by their superiors. The problem is the government leaders that have turned the CIA into its own private army, and allowed them to finance their illegal operations in any way they can: drug money, arms sales, and counterfeiting of U.S. currency (ever wonder where those "supercurrency" U.S. counterfeits came from?) Every president uses this army for its personal interests (usually related to promoting U.S. business interests abroad.) While we're here focused on a bunch of tapes CIA operatives are all over South America trying to fight against democracy and nationalization and in Iran financing and otherwise supporting terrorists attempting to destabilize that government. I propose to you that waterboarding is mild compared to a great deal of the activities they are engaged in.

Flouting the law? Amrit

 Sun, 03/08/2009 - 15:53 β€” J. Clark (not verified)
Flouting the law? Amrit Singh, staff attorney with the ACLU, wrote; " The time has come for the CIA to be held accountable for flouting the rule of law." Gee, that sounds gentle. I say, rather, that it's time for CIA personnel to be held accountable for breaking the law, if that's what they've done. People who break the law are called criminals, not flouters. Suspected criminals need to be investigated. If the criminal investigation turns up probable cause, they need to be prosecuted. If convicted they need to be incarcerated. CIA personnel and others are suspected of striking at our American values from within, which is more likely to bring us down than anything bin Laden can do--and he knows that. He had to be hoping that CIA personnel and others would react that way, and he must be overjoyed that they may have. If they did, they need to be put where we want to put bin Laden himself--even if it turns out that some of these people worked at the White House.

The Chain of Command is

 Sun, 03/08/2009 - 19:19 β€” Anonymous (not verified)
The Chain of Command is clear-cut. The list of crimes is huge. The array of evidence to indict and prosecute is vast. Hold individuals in the chain of command behind bars and bring them to court. More evidence will appear, certainly. However, attempts at "rational" postures about torture whether cynical or plaintive are part of a syndrome all of which is madness. Clearly, these crimes demand indictment and prosecution to uphold Rule of Law.

(yawn...) just as long as no

 Mon, 03/09/2009 - 06:50 β€” Herbert Browne (not verified)
(yawn...) just as long as no one shreds the CIA budget, everything's fine at Langley, ain't it? ^..^