Vexed, AQ Ties, Videotape
Because it is now the policy of the United States that the nation’s wartime intelligence business will be conducted in public, it was wrong of the CIA to deprive al-Jazeera of this B-roll offering. NYT:
WASHINGTON, Dec. 7 — White House and Justice Department officials, along with senior members of Congress, advised the Central Intelligence Agency in 2003 against a plan to destroy hundreds of hours of videotapes showing the interrogations of two operatives of Al Qaeda, government officials said Friday.
The chief of the agency’s clandestine service nevertheless ordered their destruction in November 2005, taking the step without notifying even the C.I.A.’s own top lawyer, John A. Rizzo, who was angry at the decision, the officials said.
The disclosures provide new details about what Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the C.I.A. director, has said was a decision “made within C.I.A. itself” to destroy the videotapes. In interviews, members of Congress and former intelligence officials also questioned some aspects of the account General Hayden provided Thursday about when Congress was notified that the tapes had been destroyed.
Current and former intelligence officials say the videotapes showed severe interrogation techniques used on two Qaeda operatives, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who were among the first three terror suspects to be detained and interrogated by the C.I.A. in secret prisons after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Top C.I.A. officials had decided in 2003 to preserve the tapes in response to warnings from White House lawyers and lawmakers that destroying the tapes would be unwise, in part because it could carry legal risks, the government officials said.
But the government officials said that Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., then the chief of the agency’s clandestine service, the Directorate of Operations, had reversed that decision in November 2005, at a time when Congress and the courts were inquiring deeply into the C.I.A.’s interrogation and detention program. Mr. Rodriguez could not be reached Friday for comment.
It is worth noting that not only would these tapes be of compelling interest to news organizations such as al-Jazeera, al-Arabiya, CNN, CBS, BBC, etc., they also could be very significant to the political operations of organizations such as MoveOn.org, the Democratic National Committee, and al-Qaeda.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 8:57 am on Saturday, December 8, 2007
5 Responses to “Vexed, AQ Ties, Videotape”
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December 8th, 2007 at 11:02 am
CIA heroes on Monday, Zeros on Friday.
Must be tough to be a liberal these days. To go from lionizing the CIA to demonizing them in 4 days. Give you wiplash for sure
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Note. I understand that the NIE was isued by a different bureaucracy* than the one who tortured the freedom fighters, but I doubt that one person in a hundred outside the permanently obsessed and geeky knows that.
*Probably “The Knights Who Say Nie”.
December 8th, 2007 at 4:43 pm
I wonder just how long the CIA been a rogue organization?
December 8th, 2007 at 7:34 pm
First, we kill all the lawyers…
December 9th, 2007 at 1:27 am
Mr Rodriguez would appear to be the only CIA senior manager in recent memory to something effective to protect his troops, IOW he committed professional suicide on their behalf. Mind you, professionally, it was the proper thing to do, but should have been done much earlier.
Cheers
December 9th, 2007 at 1:29 am
to “DO” something …
This is a reminder that in some/many situations, retaining materiel beyond its last date of usefulness can be counter productive.
Cheers