Ok, let’s review. The CIA carried it out – both the actual torture and the videotaping thereof. Former CIA agents (under contract) destroyed the tapes because current CIA officials refused to do it. CIA lawyers approved all of it beforehand even after the White House told them not to destroy the tapes. And, the pièce de résistance, the U.S. Congress [tacitly] approved of torture, in secret and after the fact.
So, we are to believe that the CIA took it upon themselves to (1) torture the detainees and then (2) destroy the videotapes -- against the expressed [official] wishes of the White House -- in order to protect the identities of the CIA officials who carried out the interrogations torture when Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee Carl Levin (D-MI) says that if that premise is used, every single document or file in the CIA system database would have to be destroyed.
An unspecified number of CIA lawyers within the clandestine branch of the CIA gave written approval in advance to the destruction of hundreds of hours of videotapes documenting interrogations of two al-Qaeda lieutenants, according to a former senior intelligence official with direct knowledge of the episode.
The new revelation in the developing scandal is likely to widen the scope of inquiries in the hearings that are due to start Tuesday morning in Congress. The Justice Department has also opened a probe into the matter.
The story appears in Tuesday’s New York Times:
Any written documents are certain to be a focus of government investigators as they try to reconstruct the events leading up to the tapes’ destruction.
The former intelligence official acknowledged that there had been nearly two years of debate among government agencies about what to do with the tapes, and that lawyers within the White House and the Justice Department had in 2003 advised against a plan to destroy them. But the official said that C.I.A. officials had continued to press the White House for a firm decision, and that the C.I.A. was never given a direct order not to destroy the tapes.
"They never told us, ‘Hell, no,’" he said. "If somebody had said, ‘You cannot destroy them,’ we would not have destroyed them."
The former official spoke on condition of anonymity because there is a continuing Justice Department inquiry into the matter. He said he was sympathetic to Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., the former chief of the clandestine branch, who has been described by intelligence officials as having authorized the destruction of the tapes. The former official said he was concerned that Mr. Rodriguez was being unfairly singled out for blame in the destruction of the tapes.
The former official said Mr. Rodriguez decided in November 2005 that he had sufficient authority to destroy the interrogation videos, based on the written authorization given to him from lawyers within the branch then known as the Directorate of Operations.
The C.I.A. has said that the two interrogations shown in the videotapes occurred in 2002 and that the taping of interrogations stopped that year. On Monday, however, a lawyer representing a former prisoner who said he was held by the C.I.A. said the prisoner saw cameras in interrogation rooms after 2002.
Surprisingly, current and former officials said the agency’s top lawyer at the time, John A. Rizzo, was not asked for final approval ahead of the destruction of the tapes; even though Rizzo was involved for nearly two years in discussions of the tapes. The official who talked anonymously about the episode said Mr. Rodriguez and others in the clandestine branch believed at the time that even without Rizzo’s formal approval the legal judgment made it all right to destroy the tapes.
The former official said the leaders of the clandestine service believed they "didn’t need to ask Rizzo’s permission."
During a closed session of the Senate Intelligence Committee, CIA Director General Michael V. Hayden is scheduled to appear to answer questions about the tape destruction. The general has defended the action since the story broke as having been "... done in line with the law," but the episode has drawn criticism from congressional Republicans and Democrats. As of Friday, officials at the CIA and White House were directed to preserve any documents related to the destruction of the tapes.
According to the former official, Mr. Rodriguez’s decision to destroy the tapes grew out of his primary concern, which was the safety of agents who could have been identified by the videos, but the tapes were ultimately destroyed amidst growing Congressional and legal scrutiny into the CIA’s overall detention and interrogation program. Other former CIA officials said they’d be very surprised if a Directorate of Operation’s lawyer would give approval for such a controversial move without consulting Mr. Rizzo first.
"Although unlikely, it is conceivable that once a C.I.A. officer got the answer he wanted from a D.O. lawyer, he acted on that advice," said John Radsan, who worked as a C.I.A. lawyer between 2002 and 2004 and is now a professor at William Mitchell College of Law in Minnesota. "But a streamlined process like that would have been risky for both the officer and the D.O. lawyer."
Mr. Radsan added, "I’d be surprised that even the chief D.O. lawyer made a decision of that magnitude without bringing the General Counsel’s front office into the loop."
In mid-2005, the name of the Directorate of Operations was changed to the National Clandestine Service.
Paul Gimigliano, a C.I.A. spokesman, declined to comment for this article, citing the joint investigation into the matter by the Justice Department and the C.I.A’s inspector general.
The onetime prisoner who reported seeing the cameras, Muhammad Bashmilah of Yemen, was seized by Jordanian intelligence agents back in 2003 and turned over to the CIA, according to the human rights advocacy group, Amnesty International. He was flown from Jordan to Afghanistan in October 2003 and held there until April 2004, when he was flown by plane and helicopter to a C.I.A. jail in an unidentified country, Amnesty found. Mr. Bashmilah and two other Yemeni men held with him were flown to Yemen in May 2005 and later released. Meg Satterthwaite, a director at the International Human Rights Clinic at New York University, is representing Mr. Bashmilah in a lawsuit. She told the Times that her client described cameras both in his cells and in interrogation rooms. Some were on tripods and others were on the wall. She added that in hours of conversation with her client in Yemen and by phone this past year were both lucid and detailed.
On Thursday, General Hayden said in a message to CIA employees that "videotaping stopped in 2002" after officials "determined that its documentary reporting was full and exacting, removing any need for tapes."
Asked Monday about Mr. Bashmilah’s claims, Mr. Gimigliano said he had nothing to add to General Hayden’s statement.
Senator Joe Biden is right. A special [independent] counsel must be named to this case. None of the parties involved can be trusted to investigate themselves or the other parties involved. It’s as if the CIA knew it was wrong and instead of destroying the tapes themselves, outsourced the job to contractors. The White House, meanwhile, knowing full well that they could order the agency to not destroy the tapes instead decided to more or less leave the decision up to the CIA. Congress then steps in and offers their tacit approval, knowing full well that laws were broken.
In my opinion, all the parties involved bear some culpability for this debacle. Everyone was out to cover their proverbial asses, with no concern at all for legal procedures. Just as with everything else this regime does, laws are inconvenient little processes made to be broken if their perceived convoluted need arises.
Impede, impeach and imprison. (and investigate, investigate, investigate!)
Peace