News tonight in a Christmas weekend present, the infamous Friday dump, "The 9/11 Panel Study Finds That CIA Withheld Tapes," and Kennedy takes information under advisement in detainee case with lawyer saying Justice cannot be trusted.
To be expected: The CIA is actually using the lame argument for not handing over the CIA Torture Interrogation Tapes to the 9/11 Commission this: the Commission did not ask for them specifically. They did not ask for "videos." Tis the season for Ho-Ho-Ho!
The Commission has decided they were lied to. They had asked for ALL relevant information to interrogation of terrorist suspects and were assured they had been given such. At the same time, Judge Kennedy has taken his decision under advisement. The Justice Department argued that Kennedy should "await results of the AG's "preliminary inquiry." So Judge Kennedy asked the detainee's lawyer, David Remes, a question. --read below.
"Why should the court not permit the Department of Justice to do just that?" Judge Kennedy asked David H. Remes, a lawyer for the detainees. For Mr. Remes, the answer was simple. "Plainly, the government wants only foxes guarding the henhouse," he asserted in his motion. Considering the government’s behavior so far, Mr. Remes argued, the Justice Department is not entitled to a presumption that it will do the right thing.
The CIA says they complied with the Commission. It depends on the definition of "ALL" or the definition of "information" apparently. It would be interesting to know, and I did not see it discussed, whether the CIA made transcripts of those destroyed tapes. They will say, no they did not, because if they said they had then the written transcripts would have been written information they should have turned over to the commission. But can anyone imagine no transcriptions? Does anyone here know that part of the CIA protocol--which some have discussed recently in many detained diaries.
9/11 Panel Finds CIA Withheld Tapes
A review of classified documents by former members of the Sept. 11 commission shows that the panel made repeated and detailed requests to the Central Intelligence Agency in 2003 and 2004 for documents and other information about the interrogation of operatives of Al Qaeda, and were told by a top C.I.A. official that the agency had "produced or made available for review" everything that had been requested.
The review was conducted earlier this month after the disclosure that in November 2005, the C.I.A. destroyed videotapes documenting the interrogations of two Qaeda operatives.
A seven-page memorandum prepared by Philip D. Zelikow, the panel’s former executive director, concluded that "further investigation is needed" to determine whether the C.I.A.’s withholding of the tapes from the commission violated federal law.
Now Mr. McLaughlin, former CIA head, says in an interview Friday:
agency officials had always been candid with the commission, and that information from the C.I.A. proved central to their work.
"We weren’t playing games with them, and we weren’t holding anything back," he said.
When they say, "they didn't ask for videos" specifically, that, Mr. McLaughlin, is a game!
Who do they think they are kidding?