Category: Torture

Were the torture tapes destroyed to prevent evidence emerging of a royal Saudi connection to 9/11?

The latest evidence of brazen destruction of critical evidence of illegal activity by the CIA seems to have provoked even the most die-hard of Bush supporters into something like reality. To Malkin, I am part of the "unhinged left". But even she has to concede:

It is bad.

Rick Moran expresses what many on the center-right privately feel:

There may be good reason to destroy DVD’s of interrogations. But not when they have probative value in a potential court case nor when they are destroyed to cover up wrong doing by employees of the government.

Moran wants to junk the Geneva Conventions – but even he sees that, whatever your view of them, they are still the law of the land, and destruction of evidence that they have been broken is a function of a government that regards itself as above the law. And Moran also understands that the law is crystal-clear:

And yes, waterboarding is torture. Putting a prisoner in stress positions is torture. Sleep deprivation is torture.

James Joyner notes:

The CIA’s entirely plausible explanation is that they destroyed the tapes for security reasons rather than to subvert the legal process. That doesn’t, of course, mean that they didn’t subvert the legal process in so doing; indeed, it’s rather obvious that they did.

Insta-silence, of course. Glibertarians don’t care about the government torturing people and destroying the evidence. And despite page one treatment across the planet, crickets chirp at the Corner.

My take on the CIA’s destruction of potential evidence of war crimes here and here.

This AP nugget suggests that the destruction of evidence of war crimes was done with the knowledge and consent of the key Congressional leaders:

CIA Director Michael Hayden said House and Senate intelligence committee leaders were informed of the existence of the tapes and the CIA’s intention to destroy them. He also said the CIA’s internal watchdog watched the tapes in 2003 and verified that the interrogation practices were legal.

Legal according to whom?

What defines such a republic? How about an executive that ignores the rule of law, commits war-crimes and then destroys the actual evidence? Today’s bombshell is that the CIA has done just that with respect to tapes  made recording the torture of enemy combatants. Read the whole story. We live in a country where the government can detain indefinitely, torture in secret, and then secretly destroy the tapes of torture sessions to protect its own staff:

The videotapes showed agency operatives in 2002 subjecting terror suspects — including Abu Zubaydah, the first detainee in CIA custody — to severe interrogation techniques. They were destroyed in part because officers were concerned that tapes documenting controversial interrogation methods could expose agency officials to greater risk of legal jeopardy, several officials said. The CIA said today that the decision to destroy the tapes had been made "within the CIA itself," and they were destroyed to protect the safety of undercover officers and because they no longer had intelligence value. The agency was headed at the time by Porter J. Goss. Through a spokeswoman, Goss declined this afternoon to comment on the destruction of the tapes.

My italics. This was a deliberate act to destroy evidence of war-crimes and to protect war criminals from facing the rule of law. The Congress needs to find out who authorized the destruction of those tapes. I should add that this is not the first time that videotapes of alleged torture sessions have been "lost." The same happened in the case of Jose Padilla:

The missing DVD dates from March 2, 2004. It contains a video of the last interrogation session of Padilla, then a declared ‘enemy combatant’ under an order from President Bush, while he was being held in military custody at a U.S. Navy brig in Charleston, S.C. But in recent days, in the course of an unusual court hearing about Padilla’s mental condition, a government lawyer disclosed to a surprised courtroom that the Defense Intelligence Agency — which had custody of the evidence — was no longer able to locate the DVD. As a result, it was not included in a packet of classified DVDs that was recently turned over to defense lawyers under orders from Judge Cooke.

The disclosure that the Pentagon had lost a potentially important piece of evidence in one of the U.S. government’s highest-profile terrorism cases was met with claims of incredulity by some defense lawyers and human-rights groups monitoring the case. "This is the kind of thing you hear when you’re litigating cases in Egypt or Morocco or Karachi," said John Sifton, a lawyer with Human Rights Watch, one of a number of groups that has criticized the U.S. government’s treatment of Padilla. "It is simply not credible that they would have lost this tape. The administration has shown repeatedly they are more interested in covering up abuses than getting to the bottom of whether people were abused."

A potential opening for Congressional investigation:

The tapes, recorded in 2002 and destroyed in 2005, were not provided to the September 11 Commission despite a formal request to the CIA for "transcripts and any other documentary evidence" taken from interrogations. The Commission completed its work in 2004.

The story also reports that CIA attorneys told "federal prosecutors in 2003 and 2005, who relayed the information to a federal court in the Moussaoui case, that the C.I.A. did not possess recordings of interrogations sought by the judge in the case." Moussaoui had sought the tapes as exculpatory evidence.

This administration commits war-crimes, hides the evidence from federal law officers and the 9/11 Commission and then destroys the evidence completely. Give that some time to sink in.

A reader writes:

I’m an administrator at a small private high school just outside Washington, DC.  I was recently observing a 12th grade Government class having a seminar. The topic under discussion was the Bush doctrine of pre-emption. The teacher, as he sometimes does, began this particular discussion by laying out the pro-preemption point of view (I happen to know this teacher’s politics lean liberal, and I have always been impressed that the students in his seminar have no clue where he really stands politically; he wants then to form their own opinions).

The students discussed the alternatives to preemptive strikes and invasions. They came up with many, from the plausible to the naive. My favorite comment came from a student known for having fairly conservative views:

“Man, the Bush doctrine,” he said, “that’s just lazy.”

Hadn’t thought of it quite that simply before. Couldn’t really rebut it, in retrospect.

Applies to torture, as well. Lazy and stupid.

It wastes so much water:

Hammil recommended the government switch to more eco-friendly means of enhanced interrogation, such as waterboarding with a return-hose device in order to reuse old water, or simply beating suspected terrorists to a bloody pulp.

Well, they’ve got the last one covered, if Bagram and Abu Ghraib are anything to go by.

The excuses for inaction are running thin:

The APA talks obsessively about "influencing policy" through engagement, but has precious little to show for it. The CIA still tortures, using the techniques that were designed by psychologists. We all know it. The press reports on it. But the APA has yet to utter a word condemning these misuses of psychological knowledge and expertise.

Now maybe some Southern Baptists will get the courage of their own convictions:

King Ferdinand declared that drowning—called the third baptism—was a suitable response to Anabaptists. Water as a form of torture was an inversion of the waters of baptism under the (grotesque) belief that it could deliver the heretic from his or her sins.

In the Inquisition, the practice was not drowning as such, but the threat of drowning, and the symbolic threat of baptism. The tortura del agua or toca entailed forcing the victim to ingest water poured into a cloth stuffed into the mouth in order to give the impression of drowning. Because of the wide symbolic meaning of "water" in the Christian and Jewish traditions (creation, the great flood, the parting of the Red Sea in the Exodus and drowning of the Egyptians (!), Christ’s walking on the water, and, centrally for Christians, baptism as a symbolic death that gives life), the practice takes on profound religious significance. Torture has many forms, but torture by water as it arose in the Roman Catholic and Protestant reformations seemingly drew some of its power and inspiration from theological convictions about repentance and salvation.

More blog-commentary here.

An important move:

After the meeting, Huckabee joined Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in declaring his opposition to the interrogation procedure known as "waterboarding," and said he would support closing the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a contrast with the other leading Republicans.

Pro-torture Powerline calls him too "moralistic" for this position. I think the word they were searching for was "moral".