Dirty Business: the CIA destroys interrogation videos

 

Recent reports indicate that the CIA destroyed video evidence of the interrogation of two captured Al-Queda operatives. The evidence was taken in 2002 and destroyed in 2005. You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to consider the fact that the videos were destroyed because they showed scenes of torture that would have come back to haunt the CIA bigshots or whomever it was who ordered the torture in the first place.

I agree with Senator John McCain, a past torture victim at the hands of the North Vietnamese, and others who believe that the US intelligence and military authorities should abide by the Geneva Convention when it comes to dealing with captured enemies. To do less is to spit in the face of those who gathered intelligence without such barbarity and refutes our claims to be a civilized state which abides by the rule of law.

Tempting as it might be for a lefty weasel like me to lay the blame at the Oval Office or wherever Dick Cheney hangs out putting heat on Our Gang at Langley to destroy the incriminating document, this was something of a bipartisan cover-up, judging by what Andrew Sullivan of "The Atlantic" has reported in his blog.

" What the hell was Jane Harman doing? From the AP:
Rep. Jane Harman of California, then the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee and one of only four members of Congress informed of the tapes' existence, said she objected to the destruction when informed of it in 2003.
"I told the CIA that destroying videotapes of interrogations was a bad idea and urged them in writing not to do it," Harman said. While key lawmakers were briefed on the CIA's intention to destroy the tapes, they were not notified two years later when the spy agency went through with the plan. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said the committee only learned of the tapes' destruction in November 2006.
A leading Democrat is told that the CIA is destroying evidence of its own war crimes and says and does nothing? They really are a pathetic bunch."


I'm sure its incredibly hard not to something bad to some person who hates the American people and your government so badly that they wold plot to kill people by terrorist action. But I feel once you open the door to torture of some, you open that option for the government to do anything-water boarding, beatings,et al, to anyone in the long run, including an ordinary citizen.

That's why this needs to be stopped.
And chances are, someone in the Executive Branch or CIA realized that they couldn't spin this tape as part of a credible "war on terror" were it ever to be made public.