CIA admits it destroyed tapes of interrogations

CIA admits it destroyed tapes of interrogations

Staff members of the Sept. 11 commission, which completed its work in 2004, expressed surprise when they were told that interrogation videotapes existed until 2005.

"The commission did formally request material of this kind from all relevant agencies, and the commission was assured that we had received all the material responsive to our request," said Philip D. Zelikow, who served as executive director of the Sept. 11 commission and later as a senior counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Were these assurances given under oath?

More:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/12/06/america/06cia.php

See also:

Hayden Says CIA Videotapes Destroyed

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20071206/D8TC7EAG0.html

They tortured them.

"He said the CIA began taping the interrogations as an internal
check on the program after President Bush authorized the use
of harsh questioning methods. The methods included
waterboarding, which simulates drowning, government officials
said."

Do you get it yet debunkers?

This is how the key "official" conspiracy theory was established, by torturing these jokers until they confessed to whatever the CIA wanted to hear.

It's a fucking joke. No punchline though, just the simulation of drowning, sleep deprivation, stuff like this;

(CAUTION: There is dudity at the link.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UO392gy9uoo

You could make anybody admit to anything.

It's an important point...

With the techniques at their disposal, you can get anyone to admit to anything! It's an improtant point! It's telling the CIA destroyed tapes. It's not surprising, though, by any means.

More evidence that you

...can't believe them!

Wow, that simulation is scary as hell! The real thing must be

absolutely excruciating & atrocious!!!

We must end this insane torture & restore habeas corpus immediately!

From Russia with Love

What is most amazing about the torture techniques is that they are not designed to produce quality intelligence. They were DESIGNED to produce FALSE confessions. As a part of the SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape) programme, during the Cold War the US military simulated the torture captured US serviceman could expect in the Communist bloc (basically the KGB or one of its partners would try to get normal soldiers/airmen/etc. to admit they were spies for propaganda value, the US didn't want this so it gave servicemen a foretaste of what they could expect). When Zubayda was captured, the CIA took people from the SERE programme and had them apply the techniques they had learned from studying the KGB to CIA prisoners. Check this quote, from Air Force Colonel Steve Kleinman: "It was the K.G.B. model. But the K.G.B. used it to get people who had turned against the state to confess falsely. The K.G.B. wasn’t after intelligence."
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/08/13/070813fa_fact_mayer?printa...
It's a really long article, but it's well worth reading the whole thing.

This is also interesting: a CIA officer says of KSM's interrogations: "ninety per cent of the information was unreliable."
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a080607ksmunreliable...

Torture = Terrorism.

According to Naomi Klein in her new book Shock Doctrine, torture is never used to gain information. It is used for two main reasons. One is to "wipe the slate clean" or erase the memory and plant new thoughts, and the other, more important reason is to terrorize the enemy.
The message is, pure and simple, "Don't mess with Hitler, Hitler tortures. Don't mess with Stalin, Stalin tortures. Don't mess with Pinochet, Pinochet tortures. Don't mess with Bush and Cheney....... "
BTW despite the fact that Klein is still in denial about 9/11 Truth, this is a very important book that exposes the evil greed and corruption of savage capitalism that justified the events of 9/11. (This is my personal opinion.)

MP3 Audio Clip - Syriana Author Bob Baer Talks About 9/11

Thursday December 6, 2007
Former CIA Field Officer and Syriana Author Robert Baer Talks With Alex Jones About 9/11

* source = http://www.infowars.com
-----------------------------------

More MP3 Audio Clips >

That is a creepy tape to

That is a creepy tape to listen to. Usually Alex Jones is an aggressive interviewer, asking leading questions, putting words in the mouth of his subjects. With Baer, Alex is as gentle as a kitten, letting Baer sound like a reasonable person while he spouts his disingenuous sophistries and limited hangout half truths. Baer can not be as stupid as he pretends to be. He is covering for the perps.

Is this the person...

... to whom Griffin refers below?

This new edition has garnered some further endorsements. I was especially pleased to get one from former CIA case officer Robert Baer (the author of See No Evil, which inspired the movie Syriana), because he had written a critical review of my first book, The New Pearl Harbor. Having more recently, like Bill Christison, become convinced that 9/11 was an inside job, he wrote: "Until we get a complete, honest, transparent investigation--not one based on 'confession' extracted by torture -- we will never know what happened on 9/11. David Griffin will never let this go until we get the truth.”

http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20071009102819394

Yes, the same guy who has

Yes, the same guy who has been sucking up to DRG. But Baer's body of work is not so good. He admits that that US policy is often not so nice and inept. He admits that not all Arabs/Muslims are evil. But he still pushes the Islamofascist mythology. He just wants to fight the "real war on terror" the "right" way. I could see Hillary hiring him.

In the audiotape above he denounces "conspiracy theories". He is selling ISI wire transfers,and perhaps some LIHOP with Atta. He is still pushing KSM as the "mastermind" of 9/11. And above all, Baer is selling incompetence theory. Baer is a dream guest for Cockburn, Goodman, Chomsky, Palast, or Monbiot. Come on, the guy is not ex anything, he still works for Langley.

I am deeply disappointed in Alex Jones in not challenging Baer's performance. Alex was practically giving the guy a hummer.

So Mr. Baer, how did KSM make building 7 fall down symmetrically into its own footprint in 6 seconds?

Interesting

"In the audiotape above he denounces 'conspiracy theories'. He is selling ISI wire transfers,and perhaps some LIHOP with Atta."

As if there wouldn't be a conspiracy even behind such things...

Congress is...

...Impotent.

No.

Congress is not impotent. Congress is COMPLICIT. All you need to understand that is to examine the 9/11 Commission and its "final report".

Be sure to see...

GW's important post regarding other evidence of obstruction of justice in the 9/11 investigation by numerous parts of this government here:

http://www.911blogger.com/node/12855

The ample evidence of obstruction of justice should more than enough to warrant a new investigation.

I will be seeing my congressman in a few days and had planned a polite confrontation with him (we are on friendly speaking terms) regarding the Homegrown Thought Crime legisaltion. I'll try to add this to the pile.

--
"But truthfully, I don't really know. We've had trouble getting a handle on Building No. 7."
~~ Dr. Shyam Sunder - Acting Dir. of Buiding and Fire Research Laboratory (NIST)
"We are unable to provide a full explanation of the total collapse." (NIST)

Accessories

Yes I think debunkers, ridiculers, disinfo agents, media blackouters etc need to be regarded as accessories to the crimes of 9/11, and we should be pooling our lists.

Notions of accountability needn't suffer death from neglect

Yes!

And we should divide them into subcategories. The first, of course, being the mainstream corporate media: FOX, CNN, MSNBC, Rupert Murdock himself, etc. Next would be the "left" gatekeepers: Amy Goodman, Michael Moore, Greg Palast, Noam Chomsky, Infoshop.org, etc.

After that would be those who comprise the "pundit-ocracy". The George Steppanopolis's of the world, etc.
Then would come the obvious disinfo shills such as Killtown, Webfairy, Judy Wood, Nico Haupt, and others like them. The hardest to pin down, of course, are the internet trolls who also need to be held accountable for their participation in High Treason. They are all willing accessories to murder.

This is an excellent idea and should be followed up immediately.

They lied! They all lied!

From the article:
"What matters here is that it was done in line with the law," Hayden said.

Keep in mind that this is the same Michael Hayden, former head of NSA, who didn't even know that "upon probable cause" was the key element in the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in order to justify "lawful" searches and seizures.

http://www.youtube.com/v/cGhcECnWRGM&rel=1

And these are the men who are in charge and are asking us to trust them. Right?

No No No No.....

Only Conspiracy WACKOS believe we torture people and use their confessions as proof.....after they've pissed on themselves, bordered on the edge of death, lost consciousness, threatened with more abuse, had a psychotic break from sleep deprivation, lost all contact with the outside world, lost all hope, lost ummmm reality(yeah that's a big one), lost their minds.

I mean, what kind of Conspiracy Wacko wouldn't use their trusty critical thinking 5K1LLZ and come to the conclusion that Darwin and Occam still remain our progenitors in all that is critical thinkingish and skepticalishy? Simplest answer is usually the correct one guys. And that is, the enemies of America just admit to crimes when they get beat down and driven insane. Stop being such paranoid whackos. Occams razor Occams razor meet my amazing Occams razor.

[/sarcasm]

Meanwhile, back on a planet where bipedal beings lie and do bad things to other bipedal humans, some of the rational people with foresight and understanding of psychological complexities, are learning more and more that this SHIT goes down. And when it does, and you excuse it, you are, by default, a FUCKING SOCIOPATH!

Get it debonkers? Got it Debonkers? Great. Now have some chips and salsa watch that razor on the floor. It's by the toilet where you flushed your humanity.

Are You Defending the Terrorists? ;>)

Those is very dangerous people that they have locked up down there in Georgtownamo Bay. Are you going to be responsible if we let them go and they learn to fly airplanes and attack our cities?

You liberals is all a bunch a crazies.

(Where do these people come from anyway?)

Some might not have

Some might not have recognized or appreciated your sarcasm. I did though, and +1'd you.

/////////////////////
http://www.swatcash.com/dhs

Defending the Terrorists?

Good God man, I think I am one...according to Section 5-b158 of the blah blah blah code somewhere on some paper in some archive on some planet called America.
:P

Robert Baer: The Destroyed

Robert Baer:

The Destroyed Tapes: A Boon for Conspiracy Theorists

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1692518,00.html

The last line hits it out of the park.

/////////////////////
http://www.swatcash.com/dhs

Nice find

I don't trust Baer, but from time to time he comes across as at least an ambiguous character.

Baer is not ambiguous at

Baer is not ambiguous at all! He is a hard working limited hangout artist, doggedly trying to salvage as much of the OCT as possible.

Why should we believe the al Qaeda narrative?

Why should we believe KSM, Zubaydah and al-Shibh are in US custody? Why have we not seen any photos of high level al Qaeda? After all, we saw photos of Saddam Hussein after capture. The US government would not allow video testimony in the Moussaoui trial or the 9/11 trials in Germany. AFAIK, the only evidence allowed for trial were transcripts of interrogations.

If Tenet lied about 9/11 then it seems like a stretch to believe he started telling the truth about evidence related to 9/11. Accounts are conflicting. CIA says Zubaydah wasn't cooperating and was trained in interrogation resistance techniques. Dan Coleman of FBI (FBI Alec Station representative) said Zubaydah was probably mentally ill, possibly having a split personality. Paul Thompson has covered the contradictory accounts of KSM's arrest.

Should we trust Tenet, Goss or Hayden? Are you kidding? Not a chance. Maybe the tapes were 'destroyed' because the tapes are part of a fictional propaganda narrative. I'm not saying people haven't been tortured. There is evidence to substantiate the use of torture. I'm questioning the foundation of the torture program and the al Qaeda narrative. Sorry, I don't trust Yosri Fouda either.

Don't fall for this garbage

This is payback for the NIE report. The scumbag complicit media is the only group still aligned with the Bush Admin. Look at the facts. Who appeared right after the NIE report came out. John Bolton... neocon supreme, to try to downplay it's significance. The neo-scum didn't like this report at ALL.

Look at the timing. Immediately after the NIE report is released, suddenly a story appears about destroyed
tapes. It is trying to discredit the NIE report.

The mainstream media will NEVER do anything to help uncover the truth about 9/11... EVER.

Don't fall for this BS.

Inquiry Sought On CIA Tapes

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/07/AR200712...

Inquiry Sought On CIA Tapes
By Dan Eggen and Joby Warrick
The Washington Post
Saturday 08 December 2007

Destruction is said to be news to Bush.

Democratic lawmakers yesterday angrily demanded a Justice Department investigation into the CIA's decision to destroy videotapes of harsh interrogation tactics used on two terrorism suspects.
The White House said that President Bush was unaware of the tapes or their destruction until this week, but administration sources acknowledged last night that longtime Bush aide Harriet E. Miers knew of the tapes' existence and told CIA officials that she opposed their destruction.
The Senate intelligence committee also announced the start of its own probe into the destroyed videotapes, said Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.).
"We do not know if there was intent to obstruct justice, an attempt to prevent congressional scrutiny, or whether they were simply destroyed out of concern they could be leaked," Rockefeller said. "Whatever the intent, we must get to the bottom of it."
The uproar in Congress followed Thursday's disclosure by CIA Director Michael V. Hayden that the agency had videotaped the interrogations of two al-Qaeda suspects in 2002 and destroyed the tapes three years later. Hayden and other officials said one of the detainees was Abu Zubaida, a close associate of Osama bin Laden.
The other was identified last night by a knowledgeable U.S. official as Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who was captured in November 2002 in the United Arab Emirates. Nashiri complained earlier this year, in documents filed for his military tribunal hearing at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that he had been tortured into confessing to various terrorist acts and plots. Several alleged acts of torture are redacted from the document.
It is not clear which tactics are shown on the videotapes. Abu Zubaida has been identified by intelligence officials as one of three detainees subjected to waterboarding, an aggressive interrogation technique that simulates drowning.
Hayden said in a letter to CIA personnel that the decision to destroy the tapes was made out of concern that interrogators could be identified if the tapes were leaked.
But Democratic lawmakers, defense lawyers and civil liberties advocates scoffed at that explanation yesterday, arguing that the disclosure suggested an attempt by the CIA to cover up possibly illegal conduct in the face of specific requests for records, including video or audio tapes, from federal courts and from the independent commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks.
Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) urged Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey in a letter yesterday to investigate "whether CIA officials who destroyed these videotapes and withheld information about their existence from official proceedings violated the law."
Justice spokesman Dean Boyd said the department was reviewing Durbin's request but had no other comment.
Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) called Hayden's reasoning a "pathetic excuse" and said, "You'd have to burn every other document at the CIA that has the identity of an agent on it under that theory."
Democrats and the administration also clashed over the extent of briefings provided to Congress about the tapes.
The CIA says the Senate intelligence committee, for example, was first told of plans to destroy the tapes in February 2003 and was then informed during a closed hearing in November 2006 that the destruction had been carried out.
But Rockefeller said his panel "has located no record of either being informed of the 2003 CIA decision or being notified late last year of the tapes having being destroyed." A review of a transcript of the November 2006 hearing also makes no mention of destroying tapes, Rockefeller said.
On the House side, Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), who was previously the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said she warned the CIA's general counsel after a classified briefing in 2003 not to destroy any videotapes related to the agency's "enhanced interrogation program."
CIA officials said the agency never turned over the videotapes to the Sept. 11 commission because the panel did not specifically request them. But several members and staffers, including the panel's Republican co-chairman, disputed that claim yesterday and said the CIA's failure to disclose the tapes was in defiance of commission demands.
"That just doesn't hold water, because we asked for everything," said former New Jersey governor Thomas H. Kean, who was the panel's co-chairman. "They told us we had everything they had on the detainees... . You don't expect not to be told the truth, but we weren't told the truth."
The panel's former general counsel, Daniel Marcus, said CIA representatives told the commission that videotapes and interrogation transcripts did not exist for detainees linked to the 2001 attacks.
White House press secretary Dana Perino told reporters that Bush "has no recollection of being made aware of the tapes or their destruction" before he was briefed on the issue by Hayden on Thursday.
Perino said she could not rule out other White House involvement in the decision because she had asked only the president about it. The CIA is reviewing the case with help from White House lawyers, she said.
Miers was White House deputy chief of staff for policy when she was informed of the CIA's intention, administration sources said. She told the CIA that she opposed destroying the tapes, the sources added.
CIA officials have said that Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., then the director of clandestine operations, ordered their destruction in November 2005, and administration sources said last night that Miers, who was then White House counsel, learned of the order after it was carried out. News of Miers's knowledge was reported last night by ABC News.
A White House spokesman had no comment when asked about Miers and the tapes.
In separate letters to Mukasey and Hayden, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. (Mich.) and other committee Democrats said that "withholding of evidence sought in fact-finding or criminal investigations could amount to obstruction of justice."
The lawmakers also asked whether the Justice Department reviewed or approved of the destroying the tapes.
In the case of al-Qaeda operative Zacarias Moussaoui, prosecutors revealed in October that the CIA had discovered two videotapes and one audiotape of detainee interrogations, after saying that no such tapes existed. CIA officials say the tapes that were destroyed were not related to Moussaoui's request for material relevant to his case, however.
Abu Zubaida's interrogation played a role in the case against another alleged al-Qaeda operative, Jose Padilla, who is set to be sentenced in Miami early next year on terrorism charges.
Staff writers Peter Baker and Walter Pincus and staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.