[NYTr] CIA Destroyed Torture and "Interrogation Instructional" Videos

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

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MSNBC - Dec 6, 2007
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22134870/

CIA destroyed al-Qaida interrogation video

Tapes included waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah, who was captured in ’02

By Robert Windrem
Senior investigative producer

The CIA videotaped the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, the first major
al-Qaida leader captured, but later destroyed the tapes, current and
former intelligence officials tell NBC News.

The video, meant to instruct other agency personnel — as well as serve
as an "internal check," included video of Zubaydah being subjected to
waterboarding, the interrogation technique that simulates drowning and
is the most controversial of the many techniques used on high-value
al-Qaida detainees.

In a statement to agency employees released Thursday, CIA Director Mike
Hayden revealed that the agency destroyed all copies of the video in
2005. While the official agency statement does not mention
waterboarding, officials tell NBC News the videos included the
waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah, the leader in charge of al-Qaida's
training camps. He was known as al-Qaida's "dean of students" and had
an encyclopedic knowledge of al-Qaida operatives worldwide.  He is now
awaiting trial at the U.S. prison at the Navy base at Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba.

"The press has learned that back in 2002, during the initial stage of
our terrorist detention program, CIA videotaped interrogations, and
destroyed the tapes in 2005," wrote Hayden, who took over the
director's job in 2006. "I understand that the Agency did so only after
it was determined they were no longer of intelligence value and not
relevant to any internal, legislative, or judicial inquiries —
including the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui.

"The decision to destroy the tapes was made within CIA itself. The
leaders of our oversight committees in Congress were informed of the
videos years ago and of the Agency's intention to dispose of the
material. Our oversight committees also have been told that the videos
were, in fact, destroyed."

In describing the rationale for the original decision to produce the
videos, Hayden wrote: "The tapes were meant chiefly as an additional,
internal check on the program in its early stages. At one point, it was
thought the tapes could serve as a backstop to guarantee that other
methods of documenting the interrogations — and the crucial information
they produced — were accurate and complete. The Agency soon determined
that its documentary reporting was full and exacting, removing any need
for tapes. Indeed, videotaping stopped in 2002."

Zubaydah was the first of three al-Qaida detainees waterboarded by the
agency. The others were Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Hambali, the
masterminds of the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States and the 2002
Bali, Indonesia, bombings, respectively.

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