[NYTr] Democrats Want Probe of Tape Destruction

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

AP - Dec 8, 2007
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CIA_VIDEOTAPES?SITE=MAFAL&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Democrats Want Probe of Tape Destruction

By PAMELA HESS
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Angry congressional Democrats demanded Friday that
the Justice Department investigate why the CIA destroyed videotapes of
the interrogation of two terrorism suspects.

The Senate's No. 2 Democrat, Dick Durbin of Illinois, called on
Attorney General Michael Mukasey to find out "whether CIA officials who
destroyed these videotapes and withheld information about their
existence from official proceedings violated the law."

Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., accused the CIA of a cover-up. "We
haven't seen anything like this since the 18 1/2-minute gap in the
tapes of President Richard Nixon," he said in a Senate floor speech.

And Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., told
reporters the CIA's explanation that the tapes were destroyed to
protect agents' identities is "a pathetic excuse," adding: "You'd have
to burn every document at the CIA that has the identity of an agent on
it under that theory."

Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee sent letters to CIA Director
Gen. Michael Hayden and Mukasey asking whether the Justice Department
gave legal advice to the CIA on the destruction of the tapes, and
whether it was planning an obstruction-of-justice investigation.

White House press secretary Dana Perino said Friday that President Bush
did not recall being told about the tapes or their destruction. But she
could not rule out White House involvement in the decision to destroy
the tapes, saying she had only asked the president about it, not others.

Perino refused to say whether the destruction could have been an
obstruction of justice or a threat to cases against terrorism suspects.
If the attorney general decides to investigate, "of course the White
House would support that," she said.

In a daily press briefing dedicated almost solely to the topic of the
CIA tapes, Perino responded 19 times that she didn't know or couldn't
comment.

At least one White House official, then-White House Counsel Harriet
Miers, knew about the CIA's planned destruction of videotapes in 2005
that documented the interrogation of two al-Qaida operatives, ABC news
reported Friday. Three officials told ABC News that Miers urged the CIA
not to destroy the tapes. White House officials declined to comment on
the report.

The spy agency destroyed the tapes in November 2005, at a time when
human rights groups and lawyers for detainees were clamoring for
information about the agency's secret detention and interrogation
program, and Congress and U.S. courts were debating where "enhanced
interrogation" crossed the line into torture.

Also at that time, the Senate Intelligence Committee was asking whether
the videotapes showed CIA interrogators were complying with
interrogation guidelines. The CIA refused twice in 2005 to provide the
committee with its general counsel's report on the tapes, according to
Committee Chairman Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va.

Hayden told agency employees Thursday that the recordings were
destroyed out of fear the tapes would leak and reveal the identities of
interrogators. He said the sessions were videotaped to provide an added
layer of legal protection for interrogators using new, harsh methods.
President Bush had just authorized those methods as a way to break down
the defenses of recalcitrant prisoners.

Destruction of the tapes came in the midst of an intense national
debate about how forcefully prisoners could be grilled to get them to
talk. Not long after the tapes were destroyed, Congress adopted the
Detainee Treatment Act, championed by Republican Sen. John McCain of
Arizona, who was tortured while a prisoner of war in Vietnam. The law
prohibits not only torture, but cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment
of all U.S. detainees, including those in CIA custody.

Also in the fall of 2005, the Supreme Court heard a case involving the
legal rights of detainees held at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. It decided
in June 2006 that al-Qaida prisoners are protected by the Geneva
Conventions' prohibitions on torture and cruel treatment.

At the time, the CIA also was concerned that its operatives involved in
prisoner interrogation might be subject to legal charges over the
treatment of detainees. Some agency employees have bought liability
insurance as a hedge against that possibility.

The decision to destroy the tapes was made by Jose Rodriguez, then the
head of the CIA's clandestine directorate of operations under CIA
Director Porter Goss.

Hayden said congressional intelligence committee members were made
aware in February 2003 both of the tapes and the CIA's ultimate plan to
destroy them. That claim was denied by several members of the panels,
including Republican Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, who was then chairman
of the House Intelligence Committee.

The Senate Intelligence Committee did not learn of the tapes'
destruction until November 2006, and Rockefeller said he was not told
in 2003 of the plan to destroy them. The House Intelligence Committee
learned of the tapes' destruction in March 2007.

Republicans were mostly mum about the CIA disclosure. McCain, a
presidential candidate, said while campaigning in New Hampshire on
Friday that he would not side with Democrats' calls for an
investigation because he believed the CIA's actions were legal.

"That doesn't mean I like it," McCain added.

"Of course I object to it," he said of the tapes being destroyed.
"Right now, our intelligence agencies need credibility and this is not
helpful to that."

At least one of the tapes showed the interrogations of Abu Zubaydah,
the first high-value detainee taken by the CIA in 2002. Zubaydah, under
harsh questioning, told CIA interrogators about alleged 9/11 accomplice
Ramzi Binalshibh, Bush said publicly in 2006. The two men's confessions
also led to the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, whom the U.S.
government said was the mastermind behind the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks.

Hayden told agency employees the interrogations were legal, and said
the tapes were not relevant to "any internal, legislative, or judicial
inquiries."

Lawyers for U.S. detainees believe otherwise.

The Center for Constitutional Rights, which coordinates the work of all
attorneys representing U.S. prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay Naval
Base, says the CIA may have destroyed crucial evidence a court said it
was entitled to in 2004.

The center said Friday it is now "deeply concerned" the CIA may have
destroyed evidence relating to Majid Khan, a former CIA detainee now
held at Guantanamo.

Revelations about the tapes also may affect ongoing terrorism trials.

Convicted terrorism conspirator Jose Padilla's lawyers claimed in a
Florida federal court that Zubaydah was tortured into saying Padilla
was an al-Qaida associate. The Justice Department dismissed Padilla's
allegations as "meritless," saying Padilla's legal team could not prove
that Zubaydah had been tortured.

Padilla and his two co-defendants will be sentenced next month. They
face life in prison on three terror-related convictions.

Then-U.S. District Judge Mukasey, now attorney general, signed the
warrant used by the FBI to arrest Padilla in May 2002. That warrant
relied in part on information obtained from Zubaydah, court records
show.

In a separate case, attorneys for al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias
Moussaoui in 2003 began seeking videotapes of interrogations they
believed might help their client. In November 2005 a federal judge
ordered the government to disclose whether it had video or audio tapes
of specific interrogations. Eleven days later, the government denied it
had them.

Gerald Zerkin, one of Moussaoui's lawyers in the penalty phase of his
trial, recalled some of the defense efforts to obtain testimony from
video or audio tapes of the interrogations of top al-Qaida detainees.
"Obviously the important witnesses included Zubaydah, Binalshibh and
KSM (Khalid Sheikh Mohammed)... those are the guys at the head of the
witness list," Zerkin said. He could not recall specifically which
tapes he requested or the phrasing of his discovery requests, which he
said were probably still classified.

The tapes also were not provided to the 9/11 Commission, which relied
heavily on intelligence reports about Zubaydah and Binalshibh's 2002
interrogations. CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield said the agency did not
subvert the 9/11 commission's work.

"Because it was thought the commission could ask about tapes at some
point," he said, "they were not destroyed while the commission was
active."

[Associated Press writers Curt Anderson in Miami and Jennifer Loven, Deb
Riechmann and Matt Barakat in Washington contributed to this report.]

© 2007 The Associated Press.