[NYTr] CIA Planned Destruction of Torture Tapes in 2003

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by MichaelP

The Washington Post - Jan 4, 2008
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/01/03/ST2008010303806.html

CIA in 2003 Planned Destruction of Tapes

Congresswoman Argued Against the Move

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer

A key member of Congress disclosed yesterday that the CIA said in
February 2003 that it planned to destroy videotapes of harsh
interrogations after the agency's inspector general finished probing
the episodes, an account that adds detail to recent CIA statements
about the circumstances surrounding the tapes' destruction. 

Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) released a declassified copy of a letter
she secretly wrote to the CIA in February 2003, in which she quoted
then-CIA General Counsel Scott W. Muller as telling her a tape of the
agency's interrogation of Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, better known
as Abu Zubaida, "will be destroyed after the Inspector General finishes
his inquiry." The CIA yesterday confirmed Harman's account of Muller's
statement.

Harman had recently become the ranking Democrat on the House
intelligence committee, and in her letter she urged Muller to
"reconsider" that plan and predicted that the tapes' destruction "would
reflect badly on the agency." Agency officials nonetheless destroyed
the tapes in 2005, and on Wednesday, Attorney General Michael B.
Mukasey ordered a formal criminal probe into the destruction.

In recent public accounts about the tapes, CIA officials have said that
no definitive decision was made about destroying the tapes until 2005.
Beginning in early 2003, senior officials expressed an "intention to
dispose" of the videos, according to a Dec. 6 statement by CIA Director
Michael V. Hayden. But an internal debate over the tapes' disposition
continued for two more years, with senior CIA lawyers advising against
their destruction.

According to several senior intelligence officials, who spoke on the
condition of anonymity because the matter is under criminal
investigation, the videotaping at issue was conducted at secret CIA
detention sites overseas with the approval of CIA headquarters. The
interrogations got underway after the administration in August 2002
authorized what Muller described in a Feb. 28, 2003, letter to Harman
as a "handful of specially approved interrogation techniques."

"As we informed both you and the leadership of the Intelligence
Committees last September, a number of Executive branch lawyers
including lawyers from the Department of Justice participated in a
determination that, in the appropriate circumstances, use of these
techniques is fully consistent with US law," Muller's letter said.

By that time, videotaping of Abu Zubaida and a second terrorist, Abd
al-Rahim al-Nashiri, had stopped and CIA Inspector General John L.
Helgerson was just beginning his inquiry.

The video of Abu Zubaida's interrogation, according to a former CIA
official familiar with the situation, was meant to show "that the
interrogators stayed within the guidelines and they didn't do anything
to him that could lead to his death."

Helgerson, in a statement released Wednesday, said he and his staff
reviewed the tapes as part of their inquiry, which ended in May 2004.

Harman's recommendation to Muller that the tapes not be destroyed was
reported earlier. In her letter she wrote, "Even if the videotape does
not constitute an official record that must be preserved under the law,
the videotape would be the best proof that the written record is
accurate, if such record is called into question in the future." In a
telephone interview yesterday, Harman said she never received a direct
reply to her advice that destroying the tapes would be a mistake.

In his letter to Harman, Muller did not respond to Harman's direct
request for information about whether President Bush had authorized and
approved the harsh interrogation techniques, saying in his letter to
her that it was "not appropriate for me to comment on issues that are a
matter of policy, much less the nature and extent of Executive Branch
policy deliberations."

Muller, reached by e-mail, declined to comment yesterday on the letters
or on any other aspect of the CIA's handling of the tapes. Other
officials have said Muller did not disagree with Harman and counseled
colleagues not to destroy the tapes.

Harsh interrogation techniques, including a form of simulated drowning
known as waterboarding, were used on Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the prime
architect of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, after he was captured in
March 2003. But, according to present and former intelligence
officials, that technique was no longer needed or used after August
2003.

Helgerson concluded in his May 2004 report that the interrogations
might violate international law, and he recommended changes in the
treatment and handling of detainees. The tapes were eventually
destroyed, CIA officials have said, at the instruction of then-CIA
Deputy Director for Operations Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., after Muller had
left the CIA.