A Constructive Destruction

The Left is in full drool mode over this one.

From the Washington Post:

The CIA made videotapes in 2002 of its officers administering harsh interrogation techniques to two al-Qaeda suspects but destroyed the tapes three years later, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said yesterday.

Captured on tape were interrogations of Abu Zubaydah, a close associate of Osama bin Laden, and a second high-level al-Qaeda member who was not identified, according to two intelligence officials. Zubaydah has been identified by U.S. officials familiar with the interrogations as one of three al-Qaeda suspects who were subjected to "waterboarding," a technique that simulates drowning, while in CIA custody.

The tapes were made to document any confessions the two men might make and to serve as an internal check on how the interrogations were conducted, senior intelligence officials said.

All the tapes were destroyed in November 2005 on the order of Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., then the CIA's director of clandestine operations, officials said. The destruction came after the Justice Department had told a federal judge in the case of al-Qaeda operative Zacarias Moussaoui that the CIA did not possess videotapes of a specific set of interrogations sought by his attorneys. A CIA spokesman said yesterday that the request would not have covered the destroyed tapes.

The tapes also were not provided to the Sept. 11 commission, the independent panel that investigated the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, which demanded a wide array of material and relied heavily on classified interrogation transcripts in piecing together its narrative of events.

The startling disclosures came on the same day that House and Senate negotiators reached an agreement on legislation that would prohibit the use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics by the CIA and bring intelligence agencies in line with rules followed by the U.S. military.

Tapes.

That conjures up memories of Watergate, and scandal, and secrets.

The CIA destroyed tapes.

Ooooooooh.

...In a note to agency employees yesterday, Hayden said that the decision to destroy the videotapes was made to protect the identities of CIA officers who were clearly identifiable on them.

"Beyond their lack of intelligence value -- as the interrogation sessions had already been exhaustively detailed in written channels -- and the absence of any legal or internal reason to keep them, the tapes posed a security risk," Hayden said. "Were they ever to leak, they would permit identification of your CIA colleagues who had served in the program, exposing them to and their families to retaliation from al-Qaeda and it sympathizers."

Think of the people who were so freaked out over the pretend scandal of Valerie Plame's alleged outing. Would those same people consider the outing of the agents on these tapes to be an abomination? Would they be horrified by the leaking of their identities? What are the odds?

Slim to none.

Hayden said he decided to discuss the tapes publicly because of news media interest and the possibility that "we may see misinterpretations of the facts in the days ahead." The New York Times said on its Web site that it had informed the CIA on Wednesday night that it was preparing a story about the destroyed tapes.

Once again, the New York Times is working diligently to undermine efforts to keep Americans safe.

And once again, you can bet that there would be "misinterpretations of the facts," as Hayden so diplomatically puts it.

The Times operates in a vacuum, with no thought given to the consequences of its disclosures in terms of our national security.

Does anyone at the Times care about exposing the identities of the CIA agents on the tapes and ruining their careers, not to mention putting their lives and those of their families in extreme danger?

Noooooo.

Agency officials declined to describe the contents of the tapes, but knowledgeable U.S. officials said they depicted hours of interrogations of the two men, both of whom were subjected to aggressive interrogation methods. Whether the tapes show waterboarding or any other specific techniques is not clear.

This waterboarding fetish that the Dems and their lib media have is creepy.

It's an obsession.

The existence of the tapes was revealed to congressional oversight committees, and Congress was also informed about the decision to destroy the tapes, two senior intelligence officials said. The CIA was headed by former GOP congressman Porter J. Goss at the time.

But Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, said in a statement last night that lawmakers did not learn about the destruction of the tapes for another year.

"While we were provided with very limited information about the existence of the tapes, we were not consulted on their usage nor the decision to destroy the tapes," Rockefeller said.

Rockefeller always has a different take on events.

Same old, same old.

Civil liberties advocates denounced the CIA's decision to destroy the tapes, saying the agency should have known by 2005 that the actions depicted on them were potentially the subject of litigation and congressional investigations.

Jameel Jaffer, a national security lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union, said the tapes were destroyed at a time when a federal court had ordered the CIA to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request by the ACLU seeking records related to interrogations.

"The CIA appears to have deliberately destroyed evidence that would have allowed its agents to be held accountable for the torture of prisoners," Jaffer said. "They are tapes that should have been released to the courts and Congress, but the CIA apparently believes that its agents are above the law."

If the ACLU is so concerned about the destruction of evidence, why wasn't the group going nuts over Sandy Berger's "dox in sox" antics? Berger certainly believed that he was above the law.

What was Berger doing? It seems that he was trying to keep certain people from being held accountable for their roles in the run-up to 9/11.

I'm not defending torture. I'm advocating the protection of the American people against hostile forces.

What bothers me is that the Left is doing everything it can to make the Bush administration look bad to the American people and the world. In the process, that puts innocents at risk. It can incite violence against us and U.S. troops.

The Left's spin on the story of the destroyed tapes is that not only was there torture, but the government engaged in a cover-up about it.

Of course, that's the way it is. The Bush administration is abusive. The War on Terror is a bumper sticker slogan; it's not real. The neocons violate human rights every chance they get. Bush lied, people died. Cheney is the Antichrist, a Darth Vader Antichrist. Blah, blah, blah.

Al Qaeda has been very clear about its intentions to hit us again. The threats keep coming. What are U.S. authorities supposed to do?

During interrogation, what are they supposed to say?

"Tell us about your plots to kill Americans. Pretty please."

Sure, that would work. No reason to be harsh when dealing with sworn enemies of the U.S.

Unlike the New York Times, I don't start with the assumption that the U.S. is the enemy.

I don't think like Dick Durbin: "If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime—Pol Pot or others —that had no concern for human beings."

I have more respect for U.S. authorities and military personnel. I wouldn't equate them with Nazis or agents of a "mad regime."

Bottom line: I don't have a problem with the destruction of the tapes. It sounds like it was the appropriate thing to do.

_____________________

Here's no surprise: Dems call for inquiry in CIA tapes case

In a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois asked for a probe of "whether CIA officials who destroyed these videotapes and withheld information about their existence from official proceedings violated the law."

In a speech on the Senate floor, Durbin dismissed the CIA's explanation that it was trying to protect the identities of the interrogators. "We know that it is possible and in fact easy to cover the faces" of those who appear on camera, Durbin said. "This is not an issue that can be ignored."

Of course, Dick "you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime—Pol Pot or others —that had no concern for human beings" Durbin is making an issue out of this.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said his committee would conduct a full review of the matter. Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Clinton, D- N.Y., also called for a full investigation.

"We've got to really clean house here and get to the bottom of what's been going on," she said Friday.

Yeah, Hillary is really great at cleaning house and getting to the bottom of what's been going on.

Let's be completely honest here. Those are not items that she can include on her resume.