Now that is some serious that works real fast!!!!
CIA destroyed al-Qaida interrogation video
Tapes included waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah, who was captured in ’02
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 do enting the interrogations — and the crucial information they produced — were accurate and complete. The Agency soon determined that its do entary 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.
I realize what I am about to say creates a grey area of abuse, but lets assume this is a perfect world for a moment.
I think torture is de able. With that in mind....
Catching people like the 9/11 Hijackers and then interrogating them and extracting information by any means necessary is fine in my book. They are guilty of a heinous crime against the state, finding the lead from them to the top is priority, humanity regardless.
it only simulates drowning...they aren't actually drowned... why does everyone love the terrorists.
no matter what the u.s. does to terrorists we'll get it worse. we could feed them a 10 course meal every day when they are captured, provide manicures, etc... and they would still behead americans, pull their teeth out, etc...
these guys are terrorists not a true army falling under geneva convention rules.
hey I dislike terrorist as much as the next guy, but you're completely missing the point here. Lets check the facts:
1) You're in a war
2) You have prisoners of war
3) Torturing prisoners of war is forbidden under the Geneva Convention
I suggest you go read it before you start talking out of your ass again.
Having said that, I'm not entirely sure Geneva conventions apply when one of the sides doesn't recognize it at all. I mean, terrorists don't give a about being humane... SO the dilemma here doesn't stem from weather or not its fair to treat terrorists inhumanely, but weather America as a country wants to lower themselves to the level in which this sort of practice takes place.
Personally, I think its barbaric, but I don't kid myself into thinking it doesn't work. Question is, are the results worth it? Its a dangerous conundrum. One that won't easily be solved any time soon, not with the level of paranoia going around these days. Still, don't kid yourself, the Geneva Convention has gone out the window here, no doubt about that.
I can only add: I agree one hundred and ten percent.
When they abide by the Geneva Convention, then we
should. As long as they behead captives and drag
their bodies thru the streets, whatever works is fine
with me.
McCain haters.
He can't remember torture tapes?
LinkPresident Bush "has no recollection" of the CIA tapes that showed government officials interrogating terrorism suspects, a spokeswoman says.
Here's what press secretary Dana Perino said during today's briefing: I spoke to the President, and so I will have to defer on the others. But I spoke to the President this morning about this. He has no recollection of being made aware of the tapes or their destruction before yesterday. He was briefed by General Hayden yesterday morning. And as to the others, I'll have to -- I'll refer you to the Vice President's office and I'll see if I can get the others.
Why would he remember that? Cheney does worse to his lifelong friends.
the military themselves say the info obtained by torture is mostly useless, but it's very useful for recruiting new terrorists. aka, job security for the torturers.
DR, do you torture terrorists before or after they are convicted in a legit trial?
...going to Congress for war authorization is for pussies...
Waterboarding<Beheading
I've gotten answers out of someone by just using a good old American headlock.
headlock? why does every thread turn gay?
...Explosive stuff about destroyed terra tapes and 9/11....
The CIA's Destroyed Interrogation Tapes and the Saudi-Pakistani 9/11 Connection
Huffington PostOn December 5, the CIA's director, General Michael V. Hayden, issued a statement disclosing that in 2005 at least two videotapes of interrogations with al Qaeda prisoners were destroyed. The tapes, which the CIA did not provide to either the 9/11 Commission, nor to a federal court in the case of Zacarias Moussaoui, were destroyed, claimed Hayden, to protect the safety of undercover operatives.
Hayden did not disclose one of the al Qaeda suspects whose tapes were destroyed. But he did identify the other. It was Abu Zubaydah, the top ranking terror suspect when he was tracked and captured in Pakistan in 2003. In September 2006, at a press conference in which he defended American interrogation techniques, President Bush also mentioned Abu Zubaydah by name. Bush acknowledged that Zubaydah, who was wounded when captured, did not initially cooperate with his interrogators, but that eventually when he did talk, his information was, according to Bush, "quite important."
In my 2003 New York Times bestseller, Why America Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9/11, I discussed Abu Zubaydah at length in Chapter 19, "The Interrogation." There I set forth how Zubaydah initially refused to help his American captors. Also, disclosed was how U.S. intelligence established a so-called "fake flag" operation, in which the wounded Zubaydah was transferred to Afghanistan under the ruse that he had actually been turned over to the Saudis. The Saudis had him on a wanted list, and the Americans believed that Zubaydah, fearful of torture and death at the hands of the Saudis, would start talking when confronted by U.S. agents playing the role of Saudi intelligence officers.
Instead, when confronted by his "Saudi" interrogators, Zubaydah showed no fear. Instead, according to the two U.S. intelligence sources that provided me the details, he seemed relieved. The man who had been reluctant to even confirm his iden y to his U.S. captors, suddenly talked animatedly. He was happy to see them, he said, because he feared the Americans would kill him. He then asked his interrogators to call a senior member of the Saudi royal family. And Zubaydah provided a private home number and a cell phone number from memory. "He will tell you what to do," Zubaydah assured them
That man was Prince Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdul-Aziz, one of King Fahd's nephews, and the chairman of the largest Saudi publishing empire. Later, American investigators would determine that Prince Ahmed had been in the U.S. on 9/11.
American interrogators used painkillers to induce Zubaydah to talk -- they gave him the meds when he cooperated, and withdrew them when he was quiet. They also utilized a thiopental sodium drip (a so-called truth serum). Several hours after he first fingered Prince Ahmed, his captors challenged the information, and said that since he had disparaged the Saudi royal family, he would be executed. It was at that point that some of the secrets of 9/11 came pouring out. In a short monologue, that one investigator told me was the "Rosetta Stone" of 9/11, Zubaydah laid out details of how he and the al Qaeda hierarchy had been supported at high levels inside the Saudi and Pakistan governments.
He named two other Saudi princes, and also the chief of Pakistan's air force, as his major contacts. Moreover, he stunned his interrogators, by charging that two of the men, the King's nephew, and the Pakistani Air Force chief, knew a major terror operation was planned for America on 9/11.
It would be nice to further investigate the men named by Zubaydah, but that is not possible. All four identified by Zubaydah are now dead. As for the three Saudi princes, the King's 43-year-old nephew, Prince Ahmed, died of either a heart attack or blood clot, depending on which report you believe, after having liposuction in Riyadh's top hospital; the second, 41-year-old Prince Sultan bin Faisal bin Turki al-Saud, died the following day in a one car accident, on his way to the funeral of Prince Ahmed; and one week later, the third Saudi prince named by Zubaydah, 25-year-old Prince Fahd bin Turki bin Saud al-Kabir, died, according to the Saudi Royal Court, "of thirst." The head of Pakistan's Air Force, Mushaf Ali Mir, was the last to go. He died, together with his wife and fifteen of his top aides, when his plane blew up -- suspected as sabotage -- in February 2003. Pakistan's investigation of the explosion -- if one was even done -- has never been made public.
Zubaydah is the only top al Queda operative who has secretly linked two of America's closest allies in the war on terror -- Saudi Arabia and Pakistan -- to the 9/11 attacks. Why does Bush, and the CIA, continue to protect the Saudi Royal family and the Pakistani military, from the implications of Zubaydah's confessions? It is, or course, because the Bush administration desperately needs Pakistani and Saudi help, not only to keep Afghanistan from spinning completely out of control, but also as counterweights to the growing power of Iran. The Sunni governments in Riyadh and Islamabad have as much to fear from a resurgent Iran as does the Bush administration. But does this mean that leads about the origins of 9/11 should not be aggressively pursued? Of course not. But this is precisely what the Bush administration is doing. And now the cover-up is enhanced by the CIA's destruction of Zubaydah's interrogation tapes.
The American public deserves no less than the complete truth about 9/11. And those CIA officials now complicit in hiding the truth by destroying key evidence should be held responsible.
Meanwhile, a new poll shows 911 conspiracy theorists are winning....
Many Americans still believe in conspiracies
By KEVIN CROWE and GUIDO H. STEMPEL III
Scripps Howard News Service
Friday, November 23, 2007
Scripps NewsNearly two-thirds of Americans think it is possible that some federal officials had specific warnings of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, but chose to ignore those warnings, according to a Scripps Howard News Service/Ohio University poll.
A national survey of 811 adult residents of the United States conducted by Scripps and Ohio University found that more than a third believe in a broad smorgasbord of conspiracy theories including the attacks, international plots to rig oil prices, the plot to assassinate President John F. Kennedy in 1963 and the government's knowledge of intelligent life from other worlds.
The high percentage is a manifestation, some say, of an American public that increasingly distrusts the federal government.
"You wouldn't have gotten these numbers a year or two after the attacks themselves," said University of Florida law professor Mark Fenster. "You've got an increasingly disaffected public that is unhappy with the administration."
I guess they are winning.
Define victory.
Last edited by ChumpDumper; 12-08-2007 at 06:46 AM.
"Nearly two-thirds of Americans think it is possible that some federal officials had specific warnings of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, but chose to ignore those warnings"
That's a very easy theory to believe, esp since dubya and head and accomplice bootlicks have totally sealed off access to all their actions prior to 9/11. They escaped ALL responsibility for 9/11, and have then totally raped the Cons ution to protect themselves from being caught a second time with their NatSec pants down, from which they know they wouldn't escape.
Last edited by boutons_; 12-08-2007 at 02:07 PM.
I suggest you read the Geneva Conventions and get back to us.
ooooppps! Now we find out that the dimm-o-craps were aware
of the waterboarding and that the tapes were going to be
destroyed. What's a person to do. o, Nancy Pelosi and
J. Rockefeller.
Who Knew What and When
Yesterday's Washington Post article on Congress' long knowledge of CIA "enhanced" interrogation techniques certainly casts the current "torture tape" controversy in a completely different light. And, if we're reading the tea leaves correctly, look for that so-called "scandal" to die a quick (and deserved) death.
According to the paper, members of Congress received more than 30 briefings on CIA detention facilities and interrogation methods, beginning in the fall of 2002. Post staff writers Joby Warrick and Dan Eggen based their story on interviews with "multiple officials" who had first-hand knowledge of the briefing program. As they report:
The initial briefing was followed by 29 additional presentations over the next five years, an average of one every two months. According to three U.S. officials with knowledge of the program, the briefings outlined the interrogations methods being used, along with the information collected.
Sources tell the Post that Congressional participation in the briefings was usually limited to the "Gang of Four," the top Republicans and Democrats on the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. In some cases, a few staff members were also allowed to attend.
And, despite the frequent updates, Congressional recollections of those briefs has grown rather fuzzy:
In a meager attempt to support their argument, Congressional sources complained about the program's "secrecy" requirements, their inability to take notes during the briefings, or consult with legal advisers on matters presented by the CIA.
Phul-eeze. Those complaints are the Congressional equivalent of the "dog ate my homework." Congressmen and Senators know the "secrecy" rules when they sign on as a member of the intelligence committees. Ditto for note-taking; besides, after more than two dozen briefings over the course of five years, you'd think their recollections would be better (and they actually are).
Truth be told, Congress has just learned a hard lesson about the intel bureaucracy. The same establishment which has been fighting with the Bush Administration is more than capable of taking on the House and Senate leaders, past and present. When Congress began talking about an "independent counsel" to investigate destroyed interrogation tapes, the CIA trotted out some inconvenient facts and effectively, put the lawmakers in their place.
As we've now learned, key members of Congress knew about "water-boarding" long before the term entered the public lexicon, and they received routine updates on the interrogation program for five years. That's why it made eminent sense to destroy the interrogation tapes. Congress had already been briefed on the subject, to include the names of those interrogated and what they revealed. And apparently, virtually no House or Senate leader voiced objections to the program--until it became politically expedient.
There's a word for that kind of breath-taking flip-flop, that occurs with regularity inside The Beltway. It's called hypocrisy, and its foremost prac ioners are members of the U.S. Congress.
In our view, the CIA deserves credit for doing the sensible thing and destroying the tapes. Left on the shelf, those videos would have inevitably leaked, potentially exposing agency personnel who conducted the interrogations. Many of those CIA employees are covert operators, the same status to which Valerie Plame aspired. However, unlike Ms. Plame, the CIA staffers in the videos didn't blow their cover through an entry in Who's Who, or through a feckless spouse who readily traded his wife's status for political and personal gain.
The staffers who interrogated Khalid Sheik Mohammed and other Al Qaida prisoners deserve to have their iden ies protected. Entrusting that responsibility to a hyper-partisan Congress--over the course of a drawn-out "investigation" and accompanying leaks--is nothing more than a fool's errand.
It's rather ironic (yet completely appropriate) that Congress would be more concerned about the long-blown cover of Ms. Plame, rather than protecting the iden ies of genuine, front-line covert operatives. Call it another exercise in legislative hypocrisy, led by the usual suspects.
At that time, most rational people would have favored waterboarding (and more) as a means of obtaining information from high value terrorists. The four members in question -- Nancy Pelosi, Porter Goss, Bob Graham, and Pat Roberts -- represent a cross-section of the political spectrum. Pelosi is a leftist; Graham is a moderate-liberal; Roberts and Goss are conservatives. But they shared a desire to protect the country from further attack. That desire trumped partisanship, and was sufficient for Pelosi and the others effectively to sign off on what the CIA was doing.
Today, of course, things are different. We haven't been attacked in more than six years, quite possibly because of the information we obtained through waterboarding and other aggressive techniques. Thus, the partisan instinct, coupled with the joy of posturing, prevails.
But the heat the CIA is taking now pales in comparison to the heat it would have taken had it not used aggressive techniques, and the U.S. had been attacked by al Qaeda again. And, with the range of available interrogation methods now scaled back, the final chapter in the dance of the congressional Democrats may not yet have been written.
As I've said before, I think waterboarding is the ideal interrogation technique for known terrorists. It is nearly always effective, works in just a few minutes, and does no physical harm. It works by frightening the subject, which seems highly appropriate for a terrorist.
What I can never understand is how, exactly, the people who object to waterboarding want us to interrogate terrorists. Presumably they don't want us to beat them; unlike waterboarding, that would not only scare the terrorists but do them physical harm. Do they seriously think that we can get timely information from hard-core terrorists through clever cross-examination? Or do they think that captured terrorists, like criminal defendants in the American judicial system, have a right to remain silent?
Mon Dec 10, 7:12 PM ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) - A retired CIA agent confirmed in a US interview that interrogators used a simulated drowning technique on an Al-Qaeda suspect and admitted that the disputed method is a form torture.
In an ABC News interview aired Monday, retired agent John Kiriakou, who led a CIA team that captured and interrogated Al-Qaeda suspect Abu Zubaydah, said using the "waterboarding" technique was necessary and yielded crucial information.
Kiriakou said the method broke Zubaydah -- one of the first top Al-Qaeda suspects captured after the September 11, 2001 attacks -- in less than 35 seconds, according to ABC.
"The next day, he told his interrogator that Allah had visited him in his cell during the night and told him to cooperate," Kiriakou told ABC News.
"From that day on, he answered every question," he added. "The threat information he provided disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks."
The technique involves pouring water on the covered face of a restrained prisoner.
Although Kiriakou admitted that waterboarding was used, he did not entirely approve of it: "We're Americans, and we're better than this. And we shouldn't be doing this kind of thing."
But he also said that in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, there was a sense of urgency in getting information on terrorist groups.
"What happens if we don't waterboard a person, and we don't get that nugget of information, and there's an attack," Kiriakou said. "I would have trouble forgiving myself."
Kiriakou's comments come amid a growing scandal over the CIA's destruction in 2005 of videotapes made in 2002 of interrogations of Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, another top Al-Qaeda operative, as first reported by The New York Times.
The videotapes reportedly showed harsh interrogation techniques used on the suspects.
Kiriakou said he was unaware that the Zubaydah interrogation was being secretly recorded by the CIA and that the tapes were subsequently destroyed.
CIA director Michael Hayden, who was not leading the agency when the tapes were destroyed, has said that getting rid of the tapes was necessary to protect the iden y of CIA agents.
The White House has stopped short of denying any involvement in the affair. The Justice Department and the CIA's internal watchdog said they had opened a preliminary inquiry.
Shouldn't we abide by the Geneva Conventions no matter what? I think you've ever seen the movie The Seige...it makes perfect sense for the situation the U.S. is in.
I mean we aren't gonna win any hearts or minds by being hypocrites which is exactly what we are. People hate liars, but they hate hypocrites even more.
The Geneva Conventions are treaties that bind signatories to the way they behave toward one another during a time of war. So, when did al Qaeda become a signatory to the Geneva Conventions? When did radical Islam ratify the treaties?
And, why isn't anyone whining about their violations of the Geneva Conventions?
Errr....logical error....the United States is a signatory of the Geneva Conventions banning torture....including torture on members of Al Queda....So, when did al Qaeda become a signatory to the Geneva Conventions? When did radical Islam ratify the treaties?
And, why isn't anyone whining about their violations of the Geneva Conventions?
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