Mudd Wrestling and Torture

Spencer’s got one of the big scoops of the day: that Philip Mudd left the FBI about six weeks ago (so early March).

Philip Mudd, one of the intelligence community’s leading al-Qaeda analysts, has quietly retired from the FBI, where he was associate executive director of the National Security Branch. Mudd confirmed in an email that he left “about six weeks ago,” but didn’t immediately respond to additional questions about his departure.

Mudd was a longtime CIA counterterrorism specialist before coming to the FBI, but it doesn’t appear as if he’ll return to his home agency. This could be it for Mudd’s government career.

Spencer describes Mudd as one of the smartest guys on al Qaeda in government (here’s Mark Hosenball’s report on this, repeating the superlatives). But, last year, when he was nominated to take over Department of Homeland Security’s intelligence side, he was forced to withdraw his nomination after Senate staffers questioned whether he had ties to the torture program.

The White House nominee to be the undersecretary of intelligence and analysis at the Department of Homeland Security has withdrawn, he and the White House said in statements Friday. 

The withdrawal of the nomination of Philip Mudd, a veteran CIA analyst who had worked in recent years as a senior executive at the FBI, comes after an AP report yesterday. The report said that a Republican lawmaker planned to question Mudd over whether he had “direct knowledge” of the Bush-era harsh interrogation program while serving in a senior analytical role at the CIA.

The sinking of the nomination of someone who had served in an analytical capacity at the CIA, rather than in an operational or senior policy one, shows the broad scope of exposure to the controversial Bush-era harsh interrogation program for officials who did not obviously have a direct role in the program.

An aide to Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) told the AP that “Mudd’s analysts used information obtained through harsh interrogations, and the official said that Mudd is likely to be questioned on whether the analysis branch pressured interrogators in the field to use harsher methods because they believed detainees were not telling the truth.” Collins sits on the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs committee that oversees the DHS. [my emphasis]

Now, I didn’t make the connection between these two events last year, but since I’ve been reading the questions CIA’s Inspector General was (probably) asking a manager at CTC in February 2003, I happen to have read this passage of the CIA IG Report just this morning.

Handgun and Power Drill
91. [Redacted] interrogation team members, whose purpose it was to interrogate al-Nashiri and debrief Abu Zubaydah, initially staffed [redacted]. The interrogation team continued EITs on Al-Nashiri for two weeks in December 2002 [redacted] they assessed him to be “compliant.” Subsequently, CTC officers at Headquarters [redacted] sent a [redacted] senior operations officer (the debriefer) [redacted] to debrief and assess Al-Nashiri.

92. The debriefer assessed Al-Nashiri as withholding information, at which point [redacted] reinstated [redacted] hooding, and handcuffing. Sometime between 28 December 2002 and 1 January 2003, the debriefer used an unloaded semi-automatic handgun as a prop to frighten Al-Nashiri into disclosing information.44 After discussing this plan with [redacted] the debriefer entered the cell where Al-Nashiri sat shackled and racked the handgun once or twice close to Al-Nashiri’s head.45 On what was probably the same day, the debriefer used a power drill to frighten Al-Nashiri. With [redacted] consent, the debriefer entered the detainee’s cell and revved the drill while the detainee stood naked and hooded. [my emphasis]

Of note, the torturers had deemed al-Nashiri compliant. But CTC decided he had more information and sent out an operations guy to further question him, which is what led to two death threats being used against al-Nashiri (the kind of threats John Yoo had specifically refused to approve around July 25, 2002).

The IG Report describes the debriefer here as an operations person. Mudd was an analyst. So Mudd was probably not this person’s direct supervisor. But the CIA IG Report later makes it clear that the analysts were the ones driving further torture sessions when they decided the detainee had not revealed everything he knew or should have known.

205. According to a number of those interviewed for this Review, the Agency’s intelligence on Al-Qa’ida was limited prior to the initiation of the CTC Interrogation Program. The Agency lacked adequate linguists or subject matter experts and had very little hard knowledge of what particularly Al-Qa’ida leaders–who would later become detainees–knew. This lack of knowledge led analysts to speculate about what a detainee “should know,” vice information the analyst could objectively demonstrate the detainee did know. [three lines redacted]

206. [three lines redacted] When a detainee did not respond to a question posed to him, the assumption at Headquarters was that the detainee was holding back and knew more; consequently, Headquarters recommended resumption of EITs. [my emphasis]

Now, none of this means that Philip Mudd was in the chain of command that ordered al-Nashiri to be tortured some more (and even less of this means that Mudd approved of some cowboy swinging a gun next to al-Nashiri’s hooded head). Furthermore, the IG Report makes it clear that the order to torture Abu Zubaydah one more time, as distinct from al-Nashiri, came from DO, not CTC.

Nevertheless, this report on al-Nashiri–which was made public more than two months after Mudd withdrew his nomination but likely was available to Homeland Security Committee staffers before that point in unredacted form–does match the allegation made by Collins’ staffer pretty closely.

The big question is timing. A lot of Mudd’s bios have disappeared from the web. But when he moved to the FBI from serving as the number 2 guy in CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, here’s how they described that phase of his CIA employment.

Mr. Mudd returned to the CIA in January 2002 from the Near East Section of the White House National Security Council (NSC), where he served as the Director responsible for Gulf and other Middle Eastern issues. His NSC tour concluded with his joining Ambassador James Dobbins in the U.S. effort to reconstitute a new government in Afghanistan.

Mr. Mudd currently serves as second-in-charge of the CTC, which has responsibility for all-source analysis and global clandestine operations on subjects ranging from al-Qa’ida’s leadership to Hizballah to terrorists’ use of chemical and biological weapons.

That is, he returned to CIA in January 2002, and a year or so later assumed the role of CTC’s number 2. But I’m not sure what Mudd did in the interim year (though he had just returned from helping Hamid Karzai set up a new Afghan government). In other words, it’s not clear whether Mudd oversaw the analysts who decided they knew al-Nashiri was withholding information or not in late December 2002.

But the timing sure is notable.

image_print
76 replies
  1. DWBartoo says:

    An unfortunate name, Mudd.

    A handgun and … a power drill … “while the detainee stood naked and hooded.”

    This is mature, adult and reasonable behavior? Designed to enhance our “security”?

    Phil Mudd better hope that his fingerprints are not found on any of this, or he might need to seek employment in the private sector. That will teach him.

    Might Mudd be moved unburden himself of his “insights” should the slings and arrows become too much?

    Or, as a good G-man, will he maintain a stiff upper lip and a discreet silence?

    (Very minor typo … in the last sentence … “the” between “decided” and “knew” should be “they”.)

  2. Jim White says:

    Way back when, I did a diary with another related snippet of text a bit further down in the OIG report [Section 264, pp 104-105]:

    Agency officers report that reliance on analytical assessments that were unsupported by credible intelligence may have resulted in the application of EITs without justification. Some participants in the Program, particularly field interrogators, judge that CTC assessments to the effect that detainees are withholding information are not always supported by an objective evaluation of available information and the evaluation of the interrogators but are too heavily based, instead, on presumptions of what the individual might or should know.

    This repeats the reliance on what the prisoner “should know” and directly ties that bad analysis to further torture.

    • emptywheel says:

      Yup.

      I think it’s possible, though not probable, that Mudd was the one that got asked those questions we were looking at earlier. In any case, the presumption was that people at CTC would know what it meant when you were asked if you knew about the specific EIT used on al-Nashiri. Which does seem to point to the import of this story. And if I’m not mistaken, this is one that is in Durham’s expanded mandate.

    • harpie says:

      I’m pretty sure I’m getting a whiff of the unmistakable stench of Cheney:

      Some participants in the Program, particularly field interrogators, judge that CTC assessments to the effect that detainees are withholding information are not always supported by an objective evaluation of available information and the evaluation of the interrogators but are too heavily based, instead, on presumptions of what the individual might or should know.

      This sounds very much like The Stovepipe operation going on under Wolfowitz/Feith at the behest of Cheney at DOD at the time, which Seymour Hersh wrote about in an article of that name at the New Yorker.

  3. emptywheel says:

    Or to put it differently, we’ve had two of our top counter-terrorism people retire unexpectedly recently, Mudd and Kappes. Both were involved in the chain of command on torture, and both may have been involved in ordering someone to do further torture.

    One is an exception. Two starts to become a pattern.

      • DWBartoo says:

        Those are a very arresting pair of sentences, are they not, Jim.

        (Down hopes! Let us wait … yet a bit …)

        DW

        • emptywheel says:

          Mind you, I don’t think either one of them would be in serious legal trouble. If they were, it’d be hard to get them out of govt (bc in govt they’ll have more legal protection). Plus, I think there’s something in the US Attorney’s manual that lets you deal public figures out of office in lieu of charges.

      • Jeff Kaye says:

        It will be a lot less embarrassing for the Obama administration to have these guys out of office when the shit hits the fan, and oh yes, that will be happening.

    • Jeff Kaye says:

      Good riddance and no tears for either of these guys. Great article, EW, and nice scoop for Spencer.

      Only slightly OT, Judge Kennedy found today for Uthman Abdul Rahim Mohammed Uthman’s habeas petition, citing the unreliability of the evidence due to torture (torture claims that were unrebutted by the government). I’ve written it up, with substantial quotes from Kennedy’s decision, over at The Seminal.

      Reading the accounts of torture in Kennedy’s decision (PDF) will make your blood boil.

      Rayner reports that while Kazimi was detained outside the United States, his interrogators beat him; held him naked and shackled in a dark, cold cell; dropped him into cold water while his hands and legs were bound; and sexually abused him. Kazimi told Rayner that eventually “[h]e made up his mind to say’ Yes’ to anything the interrogators said to avoid further torture.” JE 145 ~ 13. According to Rayner’s declaration, Kazimi was relocated to a prison run by the CIA where he was always in darkness and where he was hooded, given injections, beaten, hit with electric cables, suspended from above, made to be naked, and subjected to continuous loud music. Kazimi reported trying to kill himself on three occasions. He told Rayner that he realized “he could mitigate the torture by telling the interrogators what they wanted to hear.”

  4. Mary says:

    The designation of “high value” or not would also tend to come from the analysts at CTC, so they both designated someone to be tortured and then, if the info was not justifying their “high value” designation (like an AZ) they would have not only frustration over not getting the info but also a legal reason (the Bybee memo requirement that the torturee be a high value operational member of Al-Qaeda) to push for the torturers to get info out that made the analyst’s initial designation “correct.”

        • emptywheel says:

          Part of me is thinking: If these guys had to step down bc of ties to torture then why were they even recommended for a high level job in the Obama administration? But the other part of me is thinking, well, you’ve got OBama’s top security advisor who is at LEAST as exposed on warrantless wiretapping as these guys are exposed on torture.

          But he was able to talk candidate Obama into giving himself the telecoms immunity.

    • bobschacht says:

      Yeah, this gets into a self-fulfilling prophecy, doesn’t it? If a subject is a “high value detainee,” then by definition, he oughta know stuff, right? And if the interrogations aren’t generating actionable intelligence, then almost by definition, he’s gotta be withholding important information, so then tighten the screws!!! Never mind the possibility that this cab driver might have been misclassified as a High Value Detainee! We don’t make mistakes! These are the worst of the Worst! ….aren’t they?

      Bob in AZ
      PS Do I hafta put in the snark tag?

      • Mary says:

        No tag needed. *g* The other layer is, “oh, and guys, btw, everything we just did to him might be illegal UNLESS you are able to get something out of him to prove he really was a high value detainee”

        Bc the comfort opinion prefaced everything on the detainees being tortured also being high value operational members of Al-Qaeda. So you get an AZ. And a dead Gul Rahman. Then what?
        *****************
        BTW – a bit tangential, but if Congress really is going to be wondering why the habeas filings are the first they’ve heard that AZ isn’t a member of AQ and didn’t know anything about AQ terrorist attacks, they may also be wondering what happened to one of the witnesses CIA had that who was trying to tell them that AZ wasn’t a member of AQ.

        Remember Noor al-Deen?
        http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/03/29/they-should-have-listened-to-noor-al-deen/

        Who made the arrangements to disappear al-deen to Syria and deep six the info he had that AZ wasn’t AQ?

        That WaPo story that was the springboard for EW’s piece included this:

        Moreover, within weeks of his capture, U.S. officials had gained evidence that made clear they had misjudged Abu Zubaida. President George W. Bush had publicly described him as “al-Qaeda’s chief of operations,” and other top officials called him a “trusted associate” of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and a major figure in the planning of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. None of that was accurate, the new evidence showed.

        Abu Zubaida was not even an official member of al-Qaeda

        And yet, as the doc dump shows, the paper being put together as late as 2005 (as well as the earlier Padilla presser, where the public and indirecly the Sup Ct was tutored by DOJ on AZ being an AQ operative) and even in 2007 the CIA was still generating propaganda about AZ being AQ. So when did anyone ever come clean with Congress?

  5. Mary says:

    If there’s going to be some kind of trial of AZ – or at least some kind of quasi judicial (military or civilian) proceeding – then at some point the issue of how a guy who was what Dan Coleman described came to be designated, even over the input of someone like Coleman, as “high value” and ripe for torture has to come up and be addressed.

    Since a lot of people had seen that name a lot prior to his capture, if nothing else, Mudd may have been involved in the original designations that opened the door to kicking out the FBI and having the CIA go to town on the crazy guy. Not the same culpability as telling intorturgators who wanted to stop to not only keep going, but ramp up, still a pretty prominent slot to have to hold down if more of the story is coming out.

    And keep in mind, that even by the time of the Padilla Presser and the CIA doc describing the history of the AZ torture and later, CIA was STILL using the CTC determination that AZ was a “high value operational member of al-Qaeda” and never mentioning the Hannis or Dan Coleman or the fact that they discovered AZ wasn’t actual al-Qaeda at all.

    So part of the pattern could well be the big “Walkback” by DOJ when it was forced to go into court on AZ – where it finally anted up, publically (and despite the previous DOJ presser to the contrary) that AZ wasn’t a member of al-Qaeda or an al-Qaeda deputy or in the al-Qaeda chain of command, etc. That was declassified the end of March, but the decision process was ongoing before that.

    They (DOJ) have now filed docs saying that at the time of his capture, AZ was none of the things that Bybee and Yoo said he would need to be to justify his torture. Even if their parameters had been followed. So that does pretty much call into question who said he was – and why – and why Congress and courts and OLC and others have never been told until that filing that Coleman was right and CIA torturers were wrong?

  6. bmaz says:

    It is interesting, however, that Mudd was described by Hosenball as believing:

    it might be better to treat terrorist suspects like criminals rather than war fighters because the latter status gave them more esteem than they deserved and catered to their martyrdom fantasies.

    which is something I can agree with.

    • emptywheel says:

      Yup. There’s a real disconnect. This guy is supposed to be the one guy who knows his stuff, too. (Though we believed we knew a lot about al-Nashiri; though we were relying on Yemen for that knowledge which is always dicey.)

      The other explanation for Kappes and Mudd leaving is if they’re not in the line of fire, but their direct reports are, and they’re leaving to object to it.

      Though given the underwhelming treatment for Kappes when he left, I’m not so sure.

      • MadDog says:

        …The other explanation for Kappes and Mudd leaving is if they’re not in the line of fire, but their direct reports are, and they’re leaving to object to it…

        I’m going to offer something counter-intuitive here, perhaps even a bit squirrely. *g*

        We’ve discussed this many moons ago before (I distinctly remember bmaz offering some good commentary), but what if Kappes and Mudd are in the direct line of fire, and in order to effect a 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination, are leaving?

        From past memory, my argument previously was that there is an inherent conflict between the obligation that government employees face between a requirement that they answer questions truthfully as government employees and their 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination.

        And again, if I remember correctly, my argument previously was that in order to plead that 5th Amendment right, folks could not remain as government employees. They had to leave government service in order to use that right.

        Perhaps Kappes’ and Mudd’s departure from government employment means that they are in fact targets of Durham’s investigation.

        Just MHO and YMMV. *g*

        • emptywheel says:

          One of the lawyers can say this better. But while that’s true, you need to look at the example of McPherson, who apparently got immunity before testifying. There’s a problem with forcing people to testify while they’re still govt employees on those terms bc then in trial they can say they thought they had to testify to keep their jobs.

          • MadDog says:

            It may be that MacPherson wasn’t actually a Durham target, and therefore Durham felt free to offer that immunity since it came at no real cost.

            Or MacPherson didn’t think he was a target, but may have been reluctant to testify against others at the CIA and somehow still keep his job at the CIA, and Durham forced the issue with the immunity grant.

          • MadDog says:

            …McPherson, who apparently got immunity before testifying…

            And speaking of CIA lawyers spilling their guts, I wonder whatever happened to the rest of the crew in McPherson’s leaky rowboat:

            …Steven Hermes, Robert J. Eatinger, Elizabeth Voigt…

            • MadDog says:

              And if folks don’t remember who some of these crew are, from a Law.com article about the Obama Administration’s pick of Stephen Preston for the CIA General Counsel position:

              …Preston may also be reluctant to lean too heavily on the next-highest-ranking lawyers at the CIA: Steven Hermes, the top counsel for the clandestine service, the division that carries out the agency’s covert and paramilitary operations; and Robert Eatinger, chief of the legal group for the counterterrorism center. Both Hermes and Eatinger have been questioned in a Justice Department investigation into the CIA’s destruction of interrogation videotapes, according to The Washington Post

        • bmaz says:

          The Federal government has a right to demand that its own employees testify and testify truthfully about acts occurring in the course and scope of their employment. Such an employee is, of course, free to avail themselves of the Fifth; however, they can be terminated or disciplined for doing so.

    • Mary says:

      It’s also a safer thing to say than, “I think treating them as criminals would be better because then, when we bought guys off drug lords and stuff, and CTC cued them up for torture experiments, we ended up creating monsters in our own ranks and torturing and killing people who had nothing to do with 9/11 and someday all the crap we did will come out and make our sons and daughters worry about leaving our grandchildren with us, alone, bc they’ll understand we chose monstering”

      • bmaz says:

        Heh, wait a few minutes and check back if you want a whiff of that. there was a substantial habeas decision released today, and it is pretty damning for the government. Seriously so. I’ll have it up shortly.

  7. MadDog says:

    A couple points EW:

    From Spencer’s quote:

    …Philip Mudd, one of the intelligence community’s leading al-Qaeda analysts

    (My Bold)

    And your assumption based on Spencer’s quote:

    …The IG Report describes the debriefer here as an operations person. Mudd was an analyst. So Mudd was probably not this person’s direct supervisor…

    (My Bold)

    The CIA’s CounterTerrorist Center (CTC) per Wiki was organizationally part of the Directorate of Operations (DO).

    While there was indeed analysis taking place at the CTC, that was not all the CTC folks actually did. Again per Wiki:

    …The CIA geared up to take the lead in the attack on al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. The NALT team, led by Gary Schroen, entered the country once more on September 26. A new branch was added to the CTC — CTC Special Operations, or CTC/SO. Hank Crumpton was recalled to head it. Black told him, “Your mission is to find al-Qa’ida, engage it, and destroy it”…

    As you can see from the above quote, the CIA’s CTC also had/has a direct, on the ground, operational role.

    And it’s not just Wiki. Continuing on:

    …A lot of Mudd’s bios have disappeared from the web. But when he moved to the FBI from serving as the number 2 guy in CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, here’s how they described that phase of his CIA employment…

    …Mr. Mudd currently serves as second-in-charge of the CTC, which has responsibility for all-source analysis and global clandestine operations

    (My Bold)

    I would proffer that Mudd’s designation as an “analyst” is not totally or necessarily entirely accurate. Yes, the CTC did “analysis”, but it also had/has a strong “operations” role in the GWOT.

    It might even be argued the the CTC is the “primary” CIA operations unit responsible for GWOT.

    In fact, one could argue that there is no other component within the CIA that has the CIA’s “primary” operations GWOT role than the CTC. All CIA GWOT “operations” begin and end with the CTC.

    I’m beginning to suspect that the CIA folks on the ground in charge of the detainee interrogations (including the contractors Mitchell and Jessen, but not the CIA’s OMS personnel) worked directly for the CTC.

    And lastly,

    …Furthermore, the IG Report makes it clear that the order to torture Abu Zubaydah one more time, as distinct from al-Nashiri, came from DO, not CTC…

    It still may have been the CTC where the actual order originated.

    As the CTC organizationally was part of the DO, the IG report may have chose to describe the order as coming from the DO generally rather than from its CTC sub-unit specifically.

    • emptywheel says:

      Oh, no question CTC joins the two, and no question but that the torturers reported to CTC. That’s why I’m so certain that CTC/LGL is what is behind a lot of the redactions we’ve been looking at.

      Part of the reason I’m focusing on Mudd’s role as an analyst is 1) because Collins’ staffer was describing their objection in terms of his managing analysts, and 2) because I’m not yet convinced that Mudd could have been in a role to be the interviewee for whom those questions were drawn up. Partly bc his portfolio was analysis.

      But I could well be wrong on that last point. That is, my lurking suspicion is that he IS that interviewee.

      And I’m also wondering whether John McPherson still works for the govt.

      • MadDog says:

        Excellent! I was finding it hard to believe you were buying the purported “hands-off” role that Mudd may have had at the CTC. I should’ve known better. *g*

      • MadDog says:

        …And I’m also wondering whether John McPherson still works for the govt.

        As of a couple weeks ago, per WaPo:

        U.S. investigators winding down inquiry of destroyed CIA tapes

        …Assistant U.S. Attorney John H. Durham, who is leading the investigation, recently bestowed immunity from prosecution on a CIA lawyer who reviewed the tapes years before they were destroyed to determine whether they diverged from written records about the interrogations, two sources familiar with the case said…

        …The agency lawyer, John McPherson, could appear before a grand jury later this month or in April, according to the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation continues…

      • MadDog says:

        I agree on the “almost” part. *g*

        Or as someone (me?) might put it, tis better to leech on EW’s post than not to leech at all. *g*

        Grins aside, ta!

  8. orionATL says:

    ew @13

    so are mudd and kappes collateral damage to durham’s investigt’n?

    my thought when kappas left was that obama’s boys were cleaning house at the cia. maybe it was doj instead.

    • bobschacht says:

      my thought when kappas left was that obama’s boys were cleaning house at the cia. maybe it was doj instead.

      Excellent thought! I hope you’re right.

      Bob in AZ

  9. orionATL says:

    continuing

    and then there’s the possibility of leaving gov’t to become a consultant, the dream of every long-time bureaucrat who is tired of the grind of bureaucracy.

    knowing both the cia and the fbi side of counterterrorism, might allow mudd to make money as a consult that he would have to steal to make if he remained “inside”.

  10. bobschacht says:

    EW,
    Thanks for noticing something that was easy to not notice!

    O/T but important in light of a frequent concern here in the Wheel House:

    State Dept Seeks Public Input on Human Rights in U.S.
    April 21st, 2010 by Steven Aftergood

    The U.S. State Department is inviting members of the public to present their concerns about human rights in the United States as part of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process, in which the human rights records of all UN Member States are to be reviewed….

    Time to give them a piece of our minds?

    Bob in AZ

  11. MadDog says:

    EW, someone else right smack dab in the middle at CTC/LGL you might want to include in the torture videotapes destruction timeline:

    …With virtually no experience in interrogations, the C.I.A. had constructed its program in a few harried months by consulting Egyptian and Saudi intelligence officials and copying Soviet interrogation methods long used in training American servicemen to withstand capture. The agency officers questioning prisoners constantly sought advice from lawyers thousands of miles away.

    “We were getting asked about combinations — ‘Can we do this and this at the same time?’” recalled Paul C. Kelbaugh, a veteran intelligence lawyer who was deputy legal counsel at the C.I.A.’s Counterterrorist Center from September to December of 2003.

    Interrogators were worried that even approved techniques had such a painful, multiplying effect when combined that they might cross the legal line, Mr. Kelbaugh said. He recalled agency officers asking: “These approved techniques, say, withholding food, and 50-degree temperature — can they be combined?” Or “Do I have to do the less extreme before the more extreme?”

    The questions came more frequently, Mr. Kelbaugh said, as word spread about a C.I.A. inspector general inquiry unrelated to the war on terrorism…

    (My Bold)

  12. MadDog says:

    Something that struck me today that I thought worth bringing up here has to do with that order from CIA HQ prohibiting “editing” videotapes thingie from page 1 of Part 2 (35 page PDF).

    First, you can’t do “editing” of videotape on your Ma and Pa’s VCR. You need more specialized video equipment, or have software on a computer to do video “editing”.

    And there has been speculation that that CIA HQ order was ex post facto. That is, editing of torture videotapes had indeed already taken place, and meanwhile, the discussion of destroying those torture videotapes was reaching all the way up to the White House and the NSC, and they were purportedly adamant against such destruction.

    So were the torture videotapes ever “edited”?

    You only have to re-read an EW post from December 11, 2007 to get your answer:

    …Apparently, the tapes themselves never entered this country.

    But the tapes themselves were never brought onto U.S. territory; they were kept, and later destroyed, at a secret location overseas.

    But an electronic copy of the tapes did. Isikoff and Hosenball’s source claims there’s no reason to believe that electronic copy still exists.

    At one point portions of the tapes were electronically transmitted to CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., so a small number of officials there could review them. A counterterrorism source, who also asked for anonymity when discussing this subject, said that there was no reason to believe that any recordings of such an electronic feed still exist.

    Editing? You betcha!

    Electronic copies? You betcha!

  13. MadDog says:

    Regarding the meeting described by Dusty Foggo’s deputy (page 17 of the 57 page Part 3 PDF) in which Jose Rodriguez told Porter Goss and John Rizzo that the torture videotapes had been destroyed, I found this MSNBC piece (Update: actually the AP was the original source) back on January 16, 2008 about the meeting “interesting”:

    …Rizzo was also at a meeting in early November 2005 when Rodriguez told Goss that the tapes had been destroyed.

    At the meeting it was decided that Rizzo would inform White House counsel Harriet Miers, Rodriguez would tell the leaders of the intelligence committees on Capitol Hill, and Goss would inform the director of national intelligence, according to former intelligence officials.

    Committee leaders didn’t know
    But intelligence committee leaders said they were not informed until more than a year later. Few committee members even knew the tapes had existed until CIA Director Michael Hayden announced their destruction to CIA employees in an e-mail on Dec. 6.

    “I don’t have any indication Mr. Rodriguez has talked to Congress about the tapes,” committee chairman Sylvestre Reyes, D-Texas, said following Wednesday’s hearing…

    I guess briefing Congressional Intel committee heads slipped Jose’s mind. *g*

  14. MadDog says:

    And before I call it an evening, I thought it might be interesting to show what Robert Bennett, the lawyer for Jose Rodriguez, had to say to the WaPo back on January 16, 2008 about the torture videotape destruction ordered by his client:

    …The tapes had been sitting in the station chief’s safe, in the U.S. Embassy compound, for nearly three years. Although those involved in the interrogations had pushed for the tapes’ destruction in those years and a secret debate about it had twice reached the White House, CIA officials had not acted on those requests. This time was different.

    The CIA had a new director and an acting general counsel, neither of whom sought to block the destruction of the tapes, according to agency officials. The station chief was insistent because he was retiring and wanted to resolve the matter before he left, the officials said. And in November 2005, a published report that detailed a secret CIA prison system provoked an international outcry.

    Those three circumstances pushed the CIA’s then-director of clandestine operations, Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., to act against the earlier advice of at least five senior CIA and White House officials, who had counseled the agency since 2003 that the tapes should be preserved. Rodriguez consulted CIA lawyers and officials, who told him that he had the legal right to order the destruction. In his view, he received their implicit support to do so, according to his attorney, Robert S. Bennett

    (My Bold)

    Implict rather than explict.

    As in “nobody explicitly told him he couldn’t.”

    As in “We advise you not to destroy the torture videotapes. Wink, wink.”

    And some say Addington was a wanker, but if truth be told, he was a winker.

    • MadDog says:

      And one more “interesting” bit from that WaPo article that lends credence to the idea that both “editing” and “copying” took place as I indicated in my # 42 above:

      …Colleagues recall that even in the deputy’s slot, Rodriguez was aware of the videotaping of Zubaida, and that he later told several it was necessary so that experts, such as psychologists not present during interrogations, could view Zubaida’s physical reactions to questions…

  15. Mary says:

    @13 and 14 and in line with what MadDog dug up @45, I can sure think of situations where either or both of them might have some serious trouble, t the extent they were involved with the original reports to Congress that AZ was a high value al-Qaeda guy and yet, despite many years continued association with the AZ torture (even with Kappes leaving for a bit) neither of them bothered to ever give Congress the heads up on the fact that he wasn’t – actually – until Congress finds it out from the DOJ filing in AZ’s habeas.

    Esp given the revelations in the habeas walk back that gov is conceding that AZ didn’t have any info on al-Q terrorist plots when he was captured. If and as some of the story comes out and it becomes clear that the no one was concerned about continuing to lie to Congress and it could/would still be ongoing, but for some lawyers having to decide how willing they were to lie to the courts, then some in Congress might well want to make some inquiries into why no one involved ever came and told them – OOPS.

    @35 – isn’t it interesting how all we ever get told is “it all came from SERE so it must be fine” What you don’t hear much is, “we put it together after consulting Egyptian and Saudi intelligence officials and copying Soviet interrogation methods”

    @24/25 – EW is getting at the interviewee’s Garrity Rights. Under Garrity, there’s no generalized protection for a public employee to not answer or to lie; however, a public employee asked to provide information in an investigation with criminal overtones can’t be fired for refusing to answer unless/until they are first told that answers won’t be used against them in a criminal proceeding.
    http://www.affi-iaff.org/garrity.pdf

    The statements can be used against other people in a criminal proceeding, though, and if the statements given were lies, there could be consequences for lying in the investigation independent from the criminal actions consequence.

  16. MadDog says:

    Ok, I thought I was done for the evening, but I had to throw out just one more tidbit.

    Contrast these 2 WaPo “reports” approximately a year apart. One is as I referenced in my # 23 above, just from a couple of weeks ago. The second WaPo “report” is from March 2, 2009.

    The 2009 WaPo report:

    …Federal prosecutor John Durham, who was appointed last year to investigate why the tapes were incinerated and whether any court directives were violated, has nearly completed formal interviews with all the key characters. Durham and FBI agents working alongside him conducted a lengthy session last week with a person who worked closely with Rodriguez at the time of the tapes’ destruction, according to sources who have followed the case. Rodriguez has not yet been questioned, they added…

    The 2010 WaPo report again:

    …The agency lawyer, John McPherson, could appear before a grand jury later this month or in April, according to the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation continues…

    A couple points:

    1. As a sidenote, the report states that “the tapes were incinerated”. So now we know how they got rid of them. Though I should say that burning stuff like videotapes and ensuring they are completely destroyed by the fire is not a simple task.

    2. In March 2009, the WaPo reports the Durham investigation is almost complete, yet a year later in March 2010 the WaPo reports that CIA OGC attorney McPherson, who “reviewed” the torture videotapes and torture notes, will be visiting a Durham Grand Jury either in March or April 2010, and under a grant of immunity.

    And of course, the immediate question is WTF changed in the year between March 2009 and March 2010?

    I guess we’ll have to stay tuned. *g*

  17. crossword says:

    This is called “panning for gold”…all-source analysts study the “firehose” of data, and pick out discrete bits and pieces they want followed up on. In CTC’s case, this means filling in the blanks through interrogations: the pieces to the puzzle, if you will, they can’t or haven’t been able to put together via human intelligence or signals intelligence.

    “Ask him about this date.”
    “Ask him who used to run this safe house in Karachi.”

    The military does the same. Human intelligence collection, at least in pursuit of HVTs, is driven by nuggets gleaned from signals intelligence and analysts standing in front of the “firehose”.

    All lingo is current as of January 2010.

  18. orionATL says:

    crossword @56

    that is very useful info.

    but that must mean the interrogations are piecemeal and chaotic rather than systematic.

    • crossword says:

      but that must mean the interrogations are piecemeal and chaotic rather than systematic.

      Precisely.

  19. Mary says:

    I didn’t mention the upcoming or concurrently ongoing Congressional investigation directly in my spec about Congress having some questions that Kappes and Mudd might not want to answer (likely answer “again” for comparison and contrast with their previous input) bc it was mentioned so recently, but I know I skip around a lot in the comments and realized I probably should tie it in.

    Jason Leopold put up a story a few days ago about the fact that the SSCI is supposedly getting ready to take a closer look at the AZ interrogations:

    http://www.truthout.org/zubaydahs-torture-detention-subject-senate-intelligence-inquiry58666

    The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has launched an investigation into Abu Zubaydah

    The panel will scrutinize thousands of pages of highly classified documents related to Zubaydah’s detention and torture to determine, among other things, whether the “enhanced interrogation techniques” he was subjected to was accurately reflected in CIA cable traffic sent back to Langley, whether he ever provided actionable intelligence to his torturers, and how the CIA and other government agencies came to rely on flawed intelligence that led the Bush administration to classify him as the No. 3 person in al-Qaeda and its first high-value detainee, Hill sources said.

    Now that the tapes are destroyed and years after the allegations that the Bush admin lied about AZ’s AQ status is probably not the best of times for the investigation – but since Kappes BFF has been DiFi and she chairs all this, he may have received some inside sourcing about why he might not want to be a the SSCI’s beck and call as an admin employee while this investigation is ongoing. Ditto Mudd.

    • klynn says:

      Great dot connecting off of Spencer’s scoop EW!

      Mary,

      Interesting and probable observation.

      Thanks to all for great comments.

  20. Mary says:

    The respone to “Who is the Enemy” caught my eye –

    If you’re looking for people who have some direct connection to a central Al Qaeda leadership, … very few people like that [are] around. If you move further out from that center of Al Qaeda, … you’re talking about many people, I would say, some just kids who are going in the wrong direction, who have never met a real Al Qaeda member and who have never been at a camp, but they believe

    • qweryous says:

      In response to Mary @71

      How about this:

      “Analysts — the critiques that have come out about the use of analysts, the abuse of analysts in the FBI, those are not press reports; those are internal reports.

      Yeah, and I’ll give you the ups and downs of that as well. I managed analysts; I was an analyst for 20 years at CIA. The talent we’re recruiting now is as good as any. The training we give them I think needs to improve.

      The status [of analysts] in the organization?

      Status is pretty good. I don’t think it’s where it should be, but I don’t think it’s where it was four years ago either. We have 2,000 analysts in this organization; we had 1,000-plus around Sept. 11. … With that kind of volume, we’re changing very quickly. It ain’t going to be perfect. By the way, I’m an analyst. I get access to the director any time I want.

      ” Bold not in original.

  21. qweryous says:

    How about this:

    “Analysts — the critiques that have come out about the use of analysts, the abuse of analysts in the FBI, those are not press reports; those are internal reports.

    Yeah, and I’ll give you the ups and downs of that as well. I managed analysts; I was an analyst for 20 years at CIA. The talent we’re recruiting now is as good as any. The training we give them I think needs to improve.

    The status [of analysts] in the organization?

    Status is pretty good. I don’t think it’s where it should be, but I don’t think it’s where it was four years ago either. We have 2,000 analysts in this organization; we had 1,000-plus around Sept. 11. … With that kind of volume, we’re changing very quickly. It ain’t going to be perfect. By the way, I’m an analyst. I get access to the director any time I want.

    ” Bold not in original.

Comments are closed.