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221 search results for: "torture tape"

201

But the Tapes Weren’t IN Washington

The LAT has a story suggesting Jose Rodriguez destroyed the torture tapes against Porter Goss’ wishes, and that Goss simply didn’t punish him for the act. But two details suggest an entirely different story: that Goss gave Rodriguez very clear instructions that the tapes should not be destroyed in the US, but should be destroyed in the country they were stored in.

202

Immunity

I’m all in favor of holding the several people in the White House who intervened to destroy evidence responsible for their actions.
But as we begin to hear about Jose Rodriguez considering immunity it might be well to remember what I pointed out when Rodriguez was first floating the idea of immunity.

In the hands of a less than shrewd majority and a politically reliable minority leader, immunity can be counter-productive. In the case of Monica Goodling, the Dems basically gave Monica a get out of jail card for nothing in exchange. Until I see that Crazy Pete Hoekstra’s heart is in the right place on this issue (which would, frankly, astound me), then I’d suggest we want to be very careful before we give Rodriguez something for nothing.

203

Recycling Torture Timelines

Per Jeff’s suggestion, I took a closer look at Zelikow’s memo on how the CIA stiffed the 9/11 Commission on evidence relating to interrogations of Abu Zubaydah and al-Nashiri. I’ll come back and comment on it in more detail–but I was struck by how closely the requests coincided with the beginnings of the Abu Ghraib scandal and Tenet’s resignation.

204

Timing, Again

Marty Lederman suggests that BushCo timed their terror tape destruction for a moment when they might technically evade obstruction charges for doing so. That might explain the general dodginess surround public reports of White House opposition to the torture tape destruction.

206

Dates

The AP has a story out that seems to clear all the White House lawyers of supporting the destruction of the torture tapes. All of them, that is, except David Addington.

But it also raises still more questions about timing, focusing (as a WaPo article yesterday did) on discussions in 2004. If the substantive discussions happened in 2004, then why did the tapes get destroyed in 2005?

208

Sub-Heading: White House Panics

The White House has gone to the trouble of making the NYT correct their headline indicating that news of the involvement of Addington and Gonzales in discussions of the terror tapes differs from the story the White House was pitching–that Harriet Miers was the only one involved.
While the White House is correct that they never officially claimed that Harriet was the only one involved, someone has certainly been shopping that story for over a week. Which is why it behooves those who received that story to out their source, particularly if that person is in the White House.

209

Henry Gets Impatient

Apparently, I’m not the only one who noticed that, since the time when Henry Waxman first asked Michael Mukasey to hand over the White House-related materials from the CIA Leak Case investigation, he has proven to be mighty responsive to requests from Congress when it involves covering up for the White House.

210

The Torture Debate

Dan Eggen and Walter Pincus have an interesting article describing the debate between CIA and FBI over whether waterboarding worked with Abu Zubaydah. If the timeline they describe is accurate, then it means that Abu Zubaydah gave up his most important intelligence before they started torturing him. As to the information he gave up under torture, the CIA and FBI dispute whether it was useful or not. The implication of the article is that the CIA may have destroyed the torture tapes to hide the fact that the water-boarding was ineffective.

The article explains that Abu