It looks to me as though both the House and Senate Intelligence committees are going to open up investigations over the destruction of the torture tapes. The first witness they will want to talk to is former Director of Operations, Jose Rodriguez, now retired, who ordered the destruction of tapes. He will appear before the committees because there is no plausible excuse to prevent him from testifying. He may take the Fifth Amendment, but he will have to appear. If he is granted immunity, or if he decides to talk voluntarily, the whole house of cards could come tumbling down.
It is highly, highly unlikely that Rodriguez would have ordered the destruction of these tapes without any higher authority. If he talks, it’s over for somebody.
And if anyone is considering doing any harm to Mr. Rodriguez, they better think hard…because few people in the world are better equipped to protect themselves and exact revenge than the former head of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations.
The tapes were probably destroyed to protect allies (Saudi Arabia and Pakistan come to mind) more than they were to protect CIA officers. But, who knows? One thing I can’t imagine is Rodriguez agreeing to take the fall for this. If he can work out a quid pro quo with the administration he might agree to perjure himself and rely on a pardon. But that seems doubtful. He can probably get full immunity from Congress if he is willing to talk.
And the Republicans are calling for an investigation. It’s not like they can easily argue that an investigation is a witchhunt.
This really has the potential to be as big, or bigger, than Iran-Contra.
The potential fallout from this is absolutely mind boggling.
Choices Mr. Bush. Did you decide to protect your Saudi friendships vs your Country?
There needs to be an immediate order sent out for govt agencies to freeze all info, shredders & Geek Squad need to be put on hold. No more 7 layers of erasing hard drives
link.
Thanks.
I’m not sure that I understand why you might think the tapes were destroyed to protect allies. Seems to me that the prime reason would be that the tapes showed CIA agents torturing people-and they probably also show that no useful information was obtained. Had there been, they would have been leaked to CNN or Faux Nooze.
I’m not sure that I understand why you might think the tapes were destroyed to protect allies. Seems to me that the prime reason would be that the tapes showed CIA agents torturing people-and they probably also show that no useful information was obtained. Had there been, they would have been leaked to CNN or Faux Nooze.
This will help:
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2007/12/6/192315/477
might just have legs. the folks at E&P have pointed out an interesting facet about manner in which the news outlets are referring to these tapes that l hadn’t noticed.
seems that far and away the majority of them have chosen to use BushSpeaak™ such as; “enhanced interrogation”,”coercive techniques”, and “harsh interrogation techniques”, among others; in lieu of “torture”.
somebody’s working the spin machine overtime on this one, and there are too many lies already outhere and more accumulating…starting with the chimperor.
perhaps this really is the card that brings the House of Bush down.
lTMF’sA
Interesting reading.
Do I detect a smidge of a CYA in that link, that perhaps Jose was one of the interrogators himself?? Immunity may be the correct incentive.
Read the rest.
If this statement is truthful:
“the sessions were videotaped to provide an added layer of legal protection for interrogators using new, harsh methods authorized by President Bush”
then the interrogators probably have digital copies of the digital tapes safely tucked away with their insurance records. What sort of legal protection is it if you and your lawyer don’t have copies?
(BTW, who uses magnetic “tape” anymore? The whole reason to say “videotape” is to give the impression that there are a finite number of easily-destroyed physical copies. There were movies as well as still photos taken at Abu Ghraib, does anybody refer to them as videotapes? Or if they say videotape and audiotape, perhaps it is only to clarify that we can watch the torturers jacking off as their victims scream.)
Remember also that these were not the only two people tortured. IIRC, by 2005, 44 people had died under interrogation. DIED. Tortured to death. By “the good guys”. By us.
Given that Hussein’s lynching was officially recorded, without sound and tightly edited, but the cellphone (digital) recordings were what caused the most furor, by their raw truthfulness, we can only expect that sooner or later an unofficial recording of authorized-by-Bush torture will surface and get relayed to a shocked populace.
You can not stop the signal.
Unless Rodriguez is 100% certain that every copy of every torture recording everywhere in the world has been destroyed, he’d better see about immunity from Congress. Otherwise the assumption that these two hidden interrogations was worse will prevail.
Given Sy Hersh’s claim of listening to the recordings of preteens being anally-raped in the presence of their fathers, given the recordings of torture at Abu Ghraib that Congress viewed but could not share, given the suffocated and battered bodies of the dead… what could be worse?
Torturing somebody who is already insane and “valueless” is the sort of behavior we’d condemn in inhumanly-curious Nazi doctors. Unjustifiable. It is also exactly what will condemn us in the World Court.