Heavily redacted government documents filed in a New York federal court Friday afternoon state the CIA destroyed 12 videotapes that specifically showed two detainees being tortured by interrogators, the first time the agency has disclosed the exact number of .
The documents were filed in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union seeking documentary evidence on the Bush administration’s treatment of detainees. In December 2007, the ACLU filed a motion to hold the CIA in contempt for destroying the videotapes, alleging the agency violated a court order requiring the immediate production or identify all records requested by the ACLU related to detainee treatment. That motion is still pending.
The videotaped interrogations, which were also withheld from the 9/11 Commission, were destroyed in November 2005 after The Washington Post published a story exposing the CIA’s use of so-called “black site” prisons overseas to interrogate terror suspects with techniques that were not legal on U.S. soil.
On Monday, the Justice Department revealed for the first time in court documents the CIA destroyed 92 videotapes – far more than previously known – to prevent disclosure of evidence revealing how the agency’s interrogators subjected “war on terror” detainees to waterboarding and other brutal methods.
The tape destruction has been the subject of a year-long criminal investigation by John Durham, the acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia who was appointed special prosecutor last year by Attorney General Michael Mukasey.
According to Friday’s court documents, 90 tapes relate to one detainee and two tapes relate to another detainee. The detainees are said to be al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah, who was captured in Pakistan in March 2002 and flown to a secret CIA prison site in Thailand where he was tortured in what has been called the Bush administration’s extraordinary rendition program. The other so-called “high-value” detainee whose interrogation was videotaped was identified as al-Nashiri. It is believed that all of the videotaped interrogations took place at secret CIA detention center in Thailand. (Please see this investigative report on how a newly published Justice Department legal memo authorizing extraordinary renditions was drafted exactly two weeks before Zubaydah’s capture).
In a letter filed Friday in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Acting U.S. Attorney Lev Dassin said a complete list of summaries, transcripts or memoranda related to the videotapes would be filed with the court by March 20. The CIA requested an extra two weeks, Dassin said, “because it is still searching and identifying the records at issue.”
However, “to date, the CIA is not aware of any transcripts of the destroyed videotapes,” Dassin wrote. An unredacted version of the inventory of the destroyed videotapes will only be made available for the ACLU to view behind closed doors in court. “This inventory identifies the tapes and includes any descriptions that were written on the spine of the tapes.”
Dassin said much of the information the ACLU is seeking remains classified and still cannot be released publicly. Dassin said an unredacted version of the inventory of videotapes the CIA destroyed can be viewed “in camera” by the judge presiding over the case. Additionally, the identities of individuals who viewed the videotapes also remains classified.
Amrit Singh, a staff attorney with the ACLU, said Friday the “government is needlessly withholding information about these tapes from the public, despite the fact that the CIA’s use of torture – including waterboarding – is no secret.”
“This new information only underscores the need for full and immediate disclosure of the CIA’s illegal interrogation methods,” Singh said. “The time has come for the CIA to be held accountable for flouting the rule of law.”
Dassin added that the CIA turned over to the ACLU additional unredacted pages of a highly-classified CIA inspector general’s report from 2004 that concluded the techniques used on the prisoners “appeared to constitute cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment, as defined by the International Convention Against Torture.”
In a little known Jan. 10, 2008 declaration in response to the ACLU’s contempt motion, the CIA provided some insight into the inspector general John Helgerson’s report and revealed that he viewed the torture tapes, which formed the basis for his still classified report on the CIA’s methods of interrogation.
“In January 2003, [Office of Inspector General] OIG initiated a special review of the CIA terrorist detention and interrogation program. This review was intended to evaluate CIA detention and interrogation activities, and was not initiated in response to an allegation of wrongdoing,” the declaration says. “During the course of the special review, OIG was notified of the existence of videotapes of the interrogations of detainees. OIG arranged with the NCS to review the videotapes at the overseas location where they were stored.
“OIG reviewed the videotapes at an overseas covert NCS facility in May 2003. After reviewing the videotapes, OIG did not take custody of the videotapes and they remained in the custody of NCS. Nor did OIG make or retain a copy of the videotapes for its files. At the conclusion of the special review in May 2004, OIG notified DOJ and other relevant oversight authorities of the review’s findings.”
Although the report remains classified, previously published news reports and books provided some insight into the report’s contents.
“In his report, Mr. Helgerson also raised concern about whether the use of the techniques could expose agency officers to legal liability,” according to a November 9, 2005, story in The New York Times published the same month the tapes were destroyed. “They said the report expressed skepticism about the Bush administration view that any ban on cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment under the treaty does not apply to CIA interrogations because they take place overseas on people who are not citizens of the United States.”
“The officials who described the report said it discussed particular techniques used by the CIA against particular prisoners, including about three dozen terror suspects being held by the agency in secret locations around the world,” The New York Times reported.”They said it referred in particular to the treatment of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is said to have organized the Sept. 11 attacks and who has been detained in a secret location by the CIA since he was captured in March 2003. Mr. Mohammed is among those believed to have been subjected to waterboarding, in which a prisoner is strapped to a board and made to believe he is drowning.”
According to New Yorker reporter Jane Mayer, it is also believed that the tapes were destroyed because Democratic members of Congress who were briefed about the tapes began asking questions about whether the interrogations were illegal.
“Further rattling the CIA was a request in May 2005 from Senator Jay Rockefeller, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, to see over a hundred documents referred to in the earlier Inspector General’s report on detention inside the black prison sites,” Mayer wrote in her book “The Dark Side.” “Among the items Rockefeller specifically sought was a legal analysis of the CIA’s interrogation videotapes.
“Rockefeller wanted to know if the intelligence agency’s top lawyer believed that the waterboarding of [alleged al-Qaeda operative Abu] Zubayda and [alleged 9/11 mastermind] Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, as captured on the secret videotapes, was entirely legal. The CIA refused to provide the requested documents to Rockefeller. But the Democratic senator’s mention of the videotapes undoubtedly sent a shiver through the Agency, as did a second request the made for these documents to [former CIA Director Porter] Goss in September 2005.”
According to Mayer, ex-Vice President Dick Cheney stopped Helgerson from fully completing his investigation. That proves, Mayer contends, that as early as 2004 “the Vice President’s office was fully aware that there were allegations of serious wrongdoing in The [interrogation] Program.”
“Helgerson was summoned repeatedly to meet privately with Vice President Cheney” before his investigation was “stopped in its tracks.” Mayer said that Cheney’s interaction with Helgerson was “highly unusual.”
Cheney has admitted in several interviews before he exited the White House that he personally “signed off” on waterboarding three terrorist detainees and approved the “enhanced interrogation” of 33 detainees.
In October 2007, former CIA Director Michael Hayden ordered an investigation into Helgerson’s office, focusing on internal complaints that the inspector general was on “a crusade against those who have participated in controversial detention programs.”
Dassin said the additional pages from the inspector general’s report that were turned over the ACLU identify the number of videotapes that were destroyed.
Tags: American Civil Liberties Union, CIA, detainees tortured, ex-Vice President Dick Cheney, videotapes
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