More on Torture Tapes

Bets on when we’ll see the influence of Gonzales emerge?

Cenk Uygur asks

Did the CIA Also Destroy Padilla Interrogation Tapes?

http://news.aol.com/newsbloggers/2007/12/07/did-the-cia-also-destroy-padilla-interrogation-tapes

….Jesus!! Can we get someone with a normal name–Bob, John, Mike, or Chuck?….

Why were so many quitting or being fired from August to November 2004? Also, the first name of the Doe plaintiff suing Pavitt and Goss contains four redacted letters. Does this lawsuit have something to do with these tapes or with the personnel that inflicted the torture? Has this case been settled? What was the outcome? Why arn’t we hearing any more about it?

congratulations on creating a Google One-of
Yours is the only refernce to “crazy Michael Scheuer”.

I have to agree with you that this story is not going to go away.

This is another black eye that the CIA as an institution does not need. The big questions I have: will the press recognize that it a handful of individuals, not “the CIA,” is responsible for the torture and subsequent destruction of these tapes — and will the press see this as a criminal act in both a moral and legal sense?

So far, the coverage has done little to persuade me that the press is going to give this story either the attention or analysis for which it begs.

Hopefully, someone like David Schuster will get a
hold of this story.

Buzzy Cookie Dusty - I’m in total agreement.

Larry - what are your thoughts about 9-11? Do you believe the government version of events? I know there are some really far-fetched, laughable theories out there and I have always dismissed those. However, I must say, I still think there are legitimate ones.

As Mr. Murder always says, follow the money.

A.B. Buzzy Krongard was the Vice Chairman of Deutsche Bank when 9-11 happened. That is the same bank involved with the mysterious “put options” placed against United and American Airlines.

I think what has happened is that someone has finally pulled that one loose string and things are starting to unravel. I get the feeling the NIE is only the beginning.

We’ve been hearing:

A) This was done to protect the identities of the interrogators or B) this was done to protect the interrogatars from prosecution.

While both are possible, there is also the matter of the necons trying to destroy CIA in order to prevent things like facts coming out that do not support their policies and to give more, large no-bid contracts to their pals in the private sector (who, of course, in turn keep the GOP filled with political campaign cash and who have no oversight and are not held to account when they mess up. One also has to wonder if private contractors can spy on ordinary Americas who don’t agree with the neocon policies and either take action or report it to their neocon buddies… but I’m digressing again. Seems to me that Black has drank the coolaid, but I could be wrong). One of the first news reports about the torture memos scandal made it fairly clear that CIA was asking the WH, “What exactly is, and is not allowable?” They’d been stuck with failed policy decisions so many times in the past that it was simply smart to get a ‘get out of jail free card’ from WH counsel before proceeding.

Other examples of recent years rifts between CIA and conservatives, neocons or other branches of governemnt:

• Novak claiming that the whole Plame affair was a CIA setup.
• Wall Street Journal claiming that the NIE was a setup by the 17 intelligence agencies to make Bush & Co. look bad.
• CIA, believing him to be an Iranian spy, raiding Ahmad Chalabi’s offices with the DoD or Pentagon tipping him off beforehand.
• WH and others constantly blaming CIA for Iraqi WMD claims, SotU speech, etc. when it was clear that VP’s office was pushing for the conclusions it wanted

And I’m sure there are more.

Larry sure catch just a bit of an attitude towards Micheal Scheuer. What has he done that has pissed you off so much? I am just a poor peasant but everytime I have heard Scheuer much of what he says makes sense. He has repeatedly corrected folks who try to say that all people in the middle east hate us because of our freedom and liberty (christ all mighty
how many times have we heard the Bush administration and the neocons repeat this horseshit). Micheal
Scheuer has said that many people in the middle east hate our policies in the middle east and our military bases protecting our access to their oil.

Osama Bin Laden recommended his books for greater understanding. Wonder if that made Scheuer’s book sales go up or down?

What’s your beef?

Have you read Marcy Wheelers post that I linked at your site yesterday?

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2007/12/07/whitehouse-rips-the-white-house/

Thanks for your professional insights. I learn a great deal here.

Great audio interview with Scott Ritter.
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2007/12/07/whitehouse-rips-the-white-house/

Scheuer was replaced as Chief of Alec Station in mid-1999 by Rich B. AFAIK, Rich B. headed Alec Station until December 2001 when he became the Chief of the reopened Kabul Station.

On July 10, 2001 Tenet, Black and Rich B. gave NSA Rice an urgent briefing on the possibility of a terrorist attack. Also in attendence were counterrorism czar Clarke and Deputy NSA Hadley. For reasons that have never been explained to the American public, the FBI evidently was not asked to participate in this meeting despite being the agency with jurisdiction. Furthermore, why would high ranking CIA officials give Rice an urgent briefing yet not tell the FBI that al Qaeda operatives were in the US?

Here are my questions.

Who has the copy of the tapes?

Who has the transcript of the tapes?

There may not be a copy (which would surprise me) but nobody said anything about transcripts or transcriptions or summaries yet. I could have missed that. A transcript would be a easier to retain in a stealth fashion or just by accident.

But nothing matters to Bush and company, they think they have their own law, above the real law. And nothing matters to a quiescent Congress because they don’t even know the law or their obligations as they show every day they fail to initiate impeachment hearings.

Great information and analysis source here. Thanks.

Larry, I posted this information on your post over at TPM Cafe, regarding the publication in 2003 by Gerald Posner in “Why America Slept” — The final chapter of Posner’s book is titled “The Interrogation” and it contains a detailed description of the Zubaydah interrogation shortly after he was taken into custody in Pakistan, and moved to Afghanistan for questioning and medical care. In his description, Posner mentions that the process was all video taped — and the level of description leads me to one of two conclusions, either (A) he received a showing of the video, or, (B) he had a good note-taker present at such a showing.

At the end of the book, in Acknowledgements, Posner offers many thanks to those who helped him — Daniel Pipes, Steve Emerson, James Woolsey, and Lauri Mylrole — an interesting collection of informants if I have ever seen such. My point being that this collection of “people who helped me” listed in a major book published in 2003, rather underscores the assumption that the knowledge the tapes existed was well broadcast four years ago — and we could assume that putting that out was a message that Posner’s informants wanted out four years ago. Please comment.

The meat of Posner’s story is that high ranking Saudi Royals and the head of the Pakistani Airforce had knowledge of 9/11 before it happened, and once CIA had the information from Zubaydah, and it was passed on to the Saudi’s and the Pakistani’s all of these figures died in strange accidents, etc. If that was what was on the tapes (and I have no way of knowing if it was really there) what was the point of getting it out in the US and World Press in 2003, and then refocusing on it with this latest, CIA destroyed the tapes story this week? What is the motivation for again highlighting information about Saudi and Pakistani foreknowledge of 9/11?

Finally, and I can’t off-hand locate my source, apparently the FBI did a very detailed study of Zubaydah’s diary, recovered in some sort of safe house, and their analysis was reported out as Zubaydah was quite nuts…his importance in al-Qaeda was quite hyped up by CIA, and hyped in public statements made by GW Bush. I know I have read long published translations of the Zubaydah diary someplace — and yep, he sounded a little nutty to me too — but I am not qualified to certify nuttiness. Nonetheless, the FBI analysis of this material did, apparently, downgrade the importance of the place of Zubaydah in the al-Qaeda hierarchy. So which is correct — the initial CIA analysis of the interrogation, or the FBI take on the diary?

Given that, why did he put the crazy Michael Scheuer in charge of the hunt for Bin Laden? Scheuer was a marginal analyst with zero experience in Islamic issues, did not speak Arabic, and surrounded himself with former Soviet analysts who were equally unqualified for the task of finding Bin Laden.

Because they didn’t want anyone to stop 9-11.

I don’t buy for one minute that these “tapes” were destroyed. I doubt any tape was involved at all. Its probably all recorded digitally and up loaded somewhere and will probably make it’s way to YouTube before you know it. People who can do this kind of depraved shit love to film themselves. these so called tapes are probably in the Ether along with those 10 million emails that disappeared.

One basic fact:Once ANYTHING has been sent along email, it is there ( somewhere) forever. just because you hit delete, doesn’t make it so.
just ask those assholes who download child porn or meet underaged kids online, they to probably thought deleted meant delete.

I think we’ll find the press has no appetite for this matter. I think we’ll also find that the House and Senate leadership don’t either. It’s too much work, it’s far too embarrassing and performing due diligence on this would undoubtedly be viewed as, “too trying for an already beleaguered American populace that just wants to heal its wounds.

“It’s time to end all this partisan bickering, look the other way and get back to governing by ignorance. The American people simply aren’t interested in justice or the truth. They don’t want to be bothered with all this crime stuff.”

The press will nod in agreement, “You can’t handle the truth and wouldn’t want to if you could!”

This will go away in short order. They’ll have one or two days of worthless “hearings” and that will be it. Thus far, they’ve managed to whitewash every single scandal that didn’t involve sex with Democrats. Iran-Contra is a good example. After all, how many criminals from Iran-Contra went on to get jobs in BushCO?

This is how “oversight” functions in this country.

Yeap, Nice read on the facts.

[...] from Larry Johnson, Larisa Alexandrovna, Marcy Wheeler, Robert Baer and Massimo Calabresi; Wheeler has also compiled a [...]

Cofer Black was compromised for his fiscal interest in developing a new wing of foreign policy for his contract company.

Thus he appointed Condi satellites to the most important Mid East policy positions, knowing that’s where our focus would be after the Cold War.

Scheuer was an expert on the Mid East like Condi was an expert on the Soviet Union. Both couldn’t speak the language of their supposed expertise spheres. The policy was consistent in its lack of ability.

As for the “missing tapes” they are not missing. Nothing ever vanishes, everything is watched and recorded.

Two words will solve the missing tape conundrum:

Sy Hersh.

Cofer’s handling of counterterror was predetermined, contingent on his hiring people Condi wanted in place.

Then when she moved up to SoS he’d get the inside track on all of the deals between the contractors and gov’t. After he’d help undermine the original mission statement and personnel infrastructure at the Company, he could profit off the new deals.

Wonder if the rates went up.

….Case officers typically buy liability insurance to pay for lawyers in case their activities come to light. And concern about crossing a legal line on interrogation has been heightened with recent exposure given to cases of alleged torture.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1692571,00.html

has boosh make the US a pawn for everybody els? Probably.

Page 1 of 2
A new Chinese red line over Iran
By M K Bhadrakumar

The conference on the Middle East in Annapolis in the United States last week seemed to be an exercise in self-delusion. Robert Fisk, who has chronicled the Levant for the past 31 years for the British media, somberly noted, “The Middle East is currently a hell disaster and the president of the United States thinks he is going to produce the crown jewels from a cabinet and forget Afghanistan and Iraq and Iran - and Pakistan, for that matter.”

But in the days that followed, crown jewels did indeed begin to

tumble out of President George W Bush’s cabinet. What awaits determination is whether Bush orchestrated it, or just let it happen.

In any case, the morning after the Annapolis shindig, we learnt that Syria and the US had a common choice in General Michel Suleiman (who also happens to be close to Hezbollah) for the unfilled Lebanese presidency. And then we saw on Sunday Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz entering the conference hall of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) summit in Doha flanked by Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad. The GCC, flag-carrier of US regional strategy for three decades, had never before invited Iran to its meetings.

By Monday morning, the Bush administration had released declassified extracts of the sensational National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on the Iranian nuclear problem, a report lying in the cabinet in the Oval Office in the White House for some time. The White House said on Wednesday that Bush was told in August that Iran may have suspended its nuclear weapons program. And now we learn that Bush will be packing his bags for his first-ever visit in his presidency to the Holy Land and Palestine.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IL07Ak02.html

[...] Silvestre Reyes touted the exploits of Jose Rodriguez (the man blamed for destroying the “torture tapes“) as “the genesis” of the show “24.” Harper’s Ken Silverstein [...]

If I were to look for more torture tapes the best place to check is George’s DVD collection. I understand he took a great interest in the “interrorgations”, at one point suggesting that a suspect with a gunshot wound shouldn’t get pain relief. I’m sure he gets off viewing these tapes (especially the “snuff videos” where someone expires while being “interogated”).

Bye-Bye Cookie

Reuters reports that Howard “Cookie” Krongard has decided to resign as the State Department’s inspector general. The decision comes after a disastrous appearance last month before Rep. Henry Waxman’s House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, where Krongard’s testimony invited charges of perjury. Krongard, who had allegedly interfered in an arms smuggling investigation targeting Blackwater USA, initially denied that his brother Buzzy Krongard (a former high-ranking CIA official) was a member of that company’s advisory board. He later changed his tune after reaching Buzzy by phone during a break in the hearing.

http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/

Right after he fumbles with perjury before Congress, the evidence tampering on interrogation tapes emerges. He is alleged to have intefered with an investigation of Blackwater re: arms smuggling. It would appear to abe an example of action concistent with purging tapes that also seem to implicate contractor abuse(in more than meaning of the word).

Hmmmm.

[...] No Quarter has a run down on who was in charge of what at the CIA from 2002 forward, More on Torture Tapes And then there is the question of the DDO and ADDO. When the tapes were made Jim Pavitt was the [...]

From Empty wheel over at FDL
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2007/12/09/nancy-pelosi-congressional-leaders-secretly-do-expect-the-spanish-inquisition/#comments

“Pelosi declined to comment directly on her reaction to the classified briefings. But a congressional
source familiar with Pelosi’s position on the matter said the California lawmaker did recall discussions about enhanced interrogation. The source said Pelosi recalls that techniques described by the CIA were still in the planning stage — they had been designed and cleared with agency lawyers but not yet put in practice — and acknowledged that Pelosi did not raise objections at the time.”

So who were the “agency” lawyers who designed and cleared these techniques?

Is this related? I wonder what “squad” these geeks that did this were really from.

The Wall Street Journal reports: ‘Investigators learned that [Office of Special Counsel head Scott Bloch, who has been under investigation since 2005] erased all the files on his office personal computer late last year. They are now trying to determine whether the deletions were improper or part of a cover-up, lawyers close to the case said … Bypassing his agency’s computer technicians, Mr. Bloch phoned for Geeks on Call, the mobile PC-help service … Bloch had his computer’s hard disk completely cleansed using a “seven-level” wipe: a thorough scrubbing that conforms to Defense Department data-security standards. The process makes it nearly impossible for forensics experts to restore the data later.’”

Also, one has to ask why it took so long to get clearance for Justice investigators to look into some of these issues.

Joe Biden says a special counsel should be appointed to investigate the destruction of evidence regarding the torture tapes. One of Joe Biden’s constituents is the father of Nick Berg. Delawarearians want the truth about what happened to Nick Berg and they want the truth about the man who supposedly killed him!

mikegorse at huffpo mentions a DoJ pdf, located here:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/world/20071207_intel_letter.pdf

and mikegorse says

Here’s where we are. We are condeming Pelosi for orchestrated behavior of a scoff-law executive branch being mis-run by the VP of Torture while George nee Howdy Doody fiddles away your future and treasury.

We are arguing about who let the tapes get destroyed while the DOJ tells us they just watched the tapes last month.

MAJOR CONTRADITION by DOJ

Two days ago the New York Times web page carried the story C.I.A. Destroyed 2 Tapes Showing Interrogations By MARK MAZZETTI - and beneath the story, a link to the letter from US Attorney, Chuck Rosenberg to Chief Judge Williams and Judge Brinkema explaining the tapes existence.

On page 2 of the PDF, paragraphs two and three, the solicitor clearly says “On September 13, 2007, an attorney for the CIA notified us of a discovery of a video tape of the interrogation of [redacted]. On September 19, 2007, we viewed that video tape and a transcript [redacted] of the interview.”

The next paragraph starts “After learning of the existence of the first video tape, we requested the CIA to perform an exhaustive review to determine whether it was in possession of any other such recording for any of the enemy combatant witnesses at issue in this case. CIA’s review, which now appears to be complete, uncovered the existence of a second video tape, as well as a short audio tape, both of which pertain to interrogations [redacted]. On October 18, we viewed the second video tape and listened to the audio tape, while reviewing transcripts.”

It appears to me the US Attorney has told the Judges he watched the video tapes in September and October of 2007, that Michael Hayden says were destroyed (”all copies”) in 2005. Is this as transparent a lie as it seems? Doesn’t anybody read the facts already in evidence?

WTF? These appear not to have anything to do with Moussaoui’s missing torture tape.

nice site d00d…

heres mine…