What Destroyed Torture Tapes?

Larissa is a journalist to be respected. She does not even complain when she does not get credit for her investigative reporting treasures.

Thanks Larissa..thanks Larry.

Hey Larissa anything new about the incomplete Phase II of the SSCI?

Soooooo, Cheney and the neocons threw out this red meat to distract from the news of the NIE.

And ditto on Larissa. View the video at her site that mentions Operation Diamondback.

I had to post this about what we’re supposed to forget.

New intelligence report a devastating, humiliating blow to U.S. president and his neocons
By ERIC MARGOLIS, TORONTO SUN

“Merry Christmas, Mr. President,” hissed the men in cloaks as they plunged a dagger into George Bush’s back.

America’s spooks finally had their revenge. After being forced by the White House in 2002-03 to concoct a farrago of lies about Iraq, and then take the blame for the ensuing fiasco there, the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies struck back this week.

U.S. intelligence chief Mike McConnell made public a bombshell National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) report that concluded “with high confidence” Tehran had halted its rudimentary nuclear weapons program in 2003.

If restarted, Iran is unlikely to produce any weapons before 2015.
http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Margolis_Eric/2007/12/09/4715227-sun.php

Over at National Review Micheal Rubin says that John
Bolten is owed an apology. I guess this means we will be hearing an apology coming out of Rubin’s mouth for the part he has played in the death and destruction in Iraq?

Monday, December 10, 2007

An apology owed to John Bolton [Michael Rubin]

The most recent Iran NIE confirms that Iran was actively pursuing a nuclear weapon back in 2003. Forgotten in much of the recent press coverage is that this proves John Bolton, at the time was undersecretary of state for Arms Control, correct. Many of the people under and around him, perhaps fearing that his analysis might get in the way of their initiatives, attacked him and leaked anonymously in the press to undermine him. And yet, now we know that Bolton was right. It seems that a

number of journalists, diplomats, and Senate staffers owe Mr. Bolton an acknowledgment, if not an apology.

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YTgxMTIyOWQ5ZDFjOWRjYjBjODc4NDk2MGVhOTVmY2I=

Bill Kristol’s latest
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/
000/000/014/455zaljq.asp
“What highly significant word is nowhere to be found in the declassified summary of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran’s nuclear intentions and capabilities? Iraq.”

Certainly one theory might be that Jose ordered the NCS’s copies of the tapes to be destroyed, not realizing that copies existed elsewhere within the Agency but outside of his control. This is the security “problem” with anything that may be copied: Anyone with access to it at any time may have made a copy that you don’t know about. It is a conundrum exploited by spies and dreaded by security officers everywhere.

WH mouthpiece Dana Perino has been told by legal told that she may not address questions pertaining to the missing tape.(s)
I just missed Larry on Thom Hartmann, bummer.

Kathleen at 11:12:08

I have been asking the same question for some time now. I called Rockefeller’s and the Intelligence Committee offices to ask about the completion of Phase II a few weeks ago. The staff person in Rockefeller’s office told me that it was complete and released. I argued a little with him because I didn’t think it had been released in full. He then said he didn’t know and transferred me to the Intelligence Committee office and I didn’t get an answer to my question.

I found only parts of the report online. Two links:

http://ftp.fas.org/irp/congress/2006_rpt/srpt109-331.pdf
POSTWAR FINDINGS ABOUT IRAQ’S WMD PROGRAMS AND LINKS TO TERRORISM AND HOW THEY COMPARE WITH PREWAR ASSESSMENTS together with ADDITIONAL VIEWS

http://intelligence.senate.gov/phaseiiaccuracy.pdf
INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE PHASE II REPORT

I hope this helps. I don’t know how to make the links so I just copied them from the web. I can’t find a completed Phase II report and I have a feeling we’ll never see the details that show how the intelligence was cherry picked in the lead up to the “war in Iraq.”

Cheryl

I can’t definitively say who scooped the story, but Skeeter Sanders of OpEdNews.com posted U.S. Attorney Says Two CIA Interrogation Tapes Still Exist on December 9. Sanders’ post gives much more context than does Larisa Alexandrovna in her short post dated December 10.

WHAT THE CIA DOESN’T WANT YOU TO KNOW ABOUT ABU ZUBAYDAH

The corporate media and Congress have finally focused on a story that casts doubt on the official version of 9/11. The MSM is telling you that the reason the CIA erased the videotapes of the CIA interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, a key al-Qaeda figure, was to protect the identity of the CIA interrogators. The second reason offered, which you may have heard,is Richard Posner’s account that Zubaydah confessed to naming five prominent Saudi and Pakistani leaders, including the head of Saudi intelligence and the top General in the Pakistani Air Force, who knew about the 9/11 attacks in advance. Four of these five died shortly thereafter, except the Saudi Intel Chief, Sheikh al-Turki, who was later welcomed by the Bush Administration as the Saudi Ambassador to Washington.

Now, here’s the third reason: Abu Zubaydah was a key Al-Qaeda figure in the CIA’s Chechnya operation, which involved several of the 9/11 hijackers. He was in a position to know about the relationship of the 9/11 Hamburg cell with the CIA.

Abu Zubyadah was involved in training several of the 9/11 hijackers. Before he was captured and tortured during interrogation, he knew a great amount about that operation and the role of the CIA in organizing al-Qaeda in its secret war against the Russians in Chechnya, and the relationship between US inteligence and al-Qaeda is both much more recent and closer than is officially acknowledged.

A few weeks ago, Paul Thompson and I had a lengthly exchange here at DU. Paul, chief author of The 9/11 Timeline, concludes that Luai Sakka, a prominent al-Qaeda logistics and training expert, was in fact a CIA double-agent who handled several of the principal 9/11 hijackers during their training in the late 1990s. At that time, the Agency was still running al-Qaeda as part of its operations against the Russians in Chechnya.

In the course of this Chechnya operation, Sakka worked with Abu Zubaydah. They also worked together in a series of bomb plots in Jordan (the so-called Millenium Plot), for which the two were convicted in absentia by a Jordanian court, according to The Times of London. See,

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389×2439700

“How can you watch a destroyed tape?”

Sort of like how one see’s the first plane hit the WTC on TV when no one did. Right, Bush? (Please don’t correct me with rhetoric such as ‘there’s a video tape of it, I saw it’. Yeah we all did…days later. It was recorded. I’m talking about Bush’s bungling in that he said he saw it ‘live’.)

i knew they made copies. governments always do…..probably in triplicate with 8×10 glossy pictures with lines and arrows and paragraphs on the back describing the scene of the massacre in minute detail. ) oh that was “Alice’s restaurant” wasn’t it?

anyhow……they probably said the tapes were destroyed because after the filmed torture ( the stick) part of his interrogation yielded NOTHING TRUTHFUL they went to actually talking to the prisoner ( the carrot method) that probably gave them the info they were asking for.

there is still some confusion about the tapes not having been named yet. I have seen “the torture tapes” used by multiple reports. Is this likely to be the three we have info about here? Are one of these three applicable with new discovery pending? or is this the first weed in the garden?
As angry as some of the folks seem to be, one would expect some very hard truths to come down in the next few days. Seems a pity that plain folks otherwise have to bargain this way with our government.
But thanks for your work, woe that we can’t thank you properly yet.

From ABC via Kos

Coming in From the Cold: CIA Spy Calls Waterboarding Necessary But Torture
Former Agent Says the Enhanced Technique Was Used on Al Qaeda Chief Abu Zubaydah

(ABC News) By RICHARD ESPOSITO & BRIAN ROSS
Dec. 10, 2007

A leader of the CIA team that captured the first major al Qaeda figure, Abu Zubaydah, says subjecting him to waterboarding was torture but necessary.

CIA Agent Speaks Out, Part 1 — Watch the Full InterviewIn the first public comment by any CIA officer involved in handling high-value al Qaeda targets, John Kiriakou, now retired, said the technique broke Zubaydah in less than 35 seconds.

Honestly, you can’t make this stuff up. The same people who get their TV news from FAUX read on Newsmax that torture “is not painful.” That’s why it’s torture……really, I think my head just exploded a little bit inside.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/us_world/2007/12/11/2007-12-11_congressional_investigators_demand_addit-3.html