CIA destroyed 92 interrogation tapes

The Washington Post reports this morning that the CIA destroyed a total of 92 videotapes of “harsh” interrogations and detention of high-value terrorists, ostensibly to protect the identity of CIA agents that appeared in them.  A federal prosecutor will not likely make a case that the CIA did it to obstruct justice, after spending a year interrogating the key personnel who destroyed the tapes.  It will likely ignite a fiery debate about accountability for practices now considered abuse, even though Congress knew about them and gave them tacit approval:

The CIA got rid of 92 videotapes depicting the harsh interrogations and confinement of “high value” al-Qaeda suspects, government lawyers disclosed yesterday, as a long-running criminal probe of the tapes’ destruction inched toward a conclusion that is not expected to result in charges against CIA operations employees, three sources said.

Then-directorate of operations chief Jose A. Rodriguez Jr. gave an order to destroy the recordings in November 2005, as scrutiny of the CIA and its treatment of terrorism suspects intensified. The agency’s then-Director Michael V. Hayden argued that the tapes posed “a serious security risk” because they contained the identities of CIA participants in al-Qaeda interrogations. Until yesterday, the exact number of destroyed tapes was not known. Agency officials have said they stopped taping detainees six years ago.

Federal prosecutor John Durham, who was appointed last year to investigate why the tapes were incinerated and whether any court directives were violated, has nearly completed formal interviews with all the key characters. Durham and FBI agents working alongside him conducted a lengthy session last week with a person who worked closely with Rodriguez at the time of the tapes’ destruction, according to sources who have followed the case. Rodriguez has not yet been questioned, they added.

Durham appears unlikely to secure criminal indictments against Rodriguez and other agency operations personnel involved in the conduct, the sources said. In recent months, the prosecutor has focused special attention on CIA legal advisers who reviewed court directives and on agency lawyers who told Rodriguez that getting rid of the recordings was sloppy and unwise but that it did not amount to a clear violation of the law, the sources said. Durham has obtained internal e-mail messages and memos that detail the sometimes jarring or unpleasant substance of the interrogations chronicled on the destroyed tapes, they added.

Having an agent appear on one tape in recognizable form would seem pretty sloppy.  Having the faces of agents visible on 92 tapes borders on the criminally incompetent, if in fact it happened at all.  These recordings were made in 2002-3, not 1982.  If the CIA needed to protect agent identities, they could have either made sure the camera didn’t pick up their faces or blurred the faces sufficiently to protect them.  After all, wouldn’t the CIA think about that kind of operational security the moment someone took out a camcorder?

The protection of agents is a pretty threadbare excuse.  The CIA didn’t want the interrogations released because of the shifting support for extraordinary interrogations, and they destroyed them.  That’s close to obstruction of justice.  If the destruction occurred after the order from Judge Brinkema to produce them for the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, it’s explicitly obstruction of justice.  However, that charge is notoriously tough to prove in court, and the CIA’s excuse would probably work — especially since almost all of Durham’s interview subjects volunteered to talk with him without subpoenas.

The CIA got away with this one, and that’s not a good thing.  The executive branch cannot wield unaccountable power for long without getting corrupted by it.  Even the CIA has to answer to the American people.  Those who forgot that during the Bush administration may remember it now under Barack Obama.

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