I have been wondering how the tapes were “destroyed”. How, exactly? If they were physical video tapes, were they shredded? Erased magnetically? Burned?

It’d be quite interesting to know, esp considering the recent fire near Cheney’s “ceremonial” office and Addington’s real one.

The e-mail thing is just getting more and more bizarre. The original e-mails AND the backups were erased. And yet Luskin says, “There’s never been any suggestion that Fitzgerald had anything less than a complete record.”

Let me make it official, then: I suggest that the erasure of both the original e-mails AND the backups could mean that Fitzgerald has something less than a complete record. I further suggest that you would have to have some sort of neurological problem if you thought otherwise.

I also suggest that erasing information that you have a legal obligation to preserve is not “consistent with industry best practices”, unless you are in the business of habitually breaking the law and then getting caught red-handed doing so.

I have difficulty believing that Rodriguez destroyed the torture tapes because of Dana Priest’s November 2005 article alone. For one thing, Dana Priest wrote an article back in December 26, 2002: “U.S. Decries Abuse but Defends Interrogations: ‘Stress and Duress’ Tactics Used on Terrorism Suspects Held in Secret Overseas Facilities”.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..01356.html

This article mentions torture, overseas detention facilities (black sites), and questions of legality.

The picture that emerges is of a brass-knuckled quest for information, often in concert with allies of dubious human rights reputation, in which the traditional lines between right and wrong, legal and inhumane, are evolving and blurred.

While the U.S. government publicly denounces the use of torture, each of the current national security officials interviewed for this article defended the use of violence against captives as just and necessary.

The off-limits patch of ground at Bagram is one of a number of secret detention centers overseas where U.S. due process does not apply, according to several U.S. and European national security officials, where the CIA undertakes or manages the interrogation of suspected terrorists.

I would submit all of the reasons which drove supposedly Jose Rodriguez and the Thailand division chief to destroy the tapes in November 2005 had already been in the public domain for nearly 3 years before Priest’s November 2, 2005 article: “CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons: Debate Is Growing Within Agency About Legality and Morality of Overseas System Set Up After 9/11” ostensibly precipitated the tapes’ destruction.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..44_pf.html

I would also say that going back and re-reading Priest’s article. It is clear that she was spun by intelligence officials about the efficacy of their techniques (torture). Thailand is mentioned twice, once in a list of black sites and once to say that site was closed in 2003. The thrust of the legal concern raised in the article isn’t even about torture but the nature of the detentions:

Since then, the arrangement has been increasingly debated within the CIA, where considerable concern lingers about the legality, morality and practicality of holding even unrepentant terrorists in such isolation and secrecy, perhaps for the duration of their lives. Mid-level and senior CIA officers began arguing two years ago that the system was unsustainable and diverted the agency from its unique espionage mission.

There is only a single oblique remark that could even possibly in retrospect be linked to the torture tapes:

Although no direct evidence of mistreatment of prisoners in U.S. custody has come to light

That’s it. There are several mentions of rendition to countries that torture: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, and even Syria. Given all this, what would Rodriguez and his station chief find in this article that would be so disturbing as to cause them to act?

At best, I think the November 2005 is just one in a constellation of events that were all happening at this time. In addition to the Priest article, there was the passage of the McCain amendment on October 5, 2005 about treatment of detainees and the CIA’s negative reply to Judge Brinkema’s question in the Moussaoui trial about tapes of interrogations on November 14, 2005. There were the ongoing and unresolved discussions about the tapes in the White House that Rodriguez knew about and which provided him with a strong incentive not to act. There was the 2003 Inspector General’s “special review”. There is the fact that the Thailand site had been shut down for 3 years. There were the legal questions raised back in Priest’s 2002 article which again argued against destroying the tapes, and there are probably several other factors that we still don’t know about. But with all of this floating around out there, how credible is it that Rodriguez acted either on his own or in response to an article that created a stir to be sure but was in essence repeating information that was 3 years old?

So where were the interrogation recordings reviewed? What’s easier and safer, flying agency officers and hired experts to Thailand; or, flying the original recording media to a convenient location; or, electronically transmitting the recordings as digital information to a CIA facility, most likely in the USA? There are time, expense, and scheduling to consider, and planes can crash.

What happened to the original recording media, be they tapes or otherwise, is very important, as are official statements made on the subject, and there should be unrelenting efforts to learn the facts. But the recordings as digital information are a larger subject. If they now exist or have existed as digital information somewhere, most likely as encrypted files, the facts concerning them should be pursued at the same time and with as much determination.