CIA destroyed terrorism suspect videotapes

Attempt to get ahead of newspaper
Hayden's message to CIA employees was an attempt to get ahead of a New York Times story about the videotapes, The Associated Press reported.

In the story in the newspaper, members of the Sept. 11 commission said they were surprised the interrogation tapes existed until 2005.

The commission had asked for material of this kind during their investigation that ended in 2004, Philip D. Zelikow, who served as executive director of the Sept. 11 commission and later as a senior counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, told the newspaper.

“The commission was assured that we had received all the material responsive to our request,” he said. “No tapes were acknowledged or turned over, nor was the commission provided with any transcript prepared from recordings.”

Daniel Marcus, a law professor at American University who served as general counsel for the Sept. 11 commission and was involved in the discussions about interviews with al-Qaida leaders, warned “it’s a very big deal” if tapes were destroyed, the New York Times reported.

It could amount to obstruction of justice to withhold evidence being sought in criminal or fact-finding investigations, Marcus told the New York Times.

'In line with the law'
Hayden insisted that the CIA's actions were legal.

"What matters here is that it was done in line with the law," he said. "Over the course of its life, the agency's interrogation program has been of great value to our country. It has helped disrupt terrorist operations and save lives. It was built on a solid foundation of legal review. It has been conducted with careful supervision. If the story of these tapes is told fairly, it will underscore those facts."

The CIA says the tapes were destroyed late in 2005, a year marked by increasing pressure from defense attorneys to obtain videotapes of detainee interrogations. The scandal over harsh treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq had focused public attention on interrogation techniques.

Beginning in 2003, attorneys for al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui began seeking videotapes of interrogations they believed might help them show their client was not a part of the Sept. 11 attacks. These requests heated up in 2005 as the defense slowly learned the identities of more detainees in U.S. custody.

In May 2005, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema ordered the government to disclose whether interrogations were recorded. The government objected to that order, and the judge modified it on Nov. 3, 2005, to ask for confirmation of whether the government "has video or audio tapes of these interrogations" and then named specific ones. Eleven days later, the government denied it had video or audio tapes of those specific interrogations.

Failed to hand-over tapes
Last month, the CIA admitted to Brinkema and a circuit judge that it had failed to hand over tapes of enemy combatant witnesses. Those interrogations were not part of the CIA's detention program and were not conducted or recorded by the agency, the agency said.

"The CIA did not say to the court in its original filing that it had no terrorist tapes at all. It would be wrong to assert that," CIA spokesman George Little said.

The 9/11 Commission referenced the 2002 interrogations of Abu Zubaydah and Binalshibh multiple times throughout its report, but cited written documents and audiotapes only.

There is no mention in the letter of the tapes that CIA officials destroyed in 2005, The New York Times reported. Moussaoui was convicted last year and sentenced to life in prison.

John Radsan, who worked as a CIA lawyer from 2002 to 2004 and is now a professor at William Mitchell College of Law, said destroying these tapes could carry legal penalties, according to the newspaper.

“If anybody at the CIA hid anything important from the Justice Department, he or she should be prosecuted under the false statement statute,” he told the New York Times.

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