BlueBloggin

Bush in his recent Gonzo impression “I can’t recall” the destruction of the CIA tapes, but he sure can remember all the lies he’s sent out to tell us. Maybe Bush can pray for memory restoration when he attends “The Church of the Holy Lie” on Sunday. It’s shocking that we have an administration full of lying amnesiacs.

Let’s see if our new Attorney General does the right thing or if he turns out to be another water boy for Bush. This could get very sticky for Michael Mukasey, who in 2002 was the U.S. District Judge who signed the warrant used by the FBI to arrest Padilla. So how will this play out.

Washington Post:

• President Bush does not recall being informed before yesterday morning about the existence or subsequent destruction of video recordings showing harsh CIA interrogations of terrorism suspects, the White House said today.

• The recordings, which CIA Director Michael V. Hayden disclosed yesterday had been made in 2002 but destroyed three years later, set off a furor on Capitol Hill today, with the Senate’s second-ranking Democrat demanding a Justice Department investigation.

• The tapes also were not provided to the Sept. 11 commission, which demanded a wide array of material and relied heavily on classified interrogation transcripts in piecing together its narrative of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

• In a news briefing today, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino was asked whether Bush, Vice President Cheney or other top officials had seen the tapes before they were destroyed. She said she spoke to Bush this morning and that “he has no recollection of being made aware of the tapes or their destruction before yesterday,” when he was briefed about the matter by Hayden. She said she did not know whether other administration officials knew about them.

Associated Press:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Congressional Democrats Friday demanded a full Justice Department investigation into whether the CIA obstructed justice by destroying videotapes that documented the harsh 2002 interrogations of two alleged terrorists.

• A day after CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden told agency employees the tapes were destroyed in 2005, members of Congress, human rights groups and lawyers for accused terrorists said the tapes may have been key evidence that the U.S. government had illegally authorized torture.

• In a Senate floor speech Durbin dismissed the CIA’s explanation that it was trying to protect the identities of the interrogators. “We know that it is possible and in fact easy to cover the faces” of those who appear on camera, Durbin said. “This is not an issue that can be ignored.”

• Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., accused the CIA of a coverup. “The agency was desperate to cover up damning evidence of their practices,” he said in floor remarks. “We haven’t seen anything like this since the eighteen-and-a-half-minute gap in the tapes of President Richard Nixon.”

• Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Armed Services Committee, told reporters the CIA’s explanation that the tapes were destroyed to protect the identify of agents is “a pathetic excuse,” adding: “You’d have to burn every document at the CIA that has the identity of an agent on it under that theory.”

• The Center for Constitutional Rights, which coordinates the work of all attorneys representing U.S. prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, says the CIA may have destroyed crucial evidence a court said it was entitled to in 2004. The group filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in 2004 that has forced the Defense Department and other government agencies to release thousands of documents.

• In a separate case, attorneys for al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui in 2003 began seeking videotapes of interrogations they believed might help them show their client wasn’t a part of the 9/11 attacks. These requests heated up in 2005 as the defense slowly learned the identities of more detainees in U.S. custody.

• On Nov. 3, 2005, a U.S. District judge ordered the government to disclose whether it had video or audio tapes of specific interrogations. Eleven days later, the government denied it had tapes relevant to the request.

• The tapes were destroyed at a time when there was increasing pressure from defense attorneys to obtain videotapes of detainee interrogations. The 2004 scandal over the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq had focused public attention on interrogation techniques. The tapes also were not provided to the 9/11 Commission, which relied heavily on intelligence reports about Zubaydah and Binalshibh’s 2002 interrogations.

Posted by nytexan December 7th, 2007 | Category: 9/11, Bush, CIA, Corruption, Politics, Senate | Subscribe to comments | Leave a comment | Trackback URL