New probe aims to cover up CIA tortures
By
John Catalinotto
Published Jan 11, 2008 11:43 PM
In an attempt to limit political damage and protect the highest officials, the
new U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey has ordered a special investigation
of the decision in 2005 to destroy tapes of CIA interrogations made in 2002 of
two alleged high-level Al-Qaeda officials. The investigation is limited to how
the decision was made and who made it. It is not supposed to probe the content
of the tapes, which are said to show brutal interrogations using torture.
Washington often claims to be the champion of “human rights” and
uses an alleged lack of human rights to attack or impose sanctions on those it
considers its enemies. Since the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and
Iraq, however, Washington and especially the CIA have become identified with
torture of prisoners, from Baghram in Afghanistan, to Abu Ghraib in Iraq, to
Guantánamo on the U.S.-occupied eastern tip of Cuba.
Since torture is illegal within the U.S.—at least on paper if not in
practice—the CIA has even outsourced interrogations to client states, a
process called “rendition.”
The tapes destroyed involve hundreds of hours of interrogation of Abu Zubaydah
and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. Both were captured in 2002 and are now being held
at Guantánamo Bay among the 275 remaining prisoners of the 800 who had
been held there since 2001. Zubaydah was captured in a firefight in Pakistan in
March of 2002 and interrogated then at a CIA safe house in Thailand. Al-Nashiri
was captured in the United Arab Emirates.
Zubaydah confessed to being a high-ranking al-Qaeda official. Al-Nashiri said
he planned the 2000 attack against the USS Cole in Yemeni waters, which blew a
hole in the side of the guided-missile destroyer and killed 17 sailors. The
U.S. authorities classified both as “enemy combatants.”
Since U.S. interrogators admittedly used extreme sensory and sleep deprivation,
along with waterboarding—and who knows what else—to get these
confessions, it is possible that in 2002 the two prisoners told their
interrogators anything they believed might stop the punishment. Both have since
challenged the confessions, saying they were obtained under torture.
By the end of 2002, the CIA says it stopped taping interrogations. For the next
three years, CIA legal counsels, CIA heads George Tenet and Porter Goss,
discussed among themselves and with White House counsel whether or not the CIA
could get away with destroying the tapes. Jane Harman of California, the
ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, wrote a letter advising
the CIA not to destroy the tapes.
Bush gang promotes torture methods
Despite legal advice that destroying the tapes might interfere with future
investigations, the CIA kept pushing to destroy the tapes. The Bush
administration, whose Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez had provided a legal
defense of brutal interrogation techniques (while refusing to call them
torture), at the very least failed to order the CIA to desist from destroying
the tapes.
In June 2005, U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy ordered the Bush
administration to safeguard “all evidence and information regarding the
torture, mistreatment and abuse of detainees now at the United States Naval
Base at Guantanamo Bay,” which would include the above tapes.
Nevertheless, in November 2005, the CIA destroyed the tapes, under orders from
Jose Rodriguez, who headed the National Clandestine Service.
The CIA claimed it destroyed the tapes to protect the safety of the
interrogating officers from retaliation from al-Qaeda. Other observers said it
was also to protect these officials’ careers.
But most suspect the CIA destroyed the tapes with the blessing of the White
House because public exposure of the torture would make Washington even more
hated than the Abu Ghraib prison scandal did.
The New York Times wrote: “Interrogations of Abu Zubaydah had gotten
rougher, with each new tactic approved by cable from headquarters. [U.S.]
American officials have said that Abu Zubaydah was the first al Qaeda prisoner
to be waterboarded, a procedure during which water is poured over the
prisoner’s mouth and nose to create a feeling of drowning. Officials said
they felt they could not risk a public leak of a videotape showing [U.S.]
Americans giving such harsh treatment to bound prisoners.” (Dec. 30)
Mukasey, while being questioned by Congress before his appointment as attorney
general, refused to say if he believed that waterboarding was torture. The
tapes would leave no doubt that it is.
While the Justice Department is attempting to limit the investigation, a
popular revulsion against the Bush administration makes it possible that the
probe will go further than expected. Already, progressive organizations of
attorneys like the Center for Constitutional Rights—which has taken the
lead in organizing legal defense of the prisoners in Guantánamo and
elsewhere—have raised protests against the Bush gang’s attack on
constitutional rights and have called on Congress to act. The last word on the
CIA tapes is yet to be spoken.
Articles copyright 1995-2012 Workers World.
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