Tapes’ Destruction By CIA Hovers Over Detainee Cases

[babylonsister]

Tapes’ Destruction Hovers Over Detainee Cases

By MARK MAZZETTI and SCOTT SHANE
Published: March 28, 2008


WASHINGTON — When officers from the Central Intelligence Agency destroyed hundreds of hours of videotapes documenting harsh interrogations in 2005, they may have believed they were freeing the government and themselves from potentially serious legal trouble.

But nearly four months after the disclosure that the tapes were destroyed, the list of legal entanglements for the C.I.A., the Defense Department and other agencies is only growing longer. In addition to criminal and Congressional investigations of the tapes’ destruction, the government is fighting off challenges in several major terrorism cases and a raft of prisoners’ legal claims that it may have destroyed evidence.

“They thought they were saving themselves from legal scrutiny, as well as possible danger from Al Qaeda if the tapes became public,” said Frederick P. Hitz, a former C.I.A. officer and the agency’s inspector general from 1990 to 1998, speaking of agency officials who favored eliminating the tapes. “Unknowingly, perhaps, they may have created even more problems for themselves.”

In a suit brought by Hani Abdullah, a Yemeni prisoner at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, a federal judge has raised the possibility that, by destroying the tapes, the C.I.A. violated a court order to preserve all evidence relevant to the prisoner. In at least 12 other lawsuits, lawyers for prisoners at Guantánamo and elsewhere have filed legal challenges citing the C.I.A. tapes’ destruction, said David H. Remes, a Washington lawyer representing 16 prisoners.

“This is like any other cover-up,” Mr. Remes said. “We’ve only scratched the surface.”

more...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/28/washington/28intel.html?_r=2&hp=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1206709607-cv3JcHretS6zzhRAp123qQ

[Broadslidin]

1. C.I.A. Torture Terrorists Rounded Up and Forcible Flung Into Gitmo Cages....!

:nuke: :hide: :nuke:

[Supersedeas]

2. and Muk Muk Mukasey is there to protect the Bushist from accountability -- Justice??

[babylonsister]

3. And how many suspected this would be Mukasey's role? WTF

was wrong with Schumer and Feinstein?

[Daphne08]

4. kick n/t

[Quantess]

5. Hovering like a dark cloud?

[L. Coyote]

6. Destroying evidence does not carry a death sentence. Pretty simple math

when one considers what happens if shown to be guilty of war crimes, torture, murder, kidnapping.

This is very in keeping with the ongoing efforts to destroy or classify, or re-classify, evidence of crimes by past R administrations, beginning on Day One of the Junta taking over the Executive.

The question arises, "How many of Jr.'s crimes were perpetrated to cover up Bush Sr. crimes?"
Bush Sr. is on the hook in Latin America for a lot of human rights atrocities, 30,000 murders
and kidnappings of liberal activists, and who knows what else from Iran-Contra, etc.

[sicksicksick_N_tired]

7. I was thinking similarly: the risks associated with destroying rather than preserving the tapes,...

,...are clearly greater. No one can convince me that those who destroyed them did so withOUT a concise understanding of the consequences.

With respect to the numerous cover-ups, I suspect that, if this administration gets away scot-free, another future administration will go even further because it believes it can.

Oh, well.

(oops, ",...withOUT a concise,..." blech)