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More Tapes of Interrogations?
One more thing from today's must-read New York Times piece. Mazzetti and Shane also report that a former CIA detainee claims to have seen cameras in his interrogation chamber. Although CIA Director Mike Hayden said "videotaping stopped in 2002" in his Thursday message to the CIA, the ex-detainee, Muhammad Bashmilah, was in CIA custody from 2004 to 2005.
The former prisoner who reported seeing cameras, Muhammad Bashmilah of Yemen, was seized by Jordanian intelligence agents in 2003 and turned over to the C.I.A., according to an investigation by Amnesty International, the human rights advocacy organization. He was flown from Jordan to Afghanistan in October 2003 and held there until April 2004, when he was flown by plane and helicopter to a C.I.A. jail in an unidentified country, Amnesty found. Mr. Bashmilah and two other Yemeni men held with him were flown to Yemen in May 2005 and later released.Meg Satterthwaite, a director of the International Human Rights Clinic at New York University who is representing Mr. Bashmilah in a lawsuit, said Mr. Bashmilah described cameras both in his cells and in interrogation rooms, some on tripods and some on the wall. She said his descriptions of his imprisonment, in hours of conversation in Yemen and by phone this year, were lucid and detailed.
Maybe Bashmilah is lying. Maybe he's misremembering. But, to be blunt, why believe Hayden? The CIA lied for years about the existence of videotaped interrogations, so there's no reason to credit Hayden's account of when the recordings ceased.
What's more, there's sworn evidence to the contrary: in an October 25th court filing (pdf), U.S. attorneys Chuck Rosenberg, David Raskin and David Novak acknowledge recently learning of two currently-existing CIA interrogation tapes. Their letter is heavily redacted, so it's unclear whether the tapes the attorneys viewed and listened to were made in 2002 but survived the 2005 destruction or were made sometime after 2002 -- or even after 2005 -- contrary to Hayden's statement. What is clear is that we shouldn't assume the CIA has accounted for every videotaped interrogation.
Comments (19)
Anonymous wrote on December 11, 2007 10:47 AM:I suppose either Brent Wilkes or Tommy Kontigiannis supplied and installed the secret CIA cameras working throug through CIA #3 Dusty Foggo?
Is that why the government is slow rolling on their prosecution and letting Tommy K continue to defraud mortgage investors and go to Greece?
Steve5117 wrote on December 11, 2007 10:47 AM:I'm tired of Daily Show reruns already and they say we're in for more reality shows so let's release the tapes and have some "real" reality.
All I want for Christmas is an interrorgation tape, an interrorgation tape,an interrorgation tape.
All I want for Christmas is an interrorgation tape, so I can have a Merry Christmas!
apeman wrote on December 11, 2007 10:49 AM:When I saw this ex agent on three network news shows my first impression was He was sent out to soft sell what happened. (apologist)
Anonymous wrote on December 11, 2007 10:51 AM:It's so hard to trust anyone these days.
He shows up at just the right time.
Presence of cameras does not equal video tapes. They could have been closed circuit, as described in the recent ABC interview.
A. Citizen wrote on December 11, 2007 11:06 AM:Every cop on the highway has a camera in their car, we just saw an incident where a motorist was tazed for speeding.
If the military is not taping interrogations, it suggests either gross incompetence or the awareness that it makes them look really bad.
lambert strether wrote on December 11, 2007 11:07 AM:As Xan points out, taping interrogations is standard practice when Army interrogators are trained at Fort Huachuca.
So, one would think it would be for the CIA too, assuming both are governed by the same legal regimen, say, the Geneva Convention and/or the law of the land.
And if it was, at one point, standard practice for the CIA to tape, one can only speculate why they stopped....
Califlander wrote on December 11, 2007 11:21 AM:Of course the interrogations were taped.
If you genuinely believed you were interrogating a person with valuable information, it would be important to analyze every word, every hesitation, and every nonverbal nuance in each response. No one would rely on their memory or their notes alone -- "Did he say 'al-Shibh' or 'al-Shibaz?'" "I dunno. My notes say 'al-Shabat'. But I think he was holding back -- you see the way his lip quivered?" "No, he sort of stutters." "I never noticed that. I think he's hiding something ..."
Now, if they were torturing these guys just to get their jollies, maybe no tapes ... unless they like to watch, if you know what I mean.
Jeff wrote on December 11, 2007 11:28 AM:Completely agree with the gist, but it is worth noting another possibility, which is that there were cameras, but they were for closed-circuit viewing and not for recording - Kiriakou in his interview with Ross says this, that he knew there were cameras in the torture chamber but thought they were not functioning as recording equipment. Of course, that doesn't mean there aren't massive amounts of recordings out there. But it remains possible that cameras were there for a purpose other than recording.
Also worth noting, contra what you all have been reporting, Kiriakou did not himself participate in torture, according to him.
turtleguy wrote on December 11, 2007 12:28 PM:Of course there are videotapes. Bush, Guiliani, and the rest of the authoritarian crowd needs masterbation material and lots of it!!
Roberta wrote on December 11, 2007 12:29 PM:I posted this last night for the article that links to the ABC interview, but my question/premise still remains:
All this talk about "tapes" implies a camcorder with High 8 cassettes in them. Is the CIA so behind on technology that they haven't upgraded their equipment since the '90s? Isn't it more reasonable to assume that these were digital "tapes" that got downloaded into at least one computer?
Assuming my premise is true, then there are likely many copies of these "tapes" out there. Can anyone really think that the rigorous and deliberated approvals for increasing the level of interrogation Kiriakou explained about on ABC occurred in a vacuum, just with phone calls? If I were in charge of making these calls, I'd want to see how effective the previous methods were in the interrogation process before moving on to the next level.
Of course, I can't really get into any of these people's heads except in my imagination, because I am limited by my ethical standards, which don't allow me to believe that even the "lesser" techniques of stress positions and sleep deprivation are not torture in themselves.
SocraticGadfly wrote on December 11, 2007 12:33 PM:Here's another possibility -- the taping, as well as some of our torture ("renditions") was outsourced to Jordan. More CIA "plausible deniability."
willyjsimmons wrote on December 11, 2007 1:03 PM:'Isn't it more reasonable to assume that these were digital "tapes" that got downloaded into at least one computer?'
Ding.Ding.Ding!
That's where I would start.
The harddrives would have to be purposefully 'zeroed out' or destroyed* to completely remove the data. Indicating an even deeper attempt within the CIA to obscure what they've been doing.
*even destroyed platters can be partially read for data if you really need to do it
Dyspeptic wrote on December 11, 2007 1:41 PM:OK, here's my prediction: There are dozens of CIA and ex-CIA agents out there who are at this moment scrambling to hire high-profile attorneys to shield them from anticipated fallout from the many tapes that will inevitably surface. Our society is too saturated today with digital information that is easily copied (as Roberta noted earlier) for anyone to have any reasonable hope that the lid will be kept on this stuff. (Remember the Abu Ghraib images that kept dribbling out excruciatingly a few years ago? This will make that sad affair look like a tea party.) CIA agents are anything but the "few bad apples" (remember? huh? do you?) to whom such beastly behavior was attributed by the lame apologists in the Pentagon.
weelzup wrote on December 11, 2007 1:50 PM:I think we're looking at a few days, a few weeks tops, before the lid comes off.
You can say you read it here first.
--CIA Director Mike Hayden said "videotaping stopped in 2002"--
He may not be lying... The interrogations were most likely recorded digitally... thus negating the need for "videotape".
parrot wrote on December 11, 2007 2:10 PM:My guess is the tapes haven't really been destroyed...as that would be against the law. Instead, they've announced that the tapes have been destroyed...but they're really being viewed every few hours in Cheney's bunker...
wagonjak wrote on December 11, 2007 2:34 PM:Anyone who thinks that there haven't been hundreds of tapes either destroyed or hidden from discovery has not been following the crimes of this Administration....
asdf wrote on December 11, 2007 3:00 PM:Aw come on Spencer you are falling behind again! You clearly missed the transcripts of the CIA attempt to get ahead of this on story on ABC. (http://abcnews.go.com/images/Blotter/brianross_kiriakou_transcript1_blotter071210.pdf):
"BRIAN ROSS: It's been revealed now that the CIA had tapes of the interrogation underway. Were you involved in the taping process?
JOHN: No. In fact, I first learned about it in the press yesterday.
BRIAN ROSS: Do-- you were not-- you did not see cameras?
JOHN: We had cameras everywhere. But it was our understanding at the time that they were closed circuit cameras so that other interrogators and medical personnel and security officers could watch the interviews-- taking place.
BRIAN ROSS: You didn't see it being recorded anywhere?
JOHN: No. No, I never saw it being recorded.
BRIAN ROSS: And now that you know it was recorded and the tapes were destroyed afterwards what do you make of that?
JOHN: I'm disappointed frankly. I understand that the agency's explanation was they wanted to make sure that everything was being done legally and within the-- the guidelines that-- that the organization had set forth. But it makes me wonder instead if they simply didn't trust the interrogators. And if they wanted to catch somebody doing something that was unauthorized. So frankly, I'm a little disappointed that they didn't have that trust in us having already been polygraphed, having undergone-- not me, but other interrogators having undergone-- the training, they still didn't trust us enough to-- to let us just do-- do our jobs."
BRIAN ROSS: You never saw tapes coming out of the machine or
JOHN: No.
BRIAN ROSS: --being sent off to Washington?
JOHN: No, never saw tapes.
BRIAN ROSS: And never reviewed them when you were back in Washington?
JOHN: No, never heard about them even.
BRIAN ROSS: Really? So they were very closely held.
JOHN:Very closely held.
BRIAN ROSS: Should they have been destroyed do you think?
JOHN: I think not. I think they're a matter of-- of historical record at least within the agency. They may have-- some legal import. And they probably should not have been destroyed.
I also note the bit where the guy explains how quote "His [Zubaida`s] value [later on] was-- it [sic] allowed us to have somebody who we could pass ideas onto for his-- for his-- comments or analysis. For example, we would say things like-- "Mr. X was arrested in some European capital. And the Europeans think he was going to undertake such-and-such an operation. Would he be the person to do something like that?"
I wonder how many people at gitmo and elsewhere had to defend themselfs against secret statements without knowing these statements came from someone the CIA had "passed ideas past".
Its sad you miss things like this. And this isn`t the first time. You really should know the FISA warrant stats by hearth and have read everything from the Nachio case if you write about pre-9/11 warrantless wiretapping. (its not 5% rejected, its 5 in thirty years, all under Bush and its not wiretapping its the IDS stupid)
The transcripts are quite informative. Its well designed spin, but still it has bits like the camera stuff. They managed to find a guy who was there eventhough he didn`t want to join in so he doesn`t have to fudge things to stay out of legal trouble. He reveals nothing of consequence but he gets plenty of time to give the "torture works" line.
Then he comes up with what simply cant be his own position. Who thinks waterboarding is bad and unamerican, but thinks its a good thing it happened and works, but should never be done again...and decides that that is the story national TV should hear about?
I smell a script from someone with Harlow`s former office. It reminds me of "cigarettes-cancer links need more study" and "the jury is still out on global warming".... that kind of thing. How could you lock people up for fucking up on the torture ban when torture is a new question and there is still a national debate going on?
And ABC doesn`t use the bits where he talks about how no attacks against the US were prevented. They also don`t have any other sources, little new facts, don`t ask the questions needed for fact checking... (when, where was that exactly, etc) I can see why the CIA came back after ABC did such a terrific job explaining the torture victims had already been moved out of Europe, just in time for Condi`s visit.
S.L. wrote on December 11, 2007 3:21 PM:Another strange descrepency in the reporting on this is that sometimes they say "two videotapes" (I believe the prosecutors say this) but other news sources say "hundreds of hours of videotape of two detainees." I don't know how much fits on a single videotape, but surely not hundreds of hours. That increases the odds that some tapes got away.
jimbo92107 wrote on December 11, 2007 5:33 PM:Why would anyone believe the director of an agency whose entire existence depends on deceiving the public?