The White House's latest on
the torture tapes has wide implications:
"He has no recollection of being made aware of the tapes or their destruction before yesterday," Perino said.
"No recollection"?
As we saw yesterday, Larry Johnson (former CIA guy) says that Bush probably had a
personal viewing of the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah.
It has been
confirmed, incidentally, that Zubaydah was waterboarded.
Can W parse his way out of this one? Well, maybe. Most of the commentary has
presumed that the tapes show Zubaydah and his partner Abd al-Rahom al-Nashiri, but the names are redacted in the documentation released so far. I suppose a Bush apologist could argue that the portion of the interrogation showing the waterboarding was not screened for the president.
Indeed, I've seen no confirmation of Johnson's claim, although I suspect that his sources are good. He never struck me as the sort of fellow who would say such a thing without good reason. Johnson should make his sourcing available to Congress.
How can Bush claim "no recollection" when he saw the video -- and when pressure to destroy the tapes
came from the White House itself?
The reason CIA officials involved the White House and Justice Department in discussions about the disposition of the tapes was that CIA officials viewed the CIA's terrorist interrogation and detention program—including the use of "enhanced" interrogation techniques—as having been imposed on the agency by the White House. "It was a political issue," said the former official, and therefore CIA officials believed that the decision as to what to do with the tapes should be made at a political level, by Miers—a former personal lawyer to President Bush and later White House staff secretary and counsel—or someone else directly representing the president.
People who are familiar with the views of both former CIA chiefs Tenet and Goss (and who spoke to NEWSWEEK anonymously because of the sensitivity of the issue) have said that at the time the question of the tapes' destruction was under discussion, both CIA directors indicated that they believed it would be unwise to destroy the tapes. The tapes' destruction actually occurred when Goss headed the agency—but one of the sources familiar with his views said that Goss thought he had an "understanding" with Clandestine Service officials that the tapes would be preserved and was unhappy to learn after the fact that the tapes had indeed been destroyed.
Yet it appears that copies of the tapes
did survive. (Scroll down for my earlier posts on this topic.) This is the key contention which Newsweek and many others refuse to address.
Did Goss attempt to double-cross Bush? Did Tenet? McLaughlin? One thing is clear: For quite some time, the Agency has chafed at the neocons' arrogant attitude toward the CIA. "Tape-gate" may be a counterstrike.
Added note: As mentioned earlier, Ron Suskind reports that Abu Zubaydah has lost his grip on reality. It has been argued that Zubaydah's harsh treatment made him lose his sanity. The more extreme theorists may posit that the purpose of the torture was not to extract information but to enforce false confessions -- and even to make the prisoners perceive false memories as the truth.
This brings us back to the terrain covered by
The Shock Doctrine, doesn't it?
