"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?
3 comments:
Around noon EST today, there was no mention of the tape issue anywhere on HuffPost's home page. It sounds like everyone now agrees with Captain Queeg, that there's a duplicate key to the pantry. But I prefer the Maltese Falcon analogy, where someone has to take the fall. If you can find out how many times these guys have seen The Maltese Falcon, you can save a lot of wild-goose hunts. Personally I'm conflicted, ambivalent, uncomfortable with any law or regulation that requires best-means recording of this or that, or prohibits any recordings being made. Also about requiring that all recordings be saved or that any be destroyed. And I won't be made comfortable with a government Editing Czar. We try to define a civil society as one where reasonable people act reasonably. Once you establish the lawfulness of a CIA, and authorize the CIA to conduct covert and clandestine operations, you've pretty much bought into required deception, dissembling, and perjury. dr. elsewhere has been noticing events that somehow belong together without having a narrative explanation, like Coltrane. Constructing a narrative for the tape issue might miss the larger issue, which isn't waterboarding, torture, or hiding whatever is in the frame, so much as the capricious embracing of zero tolerance when it suits someone. The CIA hadn't informed Congress fully, so the CIA broke the law. Uh-oh. There was a conspiracy to destroy tapes, if that's what you want to call it. There might be a conspiracy to pretend that there are no copies. Can we see the Josef Mengele movies if we request them under the FOIA?
While I agree that Larry Johnson should share his sourcing with Congress, I doubt very seriously that the "leadership" in Congress would permit any serious investigation, or take any substantive action.
"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."
Actually, I don't think this is a very "extreme" theory. Remember that the US first started looking into "enhanced interrogation techniques" (read: torture) during the Korean War because of the horrific and false confessions that prisoners of war were making.
The paradox is that, having learned how the North Korean torturers were extracting false confessions, the US now says that it uses the same process to extract the truth. Repeating the same action and expecting a different result has been called the definition of insanity.
What would be the purpose of extracting false confessions? That depends on exactly who you are asking about. On the front line, I have no doubt that there are some who are simply sadistic and enjoy causing pain to the vulnerable.
Higher up the food chain, I suspect that there are some who need to prove -- to themselves, if no one else -- how "tough" they are, particularly if they have never actually put themselves on the line.
(Samuel Johnson said that every man thinks meanly of himself for never having been a soldier or never having been to sea. This may explain some of the attitudes of the "chickenhawk" contingent.)
There are also some who are so ill-educated that they think that allowing their underlings to torture prisoners is going to provide reliable information, as opposed to a desperate babble of whatever will make the pain stop.
And there may well be a group so cynical, so far gone in evil, that they perceive a political advantage in keeping hundreds of "enemies of the people" in Gitmo or Poland or Syria as proof that, unlike those Commie, pinko Defeatocrats, they are really, really "hard on security" and therefore should be reelected.
Of course, if you can keep a trickle of information coming -- but no more than a trickle, because it's so very, very classified -- and hint at more dramatic things -- lots, maybe dozens of threats disrupted -- you can insist that torture works, and all the atrocities you commit are just proof that you are the "good" guys.
It is the logic of Hell. I very much fear that it is the fashion.
Jim
the sometimes thoughtful reader
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