9/11 panel: CIA deliberately withheld interrogation tapes

The CIA may have kept two interrogation tapes of particular interest, later destroyed, from the September 11 commission, the New York Times reports.

A classified documents review showed that, in 2003 and 2004, detailed requests were made to the Central Intelligence Agency to provide all documents and other information on the interrogation of al-Qaeda operatives. A top CIA official told the commission that all materials requested had been provided.

The two videotapes, destroyed in 2005, show two terror suspects, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, being interrogated. The White House has come under criticism after evidence surfaced that it had allowed the tapes to be destroyed, possibly to prevent them from being used as evidence. The White House claims that there was no legal obligation to preserve the tapes, as it was only directed to safeguard recordings taken at Guantanamo Bay; since the two interrogations in question were filmed at secret CIA camps before the suspects' arrival at Guantanamo, the White House contends, the tapes did not have to be preserved.

#

EXCERPTS:

A seven-page memorandum prepared by Philip D. Zelikow, the panel’s former executive director, concluded that “further investigation is needed” to determine whether the C.I.A.’s withholding of the tapes from the commission violated federal law.

In interviews this week, the two chairmen of the commission, Lee H. Hamilton and Thomas H. Kean, said their reading of the report had convinced them that the agency had made a conscious decision to impede the Sept. 11 commission’s inquiry.

Among the statements that the memorandum suggests were misleading was an assertion made on June 29, 2004, by John E. McLaughlin, the deputy director of central intelligence, that the C.I.A. “has taken and completed all reasonable steps necessary to find the documents in its possession, custody or control responsive” to formal requests by the commission and “has produced or made available for review” all such documents.

#

The entire New York Times article is available HERE.