By Cliff Montgomery – Mar. 7th, 2009
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) destroyed twelve videotapes which may have recorded the torture ofindividuals accused of terrorist activity by the Bush Administration, reveal documents filed yesterday in a lawsuitover detainee mistreatment.
The dozen videotapes constituted only a portion of a substantial collection destroyed by the Agency. In all, awhopping 92 CIA videotapes of suspects have been obliterated.
This tape destruction has come to light thanks solely to an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lawsuit filedagainst the government.
The suit has forced the Agency to cough up heavily-redacted documents which apparently show that at least adozen of those destroyed tapes chronicled acts of torture–we’re sorry, “enhanced interrogation techniques,”to use the preferred phrase of Bush officials.
The CIA’s torture techniques are officially secret, but most of the world knows that these practices onceincluded the simulated drowning of a suspect. The chosen euphemism for this act of torture was”waterboarding.”
The Bush Administration held a little less than 100 suspects at various secret sites around the globe, andduring its tenure the CIA employed “enhanced interrogation techniques” on about a third of them, stateAgency officials.
Michael Hayden, former CIA Director, already has admitted that simulated drowning was employed on threesuspects.
The ACLU lawsuit on detainee mistreatment had been on the legal back-burner. Why? Because the courtshave been conducting a separate criminal probe into the CIA’s videotape destruction. That investigation is nownear its end.
All the same, ACLU lawyer Amrit Singh took the government to task for “needlessly withholding informationabout these tapes from the public, despite the fact that the CIA’s use of torture…is no secret.”
President Barack Obama, during his first week in the White House, signed an order which forbids the CIA fromemploying “enhanced interrogation techniques” that already are prohibited by the Defense Department. Hefurther demanded an end to the Agency’s secret “black site” prisons, locations around the world wheresuspects have been kept from America’s legal system–and oftentimes, where they apparently have beentortured.
