|
The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
|
July 2nd,
2009 - Grand Jury Inquiry on Destruction of C.I.A. Tapes |
|
Grand Jury
Inquiry on Destruction of C.I.A. Tapes By Mark Mazzetti New York Times July 2, 2009 Washington - Current and
former top Central Intelligence Agency officers have appeared before a
federal grand jury in Virginia as part of an 18-month investigation into the
agency’s destruction of 92 videotapes depicting the brutal interrogations of
two Qaeda detainees. The witnesses recently
called by the special prosecutor, former government officials said, include
the agency’s top officer in London and Porter J. Goss, who was C.I.A.
director when the tapes were destroyed in November 2005. The grand jury testimony of
C.I.A. officers is further evidence that, despite President Obama’s pledge
not to punish agency operatives for their role in the detention and
interrogation of terrorism suspects, the shadow of the controversial program
still looms over the agency’s daily operations. The court appearances are
tied to a criminal investigation led by John L. Durham, whom the Justice
Department appointed in January 2008 to investigate the destruction of the
tapes. The tapes had shown C.I.A. officers using harsh interrogation methods,
including waterboarding, on two detainees, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim
al-Nashiri. Mr. Durham has shrouded his
investigation in a level of secrecy rare even by the normally tight-lipped
standards of special prosecutors, and after 18 months it is still difficult
to assess either the direction or the targets of his investigation. Current and former
intelligence officials say the tapes were ordered destroyed by Jose A.
Rodriguez Jr., then the head of the C.I.A.’s clandestine branch. Mr.
Rodriguez had worried that the tapes might be leaked and put undercover
operatives in legal and physical jeopardy. One top C.I.A. officer who
recently appeared before Mr. Durham’s grand jury is the agency’s station
chief in London, who had worked with Mr. Rodriguez when he led the agency’s
Counterterrorism Center and who eventually became his chief of staff at the clandestine
branch. Because she remains
undercover, The New York Times is not publishing her name. She is said by
former agency officers to have helped carry out Mr. Rodriguez’s order to
destroy the tapes. The tapes had been kept in a
safe at the C.I.A. station in Thailand, the country where the interrogations
took place. Mr. Goss, whom President
George W. Bush removed from the C.I.A in May 2006, is said by several former
C.I.A. officials to have opposed the destruction of the tapes. Mr. Rodriguez has not yet
testified before the grand jury, two former C.I.A. officers said. In a court filing last year,
Mr. Durham indicated he planned to wrap up interviews for the investigation
by late February, but Obama administration officials have indicated more
recently that Mr. Durham could continue his work through the summer. One
reason for the pace of the investigation, officials said, is that the grand
jury convenes only once a month to hear testimony. The current and former
government officials interviewed for this article all spoke on the condition
of anonymity because they were discussing details of a continuing criminal
investigation. Besides the question of who
at the C.I.A. and White House might have authorized the destruction of the
tapes, Mr. Durham is investigating the legal guidance Mr. Rodriguez received
before giving the order. One issue is whether the agency might have broken
the law by destroying tapes that could have been introduced as evidence in
federal trials. Mr. Rodriguez told
colleagues at the time that two lawyers inside the agency’s clandestine
branch, Steven Hermes and Robert Eatinger, had advised him that there was no
legal impediment to destroying the tapes and that he had the authority to
give the order. But the advice of the two
lawyers was careful, the former officials said, and they never gave official
approval for the tapes’ destruction. The C.I.A. never disclosed
the existence of the tapes to either the Sept. 11 commission or federal
courts that had been hearing the cases of Qaeda suspects in American custody. At the time the tapes were
destroyed, lawyers for Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker in the
Sept. 11 plot, were seeking information from the Bush administration about
the interrogation of Mr. Zubaydah that might have pertained to Mr.
Moussaoui’s role in the 2001 attacks. Some legal experts said Mr.
Durham might have trouble building a criminal case around the role of the
C.I.A. lawyers. “It seems difficult to prove
that lawyers had criminal intent,” said John Radsan, a former C.I.A. lawyer
and federal prosecutor who now teaches at the William Mitchell College of Law
in St. Paul, “and they didn’t have Rodriguez’s personal interest in getting
rid of the tapes.” “Incompetence does not equal
obstruction of justice,” Mr. Radsan said. As Mr. Durham’s
investigation proceeds, the Obama administration has also been forced under a
Freedom of Information Act lawsuit to make public a number of top-secret
documents related to the C.I.A. detention program. On Thursday, the Justice
Department sent a letter to a judge in New York saying that it would need
until Aug. 31 to produce a copy of a 2004 report by the agency’s inspector
general detailing a number of abuses at C.I.A. prisons overseas. David Johnston contributed
reporting. External link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/03/us/03inquire.html |