Tapes ‘n’ tapes

What ever happened to those destroyed CIA interrogation tapes? The CIA taped its interrogations of two al-Qaida operatives, then destroyed the hundreds of hours of footage. The heads of the 9/11 commission say the CIA obstructed their inquiry. President Bush claims to have “no recollection” of the tapes of their destruction. A federal judge who asked for the tapes was told they didn’t exist. Yet someone looking at the news would hardly know anything had happened.\nWhile every political correspondent in America books it from Iowa to New Hampshire to watch the infamous mud match, this story has dangerously slipped through the cracks. Some may think that with a change in the White House on the horizon, we shouldn’t continue to document this administration’s crimes. Yet the destruction of these tapes by the CIA is part of a pattern likely to continue in any incoming administration, unless we address it now. A few questions:\nIs it really possible that Bush didn’t know? Somehow, members of Congress knew about the destruction, as well as Bush confidante Harriet Miers. President Bush and Vice President Cheney seem obsessively occupied with the importance of reviewing intelligence extracted from interrogations. Yet, somehow, neither knew anything about the tapes’ existence or destruction. Either Bush knew about their destruction and is lying to hide something, or he is so ludicrously incompetent that he doesn’t know what his CIA is doing, even when it’s going around town telling everyone else. Neither scenario provides much confidence in our government.\nCould Congress please do its job? Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., was informed that the tapes would be destroyed by the CIA back in 2003, two years before their actual destruction. Incensed, she did what any ranking member of a Congressional oversight committee would do: She wrote a strongly-worded letter. She sits on the committee that controls the CIA’s funding and can ask for an investigation into anything she wants. Instead of actually stopping the destructions, she kindly asked the CIA to cut it out. From our elected officials, that ain’t good enough.\nWhy were the tapes destroyed? This is the $64,000 question, but it’s the toughest to answer, as long as the CIA and the Bush Administration continue to stonewall any efforts to find the truth. The official CIA response that the destruction protected agents’ identities is transparently false. Tons of files have the identities of agents, yet none of them were destroyed. Were the tapes destroyed for the content of the interrogations or the torture techniques used? Or was it all just a bureaucratic mix-up?\nOne of the principal goals in the aftermath of 9/11 was the restructuring of a broken intelligence community which missed all the warning signs and failed to connect the dots. Now, this poor excuse for the Keystone Kops, which stands as America’s first line of defense against foreign terrorism, has destroyed an essential piece of evidence for inexplicable reasons. \nMy list of questions above needs answers before we fully trust the system to protect us, because in this case, every safeguard failed and every oversight was ignored. The road to a safer America begins with untangling a pile of shredded tapes.