Congress Was Briefed About Destruction Of Interrogation Tapes Two Years Before CIA Destroyed Them
There’s been no small amount of controversy surrounding the CIA’s announcement that it had destroyed two video tapes showing “harsh” interrogations of terror detainees. There’s been all sorts of criticism from the left claiming that these tapes were destroyed by the CIA/Bush administration to hide the reality of the “torture” we’ve put detainees through.
But now comes the news that Congressional leadership, including Democrats, were notified of the CIA’s intent to destroy the tapes two years before the tapes themselves were destroyed.
Two years.
So here’s a summary of the situation: With the left in high moral dudgeon over alleged human rights violations about the Bush administration, the CIA was worried that the tapes would be leaked to be used as political propaganda. A reasonable fear given the number of politically-motivated leaks coming out of the CIA in recent years. This, obviously, would put both the intelligence gained during the interrogations and the agents conducting them in danger, so they decided to get rid of the tapes and rely on the written reports of the interrogations which they deemed sufficient. So the CIA notified the appropriate bi-partisan Congressional leadership, waited two years, and destroyed the tapes.
So where’s the controversy? Outside of it being a convenient issue for the usual leftist/media suspects to demagogue?
And, to be frank, the tapes undoubtedly contained no more than the sort of interrogation techniques such as water boarding and sleep deprivation that we’ve been debating for years now. We could probably watch video of the the loony tunes lefties water boarding each other to get an idea of what was on the tapes.
