Making The Destruction of The Tapes Public
On December 6, 2007, the New York Times advised the Bush administration that they had acquired, and planned to publish, information about the destruction of tapes made of Zubaydah's interrogation, believed to show instances of waterboarding and other forms of possible torture.
Michael Hayden, the Director of Central Intelligence, sent a letter to CIA staff the next day, briefing them on the destruction of the tapes. Hayden asserted that key members of Congress had been briefed on the existence of the tapes, and the plans for their destruction. Senator Jay Rockefeller, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, disputed Hayden's assertion, saying that he only learned of the tapes in November 2006, a year after their destruction.
Jane Harman, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee and one of just four senior members of Congress who was briefed on the existence of the tapes, acknowledged being briefed. Harman responded to Hayden's assertions by saying she had objected, in writing, to the tapes' destruction. "I told the CIA that destroying videotapes of interrogations was a bad idea and urged them in writing not to do it," Harman stated.
Hayden claimed that the continued existence of the tapes represented a threat to the CIA personnel involved, saying that if the tapes were leaked they might result in CIA personnel being identified and targeted for retaliation. Hayden stated that the tapes were destroyed "only after it was determined they were no longer of intelligence value and not relevant to any internal, legislative, or judicial inquiries."
In February 2009, the Obama administration revealed that the CIA had destroyed ninety-two videotapes that contained hundreds of hours of the interrogations.
Read more about this topic: 2005 CIA Interrogation Tapes Destruction
Famous quotes containing the words making the, making, destruction, tapes and/or public:
“In making the great experiment of governing people by consent rather than by coercion, it is not sufficient that the party in power should have a majority. It is just as necessary that the party in power should never outrage the minority.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“A man was to live in that egg-shell day and night, a mile from the shore.... Think of making your bed thus in the crest of a breaker! To have the waves, like a pack of hungry wolves, eying you always, night and day, and from time to time making a spring at you, almost sure to have you at last.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In nothing was slavery so savage and relentless as in its attempted destruction of the family instincts of the Negro race in America. Individuals, not families; shelters, not homes; herding, not marriages, were the cardinal sins in that system of horrors.”
—Fannie Barrier Williams (1855–1944)
“Everything our children hear, see, and feel is recorded onto a cassette. Guess who is the big star in their movie? You are. What you say and, more important, what you do, is recorded there for them to replay over and over again. We all have videocassettes. Adults just have larger libraries of tapes available.”
—Stephanie Martson (20th century)
“But a public oration is an escapade, a non-committal, an apology, a gag, and not a communication, not a speech, not a man.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)