In a strange piece of irony, 2 days after an announcement that the sentencing for Jose Padilla was postponed due to a death in Judge Marcia Cooke’s family, the Central Intelligence Agency revealed that it destroyed videotapes of two terror suspects being “interrogated.” This may come as a surprise to some, but it’s not the first time the CIA has come clean on something years after the fact. From the outset, it would seem that if all of us were just as honest toward those close to us as the CIA is toward the taxpaying citizens, the world might be a better place, right? Wrong.

According to the Associated Press’ Pamela Hess, we aren’t really even supposed to know this. CIA Director Michael Hayden only released this as a handwritten memo to CIA employees and it was leaked to the AP soon afterward. The agency claims to have filmed the “questioning” of only 2 terror suspects in ’02, watch-dogged itself in ’03, and destroyed the tapes in ’05 out of fear of disclosing the identities of agency interrogators to the public. “The tapes posed a serious security risk. Were they ever to leak, they would permit identification of your CIA colleagues who have served in the program, exposing them and their families to retaliation from al-Qaeda and its sympathizers.”

My question is, was the Agency/Detainee footage destroyed just to protect the identity of the interrogators? Did the CIA really only electronically record the questioning of just it’s first 2 detainees? Were they really the first 2 suspects detained? The suspects, Abu-Zubaydah and Ramzi Binalshibh were said to have experienced what amounts to outright torture and questioning that reportedly led to the capture of accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in ’03. The harsh questioning included a "simulated drowning" technique called waterboarding.

Concern over just this type of torture was on the minds of the attorneys for convicted terror conspirator, Jose Padilla. Over 3 years ago, his case was argued 2 days before the New Yorker exposed the Abu-Graib abuse scandal and here we are 2 days after the 12/4 postponement of Padilla’s sentencing hearing (originally scheduled for the 5th) with news of the CIA destroying some detainee videotaped "questioning." Padilla’s attorneys say he was “so badly mistreated by his own government during 3 and a half years in military custody that he deserves far less than the life prison sentence sought by federal prosecutors,” according to a 12/4 report by AP’s Curt Anderson. Understand that Padilla underwent this ordeal without having been charged with any crime and Cooke harshly criticized his prosecutors for being “light on facts.” The hearing will begin on 1/7.

The biggest question of course is why is the CIA being so open now regarding its destruction of the videotapes? Hide the evidence, what else? Yes they had something to hide, but in light of such torture, how reliable is this information as to the role of individuals in the CIA and others involved in the fight against so-called "world terrorism?"

Chris Stevenson is a columnist for the Buffalo Criterion.Click here to contact Mr. Stevenson.

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