LONDON, Dec. 23, 2007
Will Ex-CIA Name Names In Tape Scandal?
Paper: Former Official May Seek Immunity Before Testifying On Interrogation Tapes' Destruction
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(AP)
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Interactive 21st Century Spying The biggest overhaul of the U.S. intelligence community in half a century.
The House Intelligence Committee issued a subpoena Thursday to Jose Rodriguez, a former CIA official who oversaw the interrogation of terrorism suspects, and who allegedly ordered the destruction of interrogation videotapes.
According to the Times of London, Rodriguez will seek immunity from prosecution before testifying before the committee on January 15.
It was learned earlier this month that the CIA had recorded hundreds of hours of interrogations of at least two terrorism suspects, allegedly incorporating torture techniques, and then destroyed the tapes in 2005. The CIA hid the existence of the tapes from judges, congressional overseers, and the 9/11 Commission investigating the government's intelligence activities.
This week a U.S. judge questioned whether the CIA's destruction of the tapes violated a court order issued in 2005 to preserve any information relating to the interrogation of terrorism suspects at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay. CIA lawyers responded that the tapes were not subject to that order because, even though Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri have been detained at Guantanamo, their interrogations were conducted elsewhere.
A former CIA officer has spoken publicly that Zubaydah was waterboarded (a form of torture that simulates drowning). He allegedly "broke" and revealed information, although there has been much dispute as to the veracity of that information.
The House investigation comes on the heels of President Bush's comments that he did not "recall" the existence of the torture tapes until he was briefed on the matter by CIA director Michael Hayden about two weeks ago, and a subsequent New York Times report that
The four staffers cited were Alberto Gonzales, the former attorney general who served as White House counsel until early 2005; David Addington, a key aide to Vice President Dick Cheney; John Bellinger III, who until January 2005 was the senior lawyer at the National Security Council; and Harriet Miers, who succeeded Gonzales as White House counsel.
In an interview with the London Times, former CIA counterterrorism head Vincent Cannistraro said it was impossible for Rodriguez to have independently ordered the destruction of the tapes. “If everybody was against the decision, why in the world would Jose Rodriguez - one of the most cautious men I have ever met - have gone ahead and destroyed them?”
Another former CIA officer, Larry Johnson, told the Times that when he speaks to Congress, Rodriguez could implicate the White House: “The CIA and Jose Rodriguez look bad," he told the paper, "but he’s probably the least culpable person in the process. He didn’t wake up one day and decide, ‘I’m going to destroy these tapes.’ He checked with a lot of people, and eventually he is going to get his say.”
History may play a part in this: According to Johnson, Rodriguez - a 30-year veteran of the agency - was questioned in the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s, at which time the Reagan-Bush administration backed away from protecting him, telling him the political nature of the scandal meant he should get his own lawyer.
Rodriguez was director of the CIA's National Clandestine Service, until his retirement in September.
Intelligence sources told the Times that it is likely Rodriguez is determined to not become a "fall guy" in the matter.
Rodriguez's attorney notified the House Intelligence Committee this week that Rodriguez would agree to the committee's request to appear, but that he required a subpoena first.
That subpoena was issued on Thursday.
© MMVII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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See all 47 CommentsFor myself, being my 51st birthday, the present I would like more than any other, is to see Bush, Cheney, and the rest of their klan in handcuffs...
Posted by brianbwb at 03:42 AM : Dec 24, 2007
+ rep
Same to you brianwb I wish your Christmas to be all it can be just for you and the rest of us.
Posted by starleo14672
TO brianwb, starleo, radiobob, ST and others...
Have a merry Christmas! I certainly wish for good health and happiness for all with coming new year. As always it is great to exhange thoughts on this website!
Good night and Merry Christmas to all.
ST
"I would not render the well of compassion and good will to mystical forces unseen, as much as to humanities spirit unconquered."
SearingTruth
A Future of the Brave - www.searingtruth.com
And it will always be here, and never without defense.
Let us keep the promises we made to ourselves.
ST
ST you have always, in your words give me hope, if there were more in this world who take the time to give us facts, and hope, what a great world it would be. I am one of you dearest fans and look for your words constantly so never give up, and the bad words that get thrown back such as blow it out your windpipe, as I saw this morning, tells me we have a lot of work to do.
For myself, being my 51st birthday, the present I would like more than any other, is to see Bush, Cheney, and the rest of their klan in handcuffs...
Posted by brianbwb at 03:42 AM : Dec 24, 2007
+ rep
Same to you brianwb I wish your Christmas to be all it can be just for you and the rest of us.
starleo14672
Humanity is the bright spot you seek fellow patriot.
And it will always be here, and never without defense.
Let us keep the promises we made to ourselves.
ST
"I understand. For I have been disappointed also. Humanity, overall, almost always disappoints me. However humans, individually, almost always fill me with hope. This has led me to the conviction that humanity is good; it is our organization and ideologies that have proven pitifully and woefully ineffective and inadequate."
SearingTruth
A Future of the Brave - www.searingtruth.com
Can you imagine what would happen to any of us if we destroyed evidence in even a civil trial.
Others write here that they don''''t find this interesting news. We torture people in this country, and that is not interesting to you?
I am appalled and sick at our government and even more so by those people who condone it.
Posted by Vet_SK at 07:53 AM : Dec 24, 2007
My sentiments exactly, when does it end, the corruption in politics is just unreasonable, and it has to end, and our justice system of which we depend on as secure and without penetration has let us down miserably.Our Supreme Court which is the last resort for justice has taken the position that King George and Darth Vader are our supreme justice. When these politicians are playing games with our future and blocking bills that can help because there wants are more pressing than the countries wants, and if that isn''t enough we have so much *** crimes and pandering the *** world I just can not believe what our country has become.
The problem was that I was innocent.
ST
"And so, just as Hitler and Stalin before them, Bush and his henchmen recruited brutal sociopaths to torture and murder, accounting only to their personal will. Lending them, wholeheartedly and enthusiastically, all necessary moral and legal blessing.
I have always been curious, and wondered, who the American people thought were torturing and murdering in our name."
SearingTruth
A Future of the Brave - www.searingtruth.com
Can you imagine what would happen to any of us if we destroyed evidence in even a civil trial.
Others write here that they don''t find this interesting news. We torture people in this country, and that is not interesting to you?
I am appalled and sick at our government and even more so by those people who condone it.
My friends, sometimes the most difficult thing about fighting evil is realizing that it actually exists, and then unambiguously and forcefully calling it what it is.
History shows time and time again that one of evils greatest strengths is its ability to disguise itself as good, or at least a temporary necessity, until that last fatal moment when its revelation becomes clear, indisputable, and inescapable.
So today let us take a clear and unadulterated look into the mirror at ourselves.
Just six years ago we were one of the most respected and admired defenders of democracy and human rights in history. Respected not only by our friends, but even begrudgingly by most of our enemies. In fact, even the fantastic power of our military paled in comparison to the overwhelming might of our moral authority.
Today we are a nation that operates secret prisons occupied by anonymous inmates, illegally abducted and held indefinitely without charge or representation. We are guilty of torture. We are guilty of murder. We are guilty of preemptive war of conquest. We are guilty of the wholesale surveillance of our population, suppressing all hope of privacy and free dissent. And we are guilty of disgracing our nation through the abandonment of even our most basic precepts of morality.
If this is not evil, then nothing we have ever fought against is evil, and nothing we have ever fought for is good.
A Future of the Brave - www.searingtruth.com
And for those Americans who think they are exempt, and don''t care about foreign citizens or their rights as human beings, think again.
You may have heard the term "Habeas Corpus" tossed around a lot lately, and heard that we have lost the right to it, but do you know what that means?
It means that you no longer have the right to be brought before an impartial judge to protest your imprisonment, or provide evidence that the charges against you are false.
For example, when Bush secretly imprisons an American citizen he doesn''t like he can simply say that they are an Afghani national caught on the battlefield of Iraq, even if they were actually a loyal citizen living in Boston who was illegally abducted at the mall while shopping.
And since you no longer have the right to Habeas Corpus you will never have a chance of the truth being told, and will be at the mercy of Bush''s psychopathic brethren for what remains of your lives.
Welcome to fascist America."
SearingTruth
"A whisper of horror.
That''s all we could hear."
SearingTruth
A Future of the Brave - www.searingtruth.com
MotherHen11
Gosh.
The torture and murder of anonymous citizens by your own government isn''t enough to keep you awake?
Wow.
You are a hard audience to please.
ST
"The depth of human compassion may be measured by how often they forgive their gods."
SearingTruth
A Future of the Brave - www.searingtruth.com
Given the time, I believe that Americans would indeed come to their senses and abandon both groups of corrupt "politicians", but the key phrase is "given time"... Seeing the state of the US economy... one wonders if there is enough time left to turn such a big ship from its course as it teeters on the edge of demise...?
brianbwb
It depends on how much "American" is left in Americans, and whether we can, as a people, see the impending coral reef.
If we have lost sense of the freedom that we have forever advanced, and the constructs of justice that we ourselves helped to consolidate and affirm, then we will not survive as a nation.
However, as George Washington said, I cannot believe it would ever come to pass.
And his faith was not blind.
Thus our 225 years of freedom.
ST
"No country upon earth ever had it more in its power to attain these blessings than United America. Wondrously strange, then, and much to be regretted indeed would it be, were we to neglect the means and to depart from the road which Providence has pointed us to so plainly; I cannot believe it will ever come to pass."
George Washington, letter to Benjamin Lincoln, June 29, 1788
"Any country, who by power of its moral authority and appeal to conscience obtains world predominance, will certainly perish when asserting its right to immoral and unconscionable crime."
SearingTruth
A Future of the Brave - www.searingtruth.com
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I totally agree! There is a grassroots movement in America to stop this Administration who claims to be working in the name of God from Fu*king up America even more. Except, to many people just don''t care and are (and you can''t blame them) scared to stand up for fear of loosing their jobs or something else. There is a concerted effort by the republicans to silence any and all criticism of this Administration.
This is the new america - the corporations are republican in nature and don''t want a concious and thinking working base - it hurts profits. I know there were rumors in my company that someone was let go because they spoke out against the war and the republican party publicly.
This is America right now and it needs to change - so stand up and fight for your freedoms.
To ST
Given the time, I believe that Americans would indeed come to their senses and abandon both groups of corrupt "politicians", but the key phrase is "given time". Generations of brainwashing cannot be overcome in a couple of years.
Seeing the state of the US economy, the fragile position of the US dollar, combined with the accelerating decline of social structures, and the saturation of corruption, one wonders if there is enough time left to turn such a big ship from its course as it teeters on the edge of demise...?
So, in the next week the story will just fade to black as all others of this type have done."
watcher269
You are, unfortunately, most likely correct.
However, even if he is silenced, there is a slow but steady drip, drip, drip, of truth that keeps escaping even the firmest of walls erected by Bush.
And most of the drips are coming from Americans still embedded within our government, and as always Americans are our greatest asset.
But they are terrified to step forward, and are under incredible daily scrutiny, with random polygraph tests being the least of their worries.
So we must all abandon the Republican and Democratic parties, register as non-partisan voters, and leave both failed parties desolate, without finances, and without power.
Then the few American politicians left may have the courage to finally stand for our Constitution, instead of there next hoped for chairmanship, and register as Independent candidates so the American people may vote for them.
And at last we''ll have a plethora of candidates just begging to be elected so they can restore our Constitution, the rule of law, and bring justice back to our great nation.
ST
"It is time to stop appeasing the dictatorship of George W. Bush."
SearingTruth
A Future of the Brave - www.searingtruth.com
So, in the next week the story will just fade to black as all others of this type have done.
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See all 47 Comments