US admits CIA destroyed interrogation tapes

THE CENTRAL Intelligence Agency (CIA) destroyed almost 100 video recordings of interrogations of alleged terrorists – much more than previously admitted – the Obama administration has disclosed.

During the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, who was convicted of helping to plot the September 11th attacks, the CIA denied that any of his interrogations had been recorded. After the trial ended, the agency admitted that there had been two video recordings of interrogations, but that both had been destroyed.

In a letter yesterday to a New York judge who is hearing a freedom-of-information lawsuit taken by the American Civil Liberties Union, acting US Attorney Lev Dassin said the number of video recordings destroyed by the CIA was much greater.

“The CIA can now identify the number of videotapes that were destroyed,” the letter said. “Ninety two videotapes were destroyed.”

Almost four years ago, a judge ordered the preservation of all evidence regarding the treatment of detainees at Guantánamo Bay, but the CIA claimed that its recordings were not affected by the rulings because they interrogated captives in secret prisons in different parts of the world – before they were brought to Guantánamo.

Federal prosecutors are investigating whether CIA officers committed criminal acts in destroying the tapes, which could have provided evidence of “enhanced interrogation techniques” or torture used by the agency.

The revelation about the destroyed tapes came as attorney general Eric Holder said that, although the administration was reviewing CIA interrogation techniques, it had already decided that waterboarding – a form of controlled drowning – is unacceptable.

“Waterboarding is torture,” Mr Holder told the Jewish Council of Public Affairs in Washington.

“My Justice Department will not justify it, rationalise it, or condone it. The sanction of torture is at odds with the history of American jurisprudence and American principles.”

The CIA has admitted using waterboarding – a form of torture used in the Spanish Inquisition and under many dictatorships since then – on at least three occasions, but claims to have discontinued the practice in 2003.

“Too often over the past decade the fight against terrorism has been viewed as a zero-sum battle with our tradition of civil liberties. Not only is that school of thought misguided, I fear that in actuality it has done us more harm than good,” Mr Holder said.

“We cannot ask other nations to stand by us in the pursuit of justice if we are not viewed as being in pursuit of that ideal ourselves.”