White House lawyers who were involved in discussions with the C.I.A. on its interrogation videotapes, from left: Harriet Miers, John Bellinger, Alberto Gonzales and David Addington. (based on NYT photo)Mark Massetti and Scott Shane report today at the New York Times that the destruction of torture tapes was the subject of rather high-level discussion among the White House counsel team.
WASHINGTON — At least four top White House lawyers took part in discussions with the Central Intelligence Agency between 2003 and 2005 about whether to destroy videotapes showing the secret interrogations of two operatives from Al Qaeda, according to current and former administration and intelligence officials.You can read the whole thing by clicking on the link above.
The accounts indicate that the involvement of White House officials in the discussions before the destruction of the tapes in November 2005 was more extensive than Bush administration officials have acknowledged.
Bellinger seems to stay under the radar but we have Miers and Gonzales, notorious lap dogs for Bush, and Addington who is Dick Cheney's Dick Cheney. (If there are evil machinations to be machinated, look for Addington in the background.)
One former senior intelligence official with direct knowledge of the matter said there had been “vigorous sentiment” among some top White House officials to destroy the tapes. The former official did not specify which White House officials took this position, but he said that some believed in 2005 that any disclosure of the tapes could have been particularly damaging after revelations a year earlier of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
You could probably put some good money on Addington being a "top White House official" favoring destruction of evidence. Don't know that for a fact, of course. Just saying. I must add, to be fair, that the NYT article goes on to say others deny that anyone advocated for destruction (but I'm stopping at three cited paragraphs to stay within fair use).
UPDATE: drational at Daily Kos speculates that tapes were destroyed to eliminate potential evidence of Alberto Gonzales' perjury before Congress.
--the BB
2 comments:
This is common knowledge. Cheney designed his administration out of his experience under Nixon during Watergate. Key elements of that design include strict management of any information (no photos of coffins from Iraq) and destruction of evidence.
As a consequence, we all know it, but cannot prove it in court. It's enough to encourage Vigilante thoughts.
Indeed, johnieb. I have already used torch and pitchfork imagery. [Hello, NSA, having fun here?]
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