CIA discloses news that it destroyed interrogation video tapes

"I told the CIA that destroying videotapes of interrogations was a bad idea and urged them in writing not to do it," Harman said.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., then chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said through a spokesman that he doesn't remember being informed of the videotaping.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said the panel didn't learn of the tapes' destruction until November 2006, one year after the fact.

The American Civil Liberties Union immediately condemned the CIA's actions, Reuters also reports.

"The destruction of these tapes suggests an utter disregard for the rule of law. It was plainly a deliberate attempt to destroy evidence that could have been used to hold CIA agents accountable for the torture of prisoners," ACLU National Security Project Director Jameel Jaffer said in a statement.

According to The Washington Post, the timing of the tape incident is highly significant.

The startling disclosures came on the same day that House and Senate negotiators reached an agreement on legislation that would prohibit the use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics by the CIA and bring intelligence agencies in line with rules followed by the U.S. military.

The measure, which needs approval from the full House and Senate, would effectively set a government-wide standard for legal interrogations by explicitly outlawing the use of simulated drowning, forced nudity, hooding, military dogs and other harsh tactics against prisoners by any U.S. intelligence agency.

This week's incident comes just weeks after a similar CIA tape incident. Reuters reported on Nov. 13 that:

The CIA erred in twice telling a court in the case of September 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui that it did not have any recordings of interrogations of "enemy combatants," when in fact it had three video or audio tapes, according to a letter released on Tuesday.

Prosecutors only recently learned of the tapes from the CIA, they said in the letter to the judge who presided over the case and to a U.S. appeals court that considered the Moussaoui case.

And Andrew Sullivan, writing for The Atlantic Online, points out that tapes documenting Jose Padilla's interrogation disappeared under controversial circumstances in 2005. He quotes an assessment from Newsweek:

The missing DVD dates from March 2, 2004. It contains a video of the last interrogation session of Padilla, then a declared 'enemy combatant' under an order from President Bush, while he was being held in military custody at a U.S. Navy brig in Charleston, S.C. But in recent days, in the course of an unusual court hearing about Padilla's mental condition, a government lawyer disclosed to a surprised courtroom that the Defense Intelligence Agency — which had custody of the evidence — was no longer able to locate the DVD. As a result, it was not included in a packet of classified DVDs that was recently turned over to defense lawyers under orders from Judge Cooke.

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