Pentagon Cites Tapes Showing Interrogations
Richard Moore
fraction of the tens of thousands of
interrogations worldwide since 2001 had been
recorded."
--
I suppose that makes the USA the greatest
violator of human rights in the world today.
-rkm
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/031308J.shtml
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/13/washington/13intel.html
March 13, 2008
Pentagon Cites Tapes Showing Interrogations
By MARK MAZZETTI and SCOTT SHANE
WASHINGTON - The Defense Department is conducting
an extensive review of the videotaping of
interrogations at military facilities from Iraq
to Guantánamo Bay, and so far it has identified
nearly 50 tapes, including one that showed what a
military spokesman described as the forcible
gagging of a terrorism suspect.
The Pentagon review was begun in late January
after the Central Intelligence Agency
acknowledged that it had destroyed its own
videotapes of harsh interrogations conducted by
C.I.A. officers, an action that is now the
subject of criminal and Congressional
investigations.
The review was intended in part to establish
clearer rules for any videotaping of
interrogations, Defense officials said. But they
acknowledged that it had been complicated by
inconsistent taping practices in the past, as
well as uncertain policies for when tapes could
be destroyed or must be preserved.
The officials said it appeared that only a small
fraction of the tens of thousands of
interrogations worldwide since 2001 had been
recorded.
The officials said the nearly 50 tapes they
identified documented interrogations of two
terrorism suspects, Jose Padilla and Ali
al-Marri, and were made at a Navy detention site
in Charleston, S.C., where the two men have been
held.
The initial findings of the Pentagon review
represent the first official acknowledgment that
military interrogators had videotaped some
sessions with detainees and could widen the
controversy over the treatment of prisoners in
American custody. A Pentagon spokesman, Geoff
Morrell, cautioned that the review was
incomplete, and a spokesman for the Defense
Intelligence Agency, Don Black, said that
interrogation videotapes had been routinely
destroyed if they were judged to have no
continuing value.
The only tape described by officials is of Mr.
Marri, a citizen of Qatar who was arrested in
December 2001 while in college in Illinois and
moved five years ago to the jail after being
designated an "enemy combatant." Government
officials say they believe he was an operative
for Al Qaeda who was plotting attacks.
Two government officials said that the tape
showed Mr. Marri being manhandled by his
interrogators, but did not show waterboarding or
any other treatment approaching what they
believed could be classified as torture.
According to one Defense Department official, the
interrogators dispensing the rough treatment on
the tape were F.B.I. agents.
An F.B.I. spokesman declined to comment, citing a
continuing review of detention practices that is
being carried out by the Department of Justice's
inspector general.
Mr. Black, the spokesman for the Defense
Intelligence Agency, said its director, Lt. Gen.
Michael D. Maples, had reviewed the tape and was
satisfied that Mr. Marri's treatment was
acceptable.
He said that Mr. Marri was chanting loudly,
disrupting his interrogation, and that
interrogators used force to put duct tape on his
mouth, while Mr. Marri resisted. Mr. Black said
most of the videos showing Mr. Marri's
interrogations had been destroyed. The government
has never charged Mr. Marri, but because of his
designation as an enemy combatant, the Pentagon
is allowed to hold him indefinitely.
The scale of detention and interrogation by the
military, with tens of thousands of prisoners in
Iraq, Afghanistan and at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba,
dwarfs that of the C.I.A., which has held fewer
than 100 high-level Qaeda suspects. The C.I.A.
has acknowledged videotaping only two terrorism
suspects, in 2002, and military officials said
that the review, ordered in late January by James
R. Clapper, the Pentagon's senior intelligence
official, had similarly found that only a small
number of detainee interrogations had been
videotaped.
"This is not a widespread practice," said Mr.
Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary. He said
that it was up to individual military commanders
whether to tape interrogations and that the
videotapes were often used as the basis of
written intelligence reports. In addition to the
existing interrogation videotapes, there are
existing recordings that show interactions
between military guards and terrorism suspects,
including detainees' forcible removal from cells
at Guantánamo, military officials said.
Images of rough treatment of detainees is a
delicate subject for the Pentagon. Soldiers'
snapshots of the abusive treatment of detainees
at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq set off a
firestorm and led to prison terms for a number of
military personnel.
Congress imposed a ban in 2005 on all harsh
interrogation methods by the military but left a
loophole for the C.I.A. Last month, Congress
voted to extend the ban to the C.I.A., but
President Bush vetoed the bill.
The C.I.A. acknowledged in December that in 2005
it had destroyed the only interrogation
videotapes that its officers had made; the tapes
showed two detainees, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-
Rahim al-Nashiri.
Lawyers for Mr. Marri, who have challenged his
imprisonment in court, sought access to any tapes
or other records of his interrogations, but in
2006 a federal judge in South Carolina said the
government did not have to produce any tapes.
That decision is being appealed.
Jonathan Hafetz, one of the lawyers, said Mr.
Marri had heard guards describe "a cabinet full
of tapes" showing his interrogations, but had
never had independent confirmation that such
tapes existed. Mr. Marri has alleged that earlier
in his imprisonment he was deprived of sleep,
isolated and exposed to prolonged cold.
Mr. Hafetz said he planned to file papers in
court on Thursday describing the psychological
harm done to Mr. Marri. "Locking someone up for
five years without charges is a disgrace and a
betrayal of American and constitutional values,"
he said.
The difficulties in the Pentagon's review can be
glimpsed in a seven-page court filing last month
by Rear Adm. Mark H. Buzby, the military
commander at Guantánamo Bay.
Admiral Buzby's report describes an array of
digital video recorders used to capture
"activities" - it does not specify whether
interrogations are included - in at least four
subcamps at Guantánamo. But the systems
automatically recorded over older material when
they reached capacity, he wrote.
In some cases, Admiral Buzby wrote, "We suspect
that the recording devices contain recorded data
but we are unable technologically to confirm
whether data remains."
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
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