out of trouble. If the government is known for one thing, particularly defense spying and security groups, it is the military chain of command. There is no way
that the White House wasn't involved-no matter what the 4th estate prints.
Rodriguez had plenty of superiors telling him not to destroy the tapes. Why did he defy them? "In late 2005, the retiring CIA station chief in Bangkok sent a
classified cable to his superiors in Langley asking if he could destroy videotapes recorded at a secret CIA prison in Thailand that in part portrayed intelligence officers using simulated drowning to extract information from suspected al-Qaeda members. The tapes had been sitting in the station chief's safe, in the U.S. Embassy compound, for nearly three years. Although those involved in the interrogations had pushed for the tapes' destruction in those years and a secret debate about it had twice reached the White House, CIA officials had not acted on those requests.
This time was different.
The CIA had a new director and an acting general counsel, neither of whom sought to block the destruction of the tapes, according to agency officials. The
station chief was insistent because he was retiring and wanted to resolve the matter before he left, the officials said. And in November 2005, a published
report that detailed a secret CIA prison system provoked an international outcry."
those involved recalled conversations in which senior CIA and White House officials advised against destroying the tapes, but without expressly prohibiting it, leaving an odd vacuum of specific instructions on a such a politically sensitive matter. They said that Rodriguez then interpreted this silence -- the absence of a decision to order the tapes' preservation -- as a tacit approval of their destruction. "Jose could not get any specific direction out of his leadership" in 2005, one
senior official said. Word of the resulting destruction, one former official said, was greeted by widespread relief among clandestine officers, and Rodriguez
was neither penalized nor reprimanded, publicly or privately, by then-CIA Director Porter J. Goss, according to two officials briefed on exchanges between
the two men."
This reminds me of how Abu Ghraib was spun.
Big bro 43 took away the Geneva Convention protections from the detainees and the guy who had experience was, General Miller, was sent to Gitmoize to Abu Ghraib. Allegedly none of Miller's superiors--including the fired for incompetence Rumsfeld, who was all over the inspectors to get facts immediately-- Geneva Convention be damned, were in the loop.
I have real estate in Florida you must buy sight unseen!
If anyone does something that they think is probably wrong why doesn't their supervisor nail their head to wall? Oh, that's right this is "no accountability"
presidency.
The headline of the article "White House Says It Routinely Overwrote E-Mail Tapes From 2001 to 2003" at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/16/AR2008011602202.html is self-explanatory and clearly descibies how W has committed a multitude of crimes.
It states "Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) told the National Archives in a letter last month that White House officials had told his investigators they found "numerous days with few or no emails for certain White House components" during a 2005 review of White House computer servers. "More than two years after this problem was first discovered by White House staff," Waxman said, "the White House still has not identified the cause of the problem, determined the volume of emails lost, or developed a plan for restoring those emails that were lost." In a related controversy, House investigators have determined that hundreds of thousands of e-mails from former presidential adviser Karl Rove and other White House aides are missing because they were sent using external accounts set up by the Republican National Committee."
The article "House Panel Criticizes CIA Tape Destruction" at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/16/AR2008011604031.html
states The CIA's destruction of videotapes containing harsh interrogations of detainees at secret prisons drew bipartisan criticism from House lawmakers who attended a closed hearing yesterday at which the agency's acting general counsel testified about the matter. Intelligence committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-Tex.) said afterward that he remained convinced that the CIA did not meet its obligation to fully inform congressional overseers about the tapes and their destruction. He called the failure "unacceptable.". Rep. Peter Hoekstra (Mich.), the panel's ranking Republican and former chairman, said Rizzo suggested that Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., the CIA's head of clandestine services, acted on his own authority in November 2005 when he ordered that the tapes be destroyed. "It appears from what we have seen to date that Rodriguez may not have been following instructions" when he ordered the destruction, Hoekstra said."
Hoekstra is a GOP goon! Ignore him!
"Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein of the Southern District of New York said he will determine whether the material was properly classified or whether it should be
released under a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, said Rachel Myers, an ACLU spokeswoman who attended the hearing. Among the documents sought by the group are Justice Department memos authorizing harsh interrogation methods, a presidential order establishing the CIA prisons
and documents relating to the CIA's internal investigations of prisoner abuse. Hellerstein scheduled a separate hearing for Wednesday, Myers said, to consider
an ACLU request to hold the CIA in contempt of court for destroying the tapes."
The article "The deafness and blindness of George W. Bush." at http://www.slate.com/id/2182222 explains it about as well as can be expected. It states " I'm not sure, but I think President Bush just admitted that when somebody briefs him, he consciously prefers what he wants to hear to what the truth happens to be. As do we all, I suppose. But I see no evidence of irony, let alone self-criticism, in what Bush said. The subject was the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, from which, as Slate's Fred Kaplan noted yesterday, Bush has been distancing himself in private conversations with foreign leaders. Here's what Bush said today: I was making it clear it was an independent judgment, because what they basically came to the conclusion of, is that he's trying-you know, this is a way to make sure that all options aren't on the table. So I defended our intelligence services, but made it clear that they're an independent agency; that they come to conclusions separate from what I may or may not want."
Note that Bush didn't say the intelligence services sometimes come to conclusions separate from what he may or may not believe. It would be bad form for Bush to say that out loud, because it would undermine part of his own executive branch. But it would be defensible intellectually. Of course presidents are going to disagree now and then with conclusions reached by the intelligence agencies. One would hope that, in doing so, they give careful consideration to the known facts. But Bush wasn't saying that. He was saying that the intelligence services sometimes come to conclusions separate from what he may or may not want.
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