CIA in 2003 Planned Destruction of Tapes 
 
Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2008 23:05:02 -0600 (CST)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/01/03/ST2008010303806.html

    Washington Post --  Friday, January 4, 2008;
 	   By Walter Pincus

    A key member of Congress disclosed yesterday that the CIA said in February 
2003 that it planned to destroy videotapes of harsh interrogations after the 
agency's inspector general finished probing the episodes, an account that adds 
detail to recent CIA statements about the circumstances surrounding the tapes' 
destruction.

    Rep.  Jane Harman (D-Calif.) released a declassified copy of a letter she 
secretly wrote to the CIA in February 2003, in which she quoted then-CIA 
General Counsel Scott W. Muller as telling her a tape of the agency's 
interrogation of Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, better known as Abu Zubaida, 
"will be destroyed after the Inspector General finishes his inquiry." The CIA 
yesterday confirmed Harman's account of Muller's statement.

    Harman had recently become the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence 
committee, and in her letter she urged Muller to "reconsider" that plan and 
predicted that the tapes' destruction "would reflect badly on the agency." 
Agency officials nonetheless destroyed the tapes in 2005, and on Wednesday, 
Attorney General Michael B.  Mukasey ordered a formal criminal probe into the 
destruction.

    In recent public accounts about the tapes, CIA officials have said that no 
definitive decision was made about destroying the tapes until 2005. Beginning 
in early 2003, senior officials expressed an "intention to dispose" of the 
videos, according to a Dec. 6 statement by CIA Director Michael V. Hayden. But 
an internal debate over the tapes' disposition continued for two more years, 
with senior CIA lawyers advising against their destruction.

    According to several senior intelligence officials, who spoke on the 
condition of anonymity because the matter is under criminal investigation, the 
videotaping at issue was conducted at secret CIA detention sites overseas with 
the approval of CIA headquarters. The interrogations got underway after the 
administration in August 2002 authorized what Muller described in a Feb. 28, 
2003, letter to Harman as a "handful of specially approved interrogation 
techniques."

    "As we informed both you and the leadership of the Intelligence Committees 
last September, a number of Executive branch lawyers including lawyers from the 
Department of Justice participated in a determination that, in the appropriate 
circumstances, use of these techniques is fully consistent with US law," 
Muller's letter said.

    By that time, videotaping of Abu Zubaida and a second terrorist, Abd 
al-Rahim al-Nashiri, had stopped and CIA Inspector General John L. Helgerson 
was just beginning his inquiry.

    The video of Abu Zubaida's interrogation, according to a former CIA official 
familiar with the situation, was meant to show "that the interrogators stayed 
within the guidelines and they didn't do anything to him that could lead to his 
death."

    Helgerson, in a statement released Wednesday, said he and his staff reviewed 
the tapes as part of their inquiry, which ended in May 2004.

    Harman's recommendation to Muller that the tapes not be destroyed was 
reported earlier. In her letter she wrote, "Even if the videotape does not 
constitute an official record that must be preserved under the law, the 
videotape would be the best proof that the written record is accurate, if such 
record is called into question in the future." In a telephone interview 
yesterday, Harman said she never received a direct reply to her advice that 
destroying the tapes would be a mistake.

    In his letter to Harman, Muller did not respond to Harman's direct request 
for information about whether President Bush had authorized and approved the 
harsh interrogation techniques, saying in his letter to her that it was "not 
appropriate for me to comment on issues that are a matter of policy, much less 
the nature and extent of Executive Branch policy deliberations."

    Muller, reached by e-mail, declined to comment yesterday on the letters or 
on any other aspect of the CIA's handling of the tapes.  Other officials have 
said Muller did not disagree with Harman and counseled colleagues not to 
destroy the tapes.

    Harsh interrogation techniques, including a form of simulated drowning known 
as waterboarding, were used on Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the prime architect of 
the Sept.  11, 2001, attacks, after he was captured in March 2003.  But, 
according to present and former intelligence officials, that technique was no 
longer needed or used after August 2003.

    Helgerson concluded in his May 2004 report that the interrogations might 
violate international law, and he recommended changes in the treatment and 
handling of detainees.  The tapes were eventually destroyed, CIA officials have 
said, at the instruction of then-CIA Deputy Director for Operations Jose A. 
Rodriguez Jr., after Muller had left the CIA.