PENTAGON REVIEWING INTERROGATION TAPES
 
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2008 23:16:09 -0500 (CDT)


http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=4441834

ABC News  --  Mar 12, 2008

WASHINGTON (Reuters)  - The Department of Defense is conducting a review 
of the videotaping of interrogations at military facilities from Iraq to 
Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and so far has identified nearly 50 tapes, The New 
York Times reported on Thursday.

One of the tapes showed what a military spokesman described as the 
forcible gagging of a terrorism suspect, the newspaper said in the 
article, posted on its Web site on Wednesday.

Many of the tapes documented interrogations of Jose Padilla, the report 
said. Padilla is a Chicago gang member once accused of plotting a 
radioactive bomb attack, but sentenced in January to more than 17 years in 
prison for supporting terrorism.

He had been held without charge for 3 1/2 years and his lawyers argued 
that years of extreme isolation and interrogation had left him too 
mentally impaired to help his lawyers defend him in court.

The initial findings of the incomplete 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, the newspaper said.

The report said the Pentagon review of the tapes was begun in late January 
after the CIA acknowledged it had destroyed videotapes of harsh 
interrogations conducted by CIA officers.

The destruction of those tapes is the subject of criminal and 
congressional investigations and the review was intended partly to 
establish clearer rules for any videotaping of interrogations, defense 
officials said, according to the report.

The officials also said that only very few of tens of thousands of 
interrogations conducted worldwide since 2001 had been recorded.