|
|
RIGHTS-US: Legal Community Condemns Destruction of CIA Tapes
By William Fisher
NEW YORK, Dec 26, 2007 (IPS) - A former U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) ethics adviser has joined leading
members of the U.S. legal community in calling on Congress to investigate the
destruction of tape recordings of interrogations carried out by the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Jesselyn Radack - who came to prominence as a whistleblower after she
objected to the government's treatment of John Walker Lindh, the ‘American
Taliban’ captured during the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan - told a news
teleconference last week that the destroyed tapes are "part of a pattern." She
said, "There are some five million missing White House e-mails. No one
knows where the hit lists are from the U.S. Attorney massacre. And now the
CIA interrogation videotapes have been erased. This is criminal."
"Remember when the Justice Department prosecuted Enron and Arthur
Anderson for destruction of evidence and obstruction of justice? Now the
Justice Department is trying to block congressional oversight and legal
proceedings involving this latest scandal," Radack added.
Radack’s comments came during the launch of a new campaign, "American
Lawyers Defending the Constitution." The effort is backed by a statement
signed by more than 1,300 lawyers and law students around the country,
including former New York governor Mario Cuomo, former Reagan
administration official Bruce Fein, leaders of legal organisations and more
than 100 law professors in the U.S.
Their statement calls on House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers and Senate
Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy to hold wide-ranging hearings to investigate
"unconstitutional and potentially criminal activity by the Bush Administration."
The ‘TapeGate’ furor erupted after the New York Times revealed in early
December that the CIA in 2005 had destroyed at least two videotapes
documenting the interrogation of two al Qaeda operatives in the agency’s
custody, "a step it took in the midst of Congressional and legal scrutiny
about its secret detention programme, according to current and former
government officials." The CIA subsequently announced the programme.
The videotapes showed agency operatives subjecting terrorism suspects -
including Abu Zubaydah, the first detainee in CIA custody - to severe
interrogation techniques in 2002. In a message to his staff, CIA Director
General Michael V. Hayden reportedly said the tapes were destroyed in part
because officers were concerned that the video showing harsh interrogation
methods could expose agency officials to legal risks. He also said the tapes
no longer had intelligence value.
The destruction of the tapes has raised questions about whether CIA officials
withheld information from Congress, the courts and the Sep. 11 commission
about aspects of the programme.
The CIA programme that included the detention and interrogation of
terrorism suspects began after the capture of Zubaydah in March 2002. The
CIA has said that the DOJ and the executive branch reviewed and approved of
the use of a set of harsh techniques before they were used on any prisoners,
and that the DOJ issued a classified legal opinion in August 2002 that
provided explicit authorisation for their use.
Other participants on the telephone press conference included Michael
Ratner, president of the Centre for Constitutional Rights, a legal advocacy
group, and Marjorie Cohn, president of the 6,000-member National Lawyers
Guild.
Ratner, whose organisation has played a major role in providing defence
lawyers for detainees in Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere, underscored the
importance of congressional action. "For far too long Congress has been the
handmaiden of the Bush administration’s undermining and subversion of
basic constitutional rights. The right to be free from torture; warrant-less
wiretapping; jailing without habeas corpus; and disappearances into secret
sites. Principles going back to the Magna Carta are at stake," he said.
Ratner called on Congress to "do its job: defend the Constitution from its
enemies." "Its enemies are the Bush administration," he stressed.
"Just announcing that investigations will be held and subpoenas will be
issued is terribly insufficient unless Congress is willing to enforce the
subpoenas by issuing contempt citations," Ratner said, emphasising that,
"Congress has a constitutional duty to oversee the activities of the executive
branch, and our entire system of government is threatened when Congress
simply folds before an obstinate executive."
Cohn, author of the recently published book, "Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the
Bush Gang Has Defied the Law", told IPS, "From the illegal war in Iraq, to the
illegal torture of prisoners in U.S. custody, to the illegal destruction of
evidence by the CIA, the Bush administration has become an institution of
lawbreakers. Congress must hold hearings to investigate this lawbreaking,
and should authorise the appointment of an independent prosecutor since
Michael Mukasey cannot be counted on to conduct an impartial
investigation."
Radack rose to prominence as a major whistleblower in the Lindh case. In the
course of Lindh's criminal prosecution, the court ordered all documents
associated with his interrogation to be turned over. After some documents
were turned over, Radack was asked about the existence of more documents.
At that time, she looked through the files and discovered that the bulk of her
work was missing and had not been turned over. Radack was able to
reconstruct much of her work, and informed her supervisor that her
department had not complied with the court order.
She was forced to resign before the documents were turned over. A criminal
investigation into Radack’s actions was eventually closed with no charges, but
her case was referred to the state bar of Maryland, which eventually cleared
her of all wrongdoing. She has never been called to testify before Congress.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) said it had no knowledge that Lindh was
represented by a lawyer prior to his interrogation, but this position appears to
be contradicted by material in Radack's files.
Radack told the news conference, "My e-mails documented my advice
against interrogating Lindh without a lawyer, and concluded that the FBI
committed an ethics violation when it did so anyway. Both the CIA
videotapes and my e-mails were destroyed, in part, because officials were
concerned that they documented controversial interrogation methods that
could put agency officials in legal jeopardy."
In a related development, one of America’s leading constitutional scholars
said White House involvement in the CIA's decision to destroy videotapes
documenting severe interrogation techniques of suspected terrorists could
constitute as many as six crimes.
Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington University law school in
Washington, appeared on CNN to discuss a report by the New York Times that
four White House attorneys - including then-White House counsels Alberto
Gonzales and Harriet Miers - participated in discussions with the CIA about
whether or not the tapes should be destroyed.
Turley said, "There are at least six identifiable crimes here, from obstruction
of justice to obstruction of Congress, perjury, conspiracy, false statements,
and what is often forgotten: the crime of torturing suspects." "If that crime
was committed it was a crime that would conceivably be ordered by the
president himself, only the president can order those types of special
treatments or interrogation techniques," he added.
(END)
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
What is RSS?
