Bob in Wintry WI

All competent prosecutors are aware of information technology issues, as they deal with those issues with great frequency. If the investigations by Congress and DoJ-CIA start down the wrong path technology-wise, let’s hope there will be enough gumption and integrity in Congress to bring about the appointment of special counsel.

Actually, yes. We’ve gotten at least one report that the contents of the tapes were cabled to the US.

And if memory serves me correct, said interrogation stuff was viewed here by at a minimum, higher-ups at the CIA (and perhaps one or two “free” tickets were left at the box office for folks like the NSC’S John Bellinger or even Condi Rice who remained Junya’s National Security Advisor and didn’t flit over to State until January 26, 2005).

I would also note that we only have Mikey Hayden’s well-vetted statement that the videotapes were destroyed. This is an affirmative statement, but not necessarily all of the truth.

Mikey has never to my knowledge indicated one way or the other that the feed providing the viewing of the interrogation stuff was not itself recorded.

It would seem a tad bit unlikely that it wasn’t, so one should take existing statements about tape destruction as “parsing” until affirmative other statements exist (if ever) about interrogation recording destruction.

It never ever happened, and if if did, it didn’t.

That seems perfectly clear to me.

The location was likely transient; I’ve been looking for an example and I think we have one possibility. We know that Jordan had been cooperating, but asking Jordan to do certain kinds of things could have put them at greater risk for political instability, a la Lebanon. Jordan also has more permanent facilities, making them a more likely suspect.

But what about Poland? We know they’ve had at least one black site — yet it must have been transient. Poland received benefits from the U.S. for accommodating the U.S.; there must have been further cooperation across the EU since black sites of this transient nature didn’t appear in the recent “European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment“. Poland wasn’t alone, either; there were 14 other EU nations involved, allowing some sort of transient operation. (Poland and Romania may have allowed more permanent operations.)

But what if this is the reason why we have not seen as much chatter from the EU on the torture tapes? What if the reason the EU does not appear as concerned about possible torture conducted on their soil, because they were asked only to allow “logistical flights”, not rendition or torture? is all the data floating around the world in a plane with about as much traceability as that flight carrying cocaine that crashed over a week ago in South America? And are the comings and goings of such operations labeled “logistical flights”?

Legitimate investigators are going to have to get their A-game on if we are dealing with a floating archive.

More to the point, although two threads late, Merry Christmas, God Jul, and other appropriate wishes to all, and thanks for being here and letting the not-a-lawyers, such as myself, benefit from your thoughts.