As for illegality, well let us wait for some charge before we say he acted illegally. Or don’t you believe in due process?

http://youtube.com/watch?v=QUuV-FE8uE0

What happened to the original recording media, be they tapes or otherwise, is very important, as are official statements made on the subject, and there should be unrelenting efforts to learn the facts. But the recordings as digital information are a larger subject. If they now exist or have existed as digital information somewhere, most likely as encrypted files, the facts concerning them should be pursued at the same time and with as much determination.

That’s why I thought it was interesting that they are saying the psychologists were not present, when that is a bit at odds with what they tried to imply early on (don’t worry about the torture, the psychologists at hand won’t let it get out hand…) I think that there has been a lot of pushback in the community as to whether or not psychologists who particpated in that kind of interrogation should receive professional association response of some kind, so it sounded a bit like a well thought through CYA for everyone – - the psychologists involved were not “there” but only reviewed tapes. Of course, if that’s the case, then what about all the other harsh interrogations where there were no tapes? How were those supervised by psychologists who were also not present? Seems to me there is a group of psychologist, as well as field agents/interrogators, who have started a que for the CIA and Admin generated CYA efforts too.

As to your last paragraph at 25; ya think? Heh heh. This crap is so patently absurd that sometimes my brain just aches. A first year law student ought to be able to see through this stuff; yet it sticks….

“It was an agency decision — you can take it to the bank,” CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said in an interview on Friday. “Other speculations that it may have been made in other compounds, in other parts of the capital region, are simply wrong.”

So Hayden, who was not there when it happened, and who is not in the WH and was not a party to any of the conversations that have been revealed, is making it a “take to the bank” statement that all the decisions to destroy were done internally within the CIA.

Hmmmm.

Ok, so NONE of the decisions to actually torture were made merely internal to the CIA, and were instead all backed by DOJ solicitation/immunization memos and Executive Orders. The tapes supposedly where of interrogations done by either a criminal or war criminal – take your pick – asking about criminal or war crimes activities and participants, but no one included DOJ in the decision to destroy?

DOJ in 2005 was involved in an “unprecedented” review of all the Zubaydah/Binyam Mohammed information in connection with compiling the June 05 Padilla press conference, but the fact that there were tapes of interrogations of Zubaydah never came up? No one involved in the DOJ decisions to solicit continued punishment/detentions for Padilla reviewed them? No one from DOJ was working up info on Zubaydah where they needed to look at the tapes?

If the Sup Ct ruling on Padilla that fall had been to release or charge – which is what it looked like it was going to be – the issue of access to torture evidence relating to the “witnesses” in his case would have coming up pretty quickly.

For that matter, why there was not any general DOJ warning/ruling that evidence relating to interrogation of terrorism suspects or witness should not be destroyed baffles me. Unless, of course, DOJ was complicit in the structure of torture interrogations and didn’t want those performing the DOJ solicited abuse to keep evidence, but also didn’t want any smoking gun testimony or email that they had specifically said to destroy evidence either, since individual lawyers would run the individual risks of obstruction and being disbarred. So silence, or statements to the press, not under oath and not to Congress and the Courts directly.