Who, us torture?

Doubtless you've already heard that the CIA destroyed videotapes of them torturing people while because Congress was investigating torture.

Mr. Muller had told the lawmakers that the C.I.A. intended to destroy the interrogation tapes, arguing that they were no longer of any intelligence value and that the interrogations they showed put agency operatives who appeared in the tapes at risk.

Risk, that is, of being prosecuted.

Oh, and by the way, they also lied about the existence of the tapes.

“The commission did formally request material of this kind from all relevant agencies, and the commission was assured that we had received all the material responsive to our request,” said Philip D. Zelikow, who served as executive director of the Sept. 11 commission.

Needless, to say, the CIA says that the tapes were benign--

General Hayden said the tapes were originally made to ensure that agency employees acted in accordance with “established legal and policy guidelines.” He said the agency stopped videotaping interrogations in 2002.

“The tapes were meant chiefly as an additional, internal check on the program in its early stages,” he said. He said they were destroyed only after the agency’s Office of the General Counsel and Office of the Inspector General had examined them and determined that they showed lawful methods of questioning

--while everyone with any brains in their heads is sure that's bullshit:

Tom Malinowski, Washington director of Human Rights Watch, said General Hayden’s claim that the tapes were destroyed to protect C.I.A. officers “is not credible.”

“Millions of documents in C.I.A. archives, if leaked, would identify C.I.A. officers,” Mr. Malinowski said. “The only difference here is that these tapes portray potentially criminal activity. They must have understood that if people saw these tapes, they would consider them to show acts of torture, which is a felony offense.”

Kevin Drum explains that, in fact, we "have a pretty good idea" of what's on them.

Bush allegedly told Tenet, "Who authorized putting him on pain medication?" Not only did Tenet get the message — brutality while questioning an enemy prisoner was no problem — but Tenet also never sought explicit White House approval for permissible interrogation techniques, contributing to what Risen speculates is an effort by senior officials "to insulate Bush and give him deniability" on torture.

(From here, via Drum.)

"You're not going to let me lose face on this, are you?" "No sir, Mr. President," Tenet replied. Bush "was fixated on how to get Zubaydah to tell us the truth," Suskind writes, and he asked one briefer, "Do some of these harsh methods really work?"

(From here, also via Drum.

Of course, *that's* why the tapes were destroyed. Notice the lede to that first link, from the Times:

White House and Justice Department officials, along with senior members of Congress, advised the Central Intelligence Agency in 2003 against a plan to destroy hundreds of hours of videotapes showing the interrogations of two operatives of Al Qaeda, government officials said Friday.

The tapes were destroyed so that the White House can continue to hide behind the tissue-thin excuse that it never authorized torture, since it made sure that it legally defined whatever methods it wanted to use as "not torture." If immunizing a few CIA torturers helps make sure that they won't be forced into court to testify, everyone's happy. And now the White House gets to Act Outraged, just like they did about the Plame leak.

We're shocked, shocked! to find that evidence of torture was destroyed at Rick's Cafe.