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CIA Interrogation Tapes Found Under Desk
WASHINGTON — The CIA has tapes of 9/11 plotter Ramzi Binalshibh being interrogated in a secret overseas prison. Discovered under a desk, the recordings could provide an unparalleled look at how foreign governments aided the U.S. in holding and questioning suspected terrorists.
Tapes of alleged 9/11 plotter, Ramzi Binalshibh, being interrogated were discovered. (Rothermel/AP)
The two videotapes and one audiotape are believed to be the only remaining recordings made within the clandestine prison system.
The tapes depict Binalshibh's interrogation sessions at a Moroccan-run facility the CIA used near Rabat in 2002, several current and former U.S. officials told The Associated Press. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because the recordings remain a closely guarded secret.
When the CIA destroyed its cache of 92 videos of two other al-Qaida operatives, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Nashiri, being waterboarded in 2005, officials believed they had wiped away all of the agency's interrogation footage. But in 2007, a staffer discovered a box tucked under a desk in the CIA's Counterterrorism Center and pulled out the Binalshibh tapes.
A Justice Department prosecutor who is already investigating whether destroying the Zubaydah and al-Nashiri tapes was illegal is now also probing why the Binalshibh tapes were never disclosed. Twice, the government told a federal judge they did not exist.
The tapes could complicate U.S. efforts to prosecute Binalshibh, 38, who has been described as a "key facilitator" in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. If the tapes surfaced at trial, they could clearly reveal Morocco's role in the counterterrorism program known as Greystone, which authorized the CIA to hold terrorists in secret prisons and shuttle them to other countries.
More significantly to his defense, the tapes also could provide evidence of Binalshibh's mental state within the first months of his capture. In court documents, defense lawyers have been asking for medical records to see whether Binalshibh's years in CIA custody made him mentally unstable. He is being treated for schizophrenia with a potent cocktail of anti-psychotic medications.
46 Comments so far
Show Allrarely does a headline bring a laugh as this one did , where what passes for reality is funnier than any satire. of course the humor recedes as one clicks on and reads the article and it become clear that this is not a joke.
i think members of the cia have been dipping into that "potent cocktail of anti-psychotic medications" but it just isn't helping.
Coldponder:
It does seem as if it were sprung right out of The Onion.
In the best of times (Eisenhauer Admin - Carter Admin) this stuff would be all over the press, aka MSM - both the US and international, but now in these very bad times - quickly becoming the worst of times, there will be barely a whisper.
"And verily I say to you, in those times the seas will darken and the hearts of men will grow frigid and indifferent and the Angel of Death will gather their souls into the everlasting fires of hell."
Richard 9:666
If the video were released, Americans might get a little sense of what has been done in their name.
The written record of all too many terrible things have not been enough to change the perception that we only want to do good in the world.
And, as is almost always the case, what starts out as something done to the bad guys, gets brought home as tactics to keep the people in line.
Do you really think if Americans got a "sense of what has been done in their name" they'd even care? Most Americans are not very sympathetic to the plight of "terrorists"; if you try to converse with the average person about abuse and torture, they'll just regurgitate the BS about how all of this is keeping us "safe" from future attacks- and remind you that "9/11 changed everything." Besides, we're too busy worrying about hanging on to our houses and looking for work and those of us who aren't, are too busy following American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance.
That is exactly what the big boys are counting on. The poorer they can make us, the more fearful we become, the more they can set us against each other, the less time and energy we will have to complain about something that does not effect our everyday lives.
When this goes on long enough and becomes more intense we will have the same attitude toward our friends, neighbors, relatives. The fact that everything they do is done to create dissension, confusion, exhaustion among us does not mean that they themselves are poor or confused, or at each other's throats.
They know exactly what they are doing. They know the value of teamwork and patience. We are the sheep. They are the wolves, waiting. It's only a matter of time.
Too bad that the person who 'found' the documentary evidence of CIA torture didn't Wikileak it.
Non Serviam - I will not serve.
Galenwainwright... August 17th, 2010 9:10 am and Don Utter August 17th, 2010 9:04 am -- Good point.
We've been discussing for years on CD why persons with authority to prosecute haven't acted to hold Bush (and now Obama?) officials responsible for immoral and plainly illegal torture of detainees. I think it comes down to the insufficiency of outrage on the part of the those who might prosecute, but also on the part of the general public. Getting graphic examples of the illegality before the public in Wikileaks fashion would make a difference, even if it's too late already to prosecute much of the abuse, thanks to the dilatory strategy of Bush and Obama.
Instead, we have the ranting of the conservatives about the New York mosque, and the latest verbal miscues by bumbling Obama, convincing the last few doubters in the Muslim world that America is, indeed, engaged in a crusade against Islam.
manning...you speak the truth. As plain as the history on our noses, we beings have a genetic penchant for trouble. It has been our lot, since beyond our memories.
There is hope however fleeting: The truly wonderful will grow the testosterone delivery systems to give just enough enhancements to the cerebral, creating a new super-being, with brain and the energy to get things done, and done right.
*
Done Right: Biosphere and biodiversity = life
*
... and Testosterone could be all wrong.
A simple gesture of sincerity towards our judicial systems would suffice. We must hearken to the very basic levels of our original ideas of decency.
Should we err, we might as well be living in caves. At least we could just thump an ear when someone decided to get goofy.
The good Professor Francis Boyle - esteemed law professor at the U of Illinois, Champaign/Urbana and a world renown expert on international law and US Constitutional law - has sent a formal complaint to the International Criminal Court in the Hague against GW Bush and several of his co-horts.
Boyle is in the process of preparing a similar one against Barack H. Obama, current president of the United States Empire (USE)
RVR: If "USE" is yours, it's great! Can I "use" it?
I could use a good laugh myself, but my response to this informtion is more of a spreading sense of horror as I contemplate the depth of depravitry to which it may be possible for an organized group of human beings to descend.....
That potent cocktail will make sure he can't speak intelligibly.
Why was this under a desk?
it was being used as a footstool................
coco, :)
...alright. Lets see it, and "All" connected with it, from the meek to the mighty.
It's impossible to conceive what it must be like being held against your will (the loss of the "right" to perform bodily movements as you would, as the owner of the organism that houses your soul, is terrifying)... Then, to be "interrogated" until you're mad, and kept in a drug addled state to cover the tracks of your abusers.... Breath-taking, I think senatorial parlance was a few years back when this stuff first started stinking. And it seems we've grown accustomed to the smell, as the humiliation passed to outrage, to impotence, to despair, to a fly-trapped-in-a-jar fantasy, for both the victims, and for us... For it is unfathomable to understand what we have truly done to these people. Surely Terry Gilliam's film "Brazil" was prescient. And we Americans are now the "good Germans," unimpressed, numbed, Über-nationalistic, and self-consumed to the point of gullibility. Afraid to step out of line for the specter of abuse keeps us trembling either with guilty pleasure or horror. For we have no idea of the very real suffering that WE allow, that is OUR collective responsibility, that WE aid the continuation of by our inaction. So who is torturing whom? Is this a case of Psy-Ops, where the mere imposition of violence ensures passivity, and compliance on our part as well? And does blogging about it prove my level of alienation and lack of will? I suppose it does. But there's plenty of pathos to go around.... For I'm beginning to suspect that there ever was a time when this sort of corruption would have gotten us away from our computers, tvs, radios, corporate-run news, and prompted us to do whatever was necessary to ensure that Binalshibh's common, universal, human rights were protected. Hell, we can't even gauge their value anymore in this Reagan-induced, good vs. evil world that we take up room in. Truly we are Koestler's & Van Gogh's "ghosts in the machine." We have been trained for the past thirty years to believe that we are powerless, so, since we can do nothing, we might as well enjoy ourselves to death... For god knows, they'd never do anything like that to us. Would they? As such, the logic fails that Binalshibh's rights are really OUR rights. And when we discount one human's dignity, all then are in peril... Yet I believe we shan't wake up... Should probably move to Stockholm.
Someone disobeyed an order! The CIA has had all kinds of "Truth Serums".....The problem with using them on prisoners who have done nothing is that the prisoner's truth is not admissable in a military tribunal.....So The CIA reverted back to its experiments in mind control, torture, and brainwashing......Eventually, the prisoner will admit to anything and sign a confession to that effect!
After 5 years of torture and brainwashing, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad signed a confession that he planned the attacks of 9/11.
Excuse me, any idiot knows that NORAD had 5 practice exercises planned on 9/11 that would prevent the interception of 4 hijacked planes and those exercises had to be part of the master plan! How about giving Dick Cheney and his advisers some "Truth Serum" and let's see who was really behind the attacks of 9/11.
Everyone in the CIA who destroyed evidence of "Crimes Against Humanity" should be tried in an International Court! From Porter Goss, who authorized the destruction of the 92 tapes to President Bush who had seen some of those tapes and claimed that Khalid had put explosives low enough in the buildings to prevent people from escaping.....later his story was altered, "He meant the planes!"
Excellent analysis. Many people know it but can't keep it at the level of consciousness for very long.
The Justice department investigating the CIA or the FBI is the biggest criminal joke played on the American public.
They are not going to do anything but protect their own..
Organized vigilante religious gang stalking has been run by the FBI for 15 years, and become a stazi terror network over the last 7 years, the DOJ is fully aware of this horrifying activity and does nothing.
Welcome to the Unites Stazi of America, torture network incorporated.
Another example of the incompetent fascist rabbit hole that Dubya, Cheney, & Co. plunged the USA into, and which the Obama administration does not have the good sense to try to dig out of. When future chroniclers (if "civilization" survives somewhat intact due to the upcoming global warming shitstorm, and probably in Chinese) write about the "late great American Empire," they will compare Bush and Obama to Commodus and Pertinax.
I agree, and old Cheney is so fussy about his place in history.
Torture is not fighting terrorism, torture is terrorism.
In supposed defense of liberty, our Government has become a terrorists organization.
the cia interrogation tapes were found under desk and the brains of cia officials were found up their rectums.
matt
galveston, tx
Yeah, NNW. But I would argue that our Government has not become a terrorist organization, it has been a covert terrorist organization for a long time, long time. It is just more transparent now, that's all. To paraphrase one of our Government terrorists: torture in the defense of liberty, is not torture. Like the bumper sticker says: WAR IS JUST TERRORISM ON A BIGGER BUDGET.
"That is the law". Such phrases are becoming the punch line in sick jokes.
One of the untold stories of the 2000 Presidential race in Florida happened in Jacksonville when 27,000 "bad" ballots were thrown out by the Election Supervisor (Republican) and for 48 hours were "lost"! No on knew what had happen to the boxes of collected invalid ballots! 80% of the "invalid" ballots had come from just 4 polling places that happened to be the 4 largest Democrat prescients. The two boxes of ballots appeared after two days, sitting on the front counter in the lobby of the Election Supervisor's Office and was found there by a reporter! Bush had won Duval County by 40,000 votes so the Supervisor declare a recount of the 27,000 unnecessary, which each county supervisor in Florida can do on a county by county count. Considering the four locations , several thousands of votes for Gore were never counted! The ballots were within a few months thrown away! In most countries the Supervisor's Office would have been burned down but after a few days of less than 50 demonstrators the local media wrote the protesters off as bitter losers! And the story was buried!
They had to get Dubya in, part of the grand 9/11 plan, oh ya, you heard me.
It all starts with Dubya getting elected, and absolute must.
Then its all evil from there, 9/11 , patriots Acts , wars, and the nation wide stazi network of spys, ,,, and you can thank the right wing religious lunatic mega churches and their ministers and minions of unpatriotic followers for the nation wide stazi network
fools and bastards , every last one of those unconstitutional freaks.
I dont want to be ruled by any religious group, our founding fathers were correct , separation of church and state is how America will survive another 1000 years .
Obama missed another chance to become a peace president.
He could have admitted that 9/11 did set off a crusade that is creating more and more hate between Muslims and other religions for the still unresolved repercussions from super power politics and national security resource control.
He could encourage the new Muslim center to become a place for understanding and peace between Americans of all backgrounds.
It should become an American Muslim Peace center and have peace activists and Folk plan the peace revolution.
Then Obama could come and join us for another common dream.
Who cares he was a muslim terrorist
I hope you are drunk, otherwise you are stupid.
Bring America Back !!!!
**UTD====under the desk is where all that classified stuff
gets filed, in accord with King W and Prince Dick's
important document handling regulations.
**Obama and Biden found so much stuff under their WH desks that they didnt know what to do with it. Most of it got burned in the WH fireplaces last X-mas season.
**Team Obama is trying to recycle a lot of those UTD papers
soon as they figure how to remove those big black letters that say TOP SECRET.
Team Obama just dont have a clue==they think waterboarding
is just something one does at the beach. Esp Rhambo and his crew of Zionist Idiots.
It is likely that torture etal was used to COVER the tracks of the perps, whomever they might be, rather than to protect us from some enemy.
Looks like they got away with it.
I believe that when G.W. Bush was pretending to look for WMDs in the Oval Office (remember that sick little pantomime?), he was actually hiding these tapes!
That's my conspiracy theory and I'm sticking to it.
When the government and its agencies decide to forgo the law and act illegally it has the very real potential of destroying their case as here. Why can't the government with all of its resources operate within the law to protect you and me and the pursuit of justice?
As the the very sick and twisted Rush Limbaugh continues on his path to hell, he reminds us that torture works, citing
John McCain's GOP convention admission that he broke under torture in Nam, but then, McCain is such a dumb shit, what
was there to break or learn by breaking him? Then there is our imbecile former 2-term president, George 'Coked-up when not Drunk' Bush, who conned us into a war to 'avenge Daddy.' When he said he was against torture, that meant he had run out of blow and/or booze. He sure let it all hang out when he attended the Olympics in China, yes? It's a conservative ding-bat-crazy-shit American thing, this toturitis syndrome, and now it appears that the CIA is the carrier. Helf uns got!
This whole question of torture is becoming so hackneyed and shopworn, one has to wonder why the fuck it matters anyway! The whole capitalist system is founded upon and supported by torture of one sort or another. These self-righteous protestations against abusive treatment/torture are just so fucking lame. Every day one of you western capitalists lives, and eats, and is housed, and is transported with your fat ass on some plush cushion of a gas-powered vehicle, owes its reality to some sort of torture/exploitation. You just don't want to think it through, to see who is really at fault. And I doubt you could, IF you could. WTF??? It's not as if torture/coercement is anything new to governments or economic elites. Wake the hell up and smell the coffee...or the blood!!!!!!!
Not all exploitation is the same. Not all torture is the same. The most notable differences are that no one being tortured agrees to it, and no one being tortured derives any benefit from it.
What is "lame" are the self-righteous protestations that everyone is being tortured, we are all to blame, etc. What is "lame" is your self-righteous post.
Quite a simpleton, aren't you??
That is not fair. I know that everything I eat or wear or even hear or read has blood on it. That's why I shop at good will stores and eat plants that COULD be locally grown.
Ahhh....the sweet pungent vile stench of propaganda!
This Associated Press article above is only half the article ending in the middle. I got the article this morning and it is twice as long. Don't know why the version above is abridged? The first half (at a quick glance) appears to be the same.
Anyway, the full version says, "The tapes record a guy sitting in a room just answering questions," according to a U.S. official familiar with the program.
Yea right!? The only tapes that were not destroyed show...no torture. That really passes the smell test doesn't it? ......especially coming from the same people who lied to you about everything else.
They're complainng about the 90,000 classifuied documents wikileaks has, but THIS they don't classify,...why...because it shows ....NO TORTURE....just a "guy sitting in a room just answering questions."
See how this works? This of course was never classified...it was just...under a desk along with the case officers rubber boots...you see...
....there's no reason to be highly skeptical about the authenticity of this tape....Oh no......not like there are not example after example after example of phony baloney adio and video tapes from say....bin Laden????
Then they go on in the full version to say, "Though Binalshibh was uncooperative during his early interrogations, his interviews formed the foundation for parts of the 9/11 commission report."
The only problem with that is the 9/11 Commission never interviewed or had direct or even indirect access to any othe "alleged" 9/11 plotters. On page 146 of the report it says:
Detainee Interrogation Reports
Chapters 5 and 7 rely heavily on information obtained from captured al Qaeda members. A number of these “detainees” have firsthand knowledge of the 9/11 plot.
Assessing the truth of statements by these witnesses—sworn enemies of the United States—is challenging. Our access to them has been
limited to the review of intelligence reports based on communications received from the locations where the actual interrogations take place.
We submitted questions for use in the interrogations, but had no control over whether, when, or how questions of particular interest would be asked. Nor were we allowed to talk to the interrogators so that we could better judge the credibility of the detainees and clarify ambiguities
in the reporting.We were told that our requests might disrupt the sensitive interrogation process.
We have nonetheless decided to include information from captured 9/11 conspirators and al Qaeda members in our report.We have evaluated their statements carefully and have attempted to corroborate them with documents and statements of others. In this report, we indicate where such statements provide the foundation for our narrative.We have been authorized to identify by name only ten detainees whose custody has been confirmed officially by the U.S. government.
.....So in other words, whatever the 9/11 Commission said Ramzi Binalshibh (or Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,Abu Zubaydah or any of the other patsies) said, is what the CIA and the Bush Administration says he (they) said.
You just have to take their word for it, after all they never lied to us now, have they? Like WMD in Iraq for instance.......hummm...
How would you know that this really is in fact Ramzi Binalshibh in those audio and video tapes they just happened to find under a desk? You just have to take their word for it.
Do you see how this works, now?
And that is the whole underlying narrative that the mythology that is the 9/11 Commission Report rests upon.
When are they going to make the TV movie with Will Smith palying Binalshibh?
Beat the crap out of someone, and fill him with franken-drugs with the intent that the cruelty will get him to say he did something he didn't do. Sadism is a bottomless obsession.
The self proclaimed powers create the perception of monstrous enemies to stay in the game...to pretend they are winning for "us". Smoke and mirrors.
Don't worry, they'll still fry him. One mans torture is another mans strenuous workout, right?
Besides it reads like his brain is, let's say, not fully functional.
Good work!
Hmmm
Torture became an integral part of the post 9-11 coverup. However the key to its continued success is the total control of the US MSM by less than 10 men. These men are ALL zionists. Each and everyone are dedicated to one state and one state only, that is the state of Israel. We have now a president surrounded by advisors that share a common goal. These advisors have many other things in common as well. They are nearly all Jewish, and zionists. Many are dual citizens with Israel. Obama's chief of staff chose to work for the IDF in Israel back in 1990-1991 instead of joining the US military. If fact if you look at the Whitehouse staff in total 2/3's are Jewish. This is a very impressive feat considering that they are a tiny 2% minority. And going back to 9-11 and it's aftermath you see the same pattern. Even more troubling is Obama's choice of 2 women both of whom come from Jewish backgrounds. In fact if you look up Kagan's childhood you will find she spent a LOT of time in Israel.
Israel's involvement in 9-11 is so obvious that many people just can't see it. That the Jewish lobby in America has corrupted our government is equally obvious. But what is important to remember here is that this takeover and corruption has NOTHING to do with religion. The "anti-semitism" cry that you so often hear is merely a cover for bad people doing evil things. It all boils down to power and money, and the willingness of evil people to do evil things to get it. Religion is a convenient cover, like toture to hide the facts from the people of this great Republic who have become unwhiting victims of terrorism on a scale not seen since the dark ages.