NYT: Fear of Exposure to Public Drove Suppression of CIA Torture Tapes

The 2,060 piece in today's New York Times tells the American public the essential story of the truly immoral regime that is the Bush administration.

See SCOTT SHANE and MARK MAZZETTI's piece that one hopes leads to denunciations across the globe.

Not only did the CIA under Bush torture human beings, but they concealed and destroyed the taped evidence of torture for fear that the American public and Muslims would object. All the time, Bush and his drones blared: "We do not torture."

This contempt for democratic accountability makes the political illegitimacy of the Bush regime plain for all to see. Its contempt for human rights makes the Bush regime war criminals who ought to face trial.

From the Times:

But interviews with two dozen current and former officials, most of whom would speak about the classified program only on the condition of anonymity, revealed new details about why the tapes were made and then eliminated. Their accounts show how political and legal considerations competed with intelligence concerns in the handling of the tapes. ...

The discussion about the tapes took place in Congressional briefings and secret deliberations among top White House lawyers, including a meeting in May 2004 just days after photographs of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq had reminded the administration of the power of such images. The debate stretched over the tenure of two C.I.A. chiefs and became entangled in a feud between the agency’s top lawyers and its inspector general. The tapes documented a program so closely guarded that President Bush himself had agreed with the advice of intelligence officials that he not be told the locations of the secret C.I.A. prisons. Had there been no political or security considerations, videotaping every interrogation and preserving the tapes would make sense, according to several intelligence officials. ...

The investigations over the tapes frustrate some C.I.A. veterans, who say they believe that the agency is being unfairly blamed for policies of coercive interrogation approved at the top of the Bush administration and by some Congressional leaders. Intelligence officers are divided over the use of such methods as waterboarding.

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