Writing in TIME magazine, former CIA agent and occasional "conspiracy theory" debunker, Robert Baer, concedes that 9/11 skeptics seem all the more credible after the CIA admits destruction of key evidence. Full-time debunker Gerald Posner also sees a cover-up.
The most important document in the official mythology of September 11th, The 9/11 Commission Report, is based largely on the reported statements of three prisoners: Khalid Sheikh Mohamed, Ramzi Binalshibh, and Abu Zubaydah. The Report describes these men as high-ranking members of Al Qaeda; US authorities announced the captures of the three at different points in 2002 and 2003. According to the CIA and US military, they have been held ever since at "undisclosed locations," and have had contacts only with a handful of interrogators. No US agency has ever produced any of them in a public proceeding.
Khalid Sheikh Mohamed was originally reported as killed during an attempt
to capture him in Pakistan in September 2002. He apparently survived, for he was reported as captured in March 2003. Until 2004, it was considered a security breach for a US government source even to mention his name (although it had been public since 2002).The 9/11 Commission asked to see Mohamed and other prisoners, and was denied. The only evidence of his existence provided to the Commission was in the form of printed English-language transcripts of interrogations supposedly held at the Guantanamo prison. Videotapes were said not to exist. But although the Commission portrays Mohamed, in particular, as the originator and mastermind of the September 11th plot, it made no fuss about its denial of access to him. The Report simply cites him and the others uncritically as primary sources, without expressing a shred of doubt that the transcripts constitute the mens' words, that the words are genuine and unedited, or that the prisoners really are who the CIA says they are. This is despite the fact that Ernest May, one of the architects of the Report, admitted in a May 2005 memoir that the Commission never had full confidence that the words were truly theirs.
We learned this week that CIA videotapes of at least some of these supposed interrogations -- the tapes which were previously said not to have existed -- are now said to have been destroyed in 2005. The CIA has copped to destroying the Abu Zubaydah tapes, but has yet to name the prisoner(s) in the other destroyed tapes. (That one of them was Mohamed is a good bet.)
The CIA claims -- bizarrely -- that this was done to protect the identities of the interrogators (as though blurring them out would be beyond the agency's 19th-century video technology). The corporate media have promptly floated the idea that the motive was to cover up the use of torture, possibly waterboarding. But as the "evidence" from which the official 9/11 fable lives disappears further into a black box, naturally any breathing skeptic must wonder to what extent the tapes, or even the prisoners, existed in the first place. And if the tapes existed, was the motive behind their destruction to hide torture, or to hide evidence? Even a defender of the official story like former CIA agent Robert Baer knows this latest story only adds to the stink.
Gerald Posner, meanwhile, finds occasion to repeat the story told to him, of how Zubaydah was supposedly duped by the CIA into naming three Saudi princes and a Pakistani general as accomplices to the terror network. All four of these personages subsequently turned up dead, the three princes in fact killed in separate incidents within a single week.
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It isn't going to help that the Abu Zubaydah investigation has a lot of problems even without destroyed evidence. When Abu Zubaydah was arrested in Pakistan in 2002, two ATM cards were found on him. One was issued by a bank in Saudi Arabia (a bank close to the Saudi royal family) and the other to a bank in Kuwait. As I understand it, neither Kuwait nor Saudi Arabia has been able to tell us who fed the accounts. Also, apparently, when Abu Zubaydah was captured, telephone records, including calls to the United States, were found in the house he was living in. The calls stopped on September 10, and resumed on September 16. There's nothing in the 9/11 Commission report about any of this, and I have no idea whether the leads were run down, the evidence lost or destroyed.
If this sounds like paranoia, it is. But the CIA certainly is not helping by destroying evidence. And they should know better than to destroy evidence in the biggest criminal case in American history. More than anything what we need right now is complete and total transparency on 9/11.
Robert Baer, a former CIA field officer assigned to the Middle East, is TIME.com's intelligence columnist
Oh, boy, I can't wait until the right-wing Kookservatives weigh in on this. Of course, they'll have to wait until they get the talking points from O'Limpbaugh, since they're incapable of original thoughts.
How to win at war...(LB v1.0 as opposed to LB v36.D)
General "Black Jack" Pershing.
Born September 13th, 1860 near Laclede, Mississippi
Died July 15th, 1948 in Washington, D.C.
1891 Professor of Military Science and Tactics University of Nebraska
1898 Serves in the Spanish-American War
1901 Awarded rank of Captain
1906 Promoted to rank of Brigadier General
1909 Military Governor of Moro Province, Philippines
1916 Made Major General
1919 Promoted to General of the Armies
1921 Appointed Chief of Staff
1924 Retires from active duty
Education: 4 Years-West Point
One important thing to remember is that Muslims detest pork because they believe pigs are filthy animals. Some of them simply refuse to eat it, while others won't even touch pigs at all, nor any of their by-products. To them, eating or touching a pig, its meat, its blood, etc., is to be instantly barred from paradise and doomed to hell.
Just before World War I, there were a number of terrorist attacks against the United States and it's interests by, you guessed it, Muslim extremists.
So General Pershing captured 50 of the terrorists and had them tied to posts execution style. He then had his men bring in two pigs and slaughter them in front of the, now horrified, terrorists.
The soldiers then soaked their bullets in pigs blood, and proceeded to execute 49 of the terrorists by firing squad.
The soldiers then dug a big hole, dumped in the terrorist's bodies and covered them in pig blood, entrails, etc.
They let the 50th man go. And for about the next 42 years, there was not a single attack by a muslim fanatic anywhere in the world.
Nice try
http://tinyurl.com/d83y
Again, you miss the point and attempt to change the subject.
The point is: The Administration has done everything it can, to cover-up and mislead the American public about the facts of what happened on 9/11! Period. Now, even the DEBUNKERS are admitting it.
Now, let's see. The article about the destroyed tapes were on page l of my newspaper. HOWEVER, this article (of course) by writers of the Washington Post, was on PAGE 3-
In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included future House Speaker HANCY PELOSI, was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh tecnhiques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.
Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans. BUT on that day, NO OBJECTIONS were raised. INSTEAD, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to PUSH HARDER."The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were TOUGH ENOUGH," said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchanges.
Long before "waterboarding" entered the public discourse, the CIA gave KEY legislative overseers about 30 private briefings, some of which included descriptions of that technique and other harsh methods, according to interviews with multiple U.S. officials with firsthand knowledge.
With one known exception, NO FORMAL OBJECTIONS were raised by the lawmakers briefed about the harsh methods during the two years in which waterboarding was employed, from 2002 to 2003, said Democrats and Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter.
Officials present druing the meetings described the reaction as mostly quiet acquiescence, if not OUTRIGHT SUPPORT. "Among those being briefed, there was a pretty full understanding of what ther CIA was doing." said Mr. Goss, who charied the House intelligence committee. "And the reaction in the room was NOT JUST APPROVAL BUT ENCOURAGEMENT."
"In fairness, the environment was different then because we were closer to Sept. 11 and people were still in a panic," said one U.S. official present during the early briefings. "BUT there was NO objection, NO hand-wringing. The attitude was, "We DON'T CARE WHAT YOU DO TO THOSE GUYS as long as you get the information you need to protect the American people.'
HMMMMMMMMMMMM! (as Rosie OD would say). The crowd that suffers from BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome)have TRIED to make us believe that waterboarding & other methods of so-called torture was approved by BUSH and the BUSH ADMINISTRATION ONLY. MY, my, my!
Oh, and by the way MS, I DID NOT hear this on Rush ( I read it in Sunday's paper & Rush has not aired yet). However, I certaintly hope that he and all the other conseratives discuss it so that those VERY LARGE audiences can hear the other (true) side of the story. Because, as we all know, it won't be discussed by CBS, ABC, NBC or CorruptNewsNetwork. And let's not leave out Rabid Dog Olbermann (who should be elected Pres. of the BDS club). His fangs are always out in full force when talking about Bush.
This is not about torture, Lee. This is about destroying evidence and most likely covering up the facts about what really happened on 9/11. Try not to confuse the two issues.
Thanks
And keep watching Olbermann!
But since you mentioned it...
http://tinyurl.com/2q5e9l
I can understand how some might get caught up in the dizzying world of government lies, but here is the CIA saying they've destroyed evidence.
No grey area here folks....This is as black and white as it gets!
A gov't agency is admitting to destroying evidence. ADMITTING.
Maybe it's a start to something bigger? Maybe not, but this is not about Bush bashing, racism, Katrina, illegal wars or questionable physics.
it is obstruction of J-u-s-t-i-c-e.
Sorry Shoes, I don't listen to Rabid Dog. I only check in while I'm channel surfing & WATCH a minute to see if his fangs are out.
I was not confusing the two issues (although they are somewhat related). Just bringing it to your attention in case you would conveniently forge to mention it here.
Why is it called destroying "evidence" and not just tapes. Evidence of what? So-called torture? And I do believe the CIA and FBI are considered "secret" agencies for a reason.
How conveniently you & yours just blow past the fact that many Dems. knew about waterboarding, thought it was OK and now use it as another assult on Bush. Which one of those 66 commandments were you following there?
Who cares if and what the Dems knew and when. It's not the point, the government (CIA) withheld evidence from the 9/11 Commission. WHY?
And just WHAT are they covering up?
This is not about torture, it's about what was (or wasn't) discovered in the process.
You are trying to refocus this to reflect poorly on the Dems, nice try but no cigar, Lee.
and you'd be "rabid" to if YOUR country was being destroyed.
The 9/11 Comm. ASKED for the tapes, not to see torture (because really, how would they know it was on there?), but to witness these answers.
The CIA says that they wouldn't show them, and they've now destroyed them, for the safety of agents and their families?
We've seen this movie before.
1. The CIA is hoping all of the world is retarded enough to not think that identities/voices can be obscured and protected.
2. The CIA is hoping all the world will remember that that poor operative's identity was exposed, but that we're just retarded enough to forget that the individual(s) responsible made it a non-criminal issue.
What if the real answers are there in those tapes? Seriously. Regardless of where you stand, wouldn't it be effing awesome to have really clear answers to prove your opponents wrong?
It's not a partisan issue. It's a legal issue.
Your local copshop would be ripped to shreds if this type of behaviour was exposed.
You can't destroy evidence, and confessions are considered evidence.
Excellent points!
http://scandalist.info/
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