Destroyed CIA Tapes
Interviews to Take Place Soon in the Year-Long Investigation into Destroyed Tapes
The criminal investigation into the destruction of CIA videotapes of detainee interrogations is heating up, with interviews to be conducted in the next several weeks, according to documents recently filed by the Justice Department.
The investigation has been going on for more than a year and is being conducted by a federal prosecutor and a team of FBI agents.
In December 2007, the CIA acknowledged that interrogation videotapes of two al Qaeda detainees who had been waterboarded had been destroyed.
According to officials, former CIA official Jose Rodriguez, the former chief of the National Clandestine Service, ordered the destruction of the tapes in 2005. Rodriguez's lawyer told The Associated Press last year that then-CIA director Porter Goss was "well aware of the situation," and that he did not object to the action. Goss has not commented publicly on the matter.
A Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the James Madison Project has requested CIA documents related to the destruction of the videos showing the interrogations of al Qaeda detainees Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri.
(Published by ABC News - January, 8, 2009)