US judge denies request for hearings on CIA torture tapes

Friday, January 11, 2008 : A new firestorm is raging over the Bush administration’s use of torture in its “war on terror,” ignited by CIA Director Michael Hayden’s admission that the spy agency destroyed videotapes of its interrogation of two detainees. Hayden claimed the videotapes were destroyed in 2005 to protect the identity of CIA agents who conducted the interrogations of suspected Al-Qaeda operatives Abu Zubaida and Abd Al-Rahim Al-Nashiri in 2002.

Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) scorned this alibi, telling the Senate, “The CIA was desperately attempting to cover up damning evidence of its practices.”

Kennedy pointed out that the Bush White House has erased 10 million e-mails. He commented, “We have not seen anything like this since the 18-and-a-half minute gap in the tapes of President Richard Nixon,” a reference to Nixon’s Watergate cover-up efforts.

The furor comes on the sixth anniversary of the opening of the Guantanamo detention center at the U.S. naval base in Cuba. Human rights, civil liberties and peace organizations scheduled an International Day of Action to Shut Down Guantanamo, Jan. 11 in Washington, D.C. Protesters in orange prison jumpsuits, their heads covered with black sacks, planned to march to the Supreme Court to protest the incarceration of 360 at Guantanamo, many held for years without criminal charges, and many subjected to torture.

Daniel Gorevan, a leader of London-based Amnesty International, who was in Washington for the protest, told the World the real aim of destroying the tapes “was to protect the current administration, not to protect national security. It is a case of covering up serious crimes, holding prisoners in secrecy, subjecting them to torture. Our hope is that the scandal of Guantanamo [and] Abu Ghraib will sufficiently outrage the U.S. population and that it will bring an end to these policies and the closing of these prisons.”

Read More