Skip to main content
"Starting in 2002, the CIA conducted interrogations of captured Al Qaeda operatives, including Abu Zubaydah and Ramzi Binalshibh, at undisclosed CIA prisons outside the US. During these interrogations the CIA resorted to “enhanced interrogation techniques” (the CIA’s euphemism for torture) to extract information.[5] The methods included “waterboarding,” which induces a sensation of drowning in the unlucky individual. Evidently, the CIA decided for its own internal reasons to video-tape these early interrogation sessions. However, years later (in 2005), Jose A, Rodriquez, the CIA’s Director of Operations, ordered the tapes destroyed. For what reason? Well, according to current CIA Director Michael V. Hayden, because the tapes posed “a serious security risk.”[6] Hayden went on to clarify his rather cryptic remark, and explained to the press that if the tapes had become public they would have exposed CIA officials “and their families to retaliation from Al Qaeda and its sympathizers.” The excuse was flimflam, but the US media hung on Hayden’s every word as if he were speaking gospel. The press certainly did not throw him any hard balls. Nor did they press him on the point.
Hayden also claimed that the CIA had notified the appropriate committee heads in Congress in 2005 before destroying the evidence. But according to the Times this was immediately denied by the top two members of the House Intelligence Committee. A spokesman for Representative Peter Hoekstra (R-MI), who at the time chaired the oversight committee, said that he was “never briefed or advised” that the tapes even existed, let alone “that they were going to be destroyed.”[7]"

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Israeli school segregated Ethiopian students » Ethiopian Review

Israeli school segregated Ethiopian students » Ethiopian Review : "The placement of four Ethiopian girls in a separate class from their peers at a Petah Tikva grade school has sparked accusations of segregation on Tuesday morning following a report in Yediot Aharonot. According to ‘Hamerhav’ principal, Rabbi Yeshiyahu Granvich, complete integration of the girls was impossible. The reason being, said municipal workers, was that the students were not observant enough, nor did their families belong to the national-religious movement that the school was founded upon. Among the differences in the daily school life of the girls, a single teacher was responsible to teach them all of their subjects. Worse yet, the four were allotted separate recess hours and were driven to and from school separately. Such action has been labeled by observers as “apartheid.”"

Iraqi weapons 'expert' unmasked as a fraud - Independent Online Edition > Americas

Iraqi weapons 'expert' unmasked as a fraud - Independent Online Edition > Americas : "The Iraqi defector whose claims regarding Saddam Hussein's biological warfare capabilities were central to the US government's case for the 2003 invasion, despite repeated warnings that they were dubious, has been unmasked by a television documentary. The informer, codenamed Curveball was Rafid Ahmed Alwan who, in 1999, turned up at a refugee centre in Germany seeking political asylum. He went on to convince the Pentagon he was a brilliant chemist who had helped develop mobile biological warfare laboratories."

FT.com / UK - Al-Jazeera journalists become faces of the frontline

FT.com / UK - Al-Jazeera journalists become faces of the frontline : "Ayman Mohyeldin was in a coffee shop joking with colleagues in Gaza City when the first Israeli bomb struck, smashing into a police station just a short distance from where they were sitting. The tremors from the explosion shook the café, but it took a few minutes for the reality to sink in - Gaza was under attack. Since that moment 18 days ago, Mr Mohyeldin and his colleagues at al-Jazeera English, the satellite channel, have worked day and night, providing 24-hour coverage of the Israeli offensive in Gaza and the humanitarian crisis it has triggered. Donning a helmet and a flak jacket, Mr Mohyeldin has become one of the faces of the war, delivering calm and balanced analysis of the chaos and destruction going on around him in a soft American accent."