Videotapes of CIA interrogations of two Arabs taken prisoner by U.S. authorities after 9/11, destroyed by the government in 2005, are said to show instances of torture by the interrogators. That’s why legal liability is generally considered to be the reason for the tapes’ destruction. CIA officials and higher-ups in the executive branch might be hurt by graphic evidence that the agency employs such measures. While obstruction of justice may well have been an important motive for those who erased the videos, that doesn’t rule out other motives.
Why is there no discussion of the possibility that the tapes were destroyed to suppress the contents of the interviews, to keep the public from knowing what the prisoners actually said? The only record we have of what these two men, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, told their interrogators are short, rough summaries. Even as reporters refer to the tapes over and over, they never mention what was said. We should remember that these two were grabbed, ostensibly, as possible conspirators in the plot to crash airplanes into buildings. What did they say in 100-plus hours of taped questioning?
In all likelihood, they pointed out to their interrogators that the airplanes didn’t bring down the buildings. Everybody with access to a TV has seen the buildings collapse, and it’s obviously a case of controlled demolition. One of the three buildings that came down wasn’t even hit by anything. There is no question that the loss of life among people “trapped” in the other two buildings was the result of somebody pushing buttons somewhere, and that the buildings were rigged to go off long before 9/11.
A skilled sadist can torture a man almost to death and get him to admit anything, but he can’t change an image that everybody has seen over and over, and he can’t repeal the laws of physics, either. I’m sure both of these men pointed that out many times, and they probably got a shock to their genitals whenever they did. The destroyer of the tapes spares the public any reminder of who really killed all those people.
It’s also possible that the men actually knew something about what happened on 9/11. If 9/11 was a “false flag” operation (in which a nation attacks its own people under an enemy’s flag, to manipulate public opinion and public policy), many participants probably have bits and pieces of information about what happened, and these two men may have been in a position to compile such intelligence. If, in the course of interrogation, they shared details about our government’s complicity in the operation, or even if they simply speculated on it, as they must have, a video record of their interrogations could raise hell for the racketeers in control of our government. Especially if the torture was inflicted to get them to forget, rather than remember.
There’s also a significant likelihood that the tapes weren’t destroyed. In cases of conspiracy, no matter how incriminating a piece of evidence is, it’s also almost always exculpatory for one or more of the conspirators. People retain copies of incriminating documents to protect themselves from others who are presumed to be making copies of those same documents. The CIA directorate may have destroyed its copies, but nobody can be sure that all copies are accounted for. Maybe if Congress asked around, they could turn up a copy somewhere.
Don’t hold your breath. Congress and the embedded mass media are neck-deep in this cover-up.
