Tell-All Book: Ex-CIA Attorney Reveals How Infamous 'Torture Tapes' Were Destroyed Without White House Knowledge
Jan. 9 2014, Published 11:56 a.m. ET
It was one of the biggest scandals of the post- 9/11 era when CIA operatives destroyed video taped recordings of the interrogation of terrorist Abu Zubaydah in 2005. Rumored to include evidence of controversial interrogation techniques, including water boarding, the tapes were at the center of torture accusations against the U.S. government, and their destruction seemed, to many, to be an all-too-convenient means of sidestepping responsibility.
Now, for the first time, longtime CIA attorney John Rizzo is speaking out to tell the truth about the notorious "torture tapes" to the American public once and for all. What really happened to the recordings? And what dark secrets did they hold?? In his new book, Company Man: Thirty Years of Controversy and Crisis in the CIA, Rizzo tells all.
"It was a hell of a story about a hell of a mess," Rizzo, who served as an attorney for the CIA for more than 30 years, writes. "And I knew it better than anyone, since I was the only member of the CIA's top leadership to have been part of the episode from the beginning to just about its end," as the Agency's chief legal advisor for most of the eight years during which the scandal unfolded.
Rizzo first heard of the tapes in late 2002. He explains, "…CIA officers, in a secret Agency detention facility overseas, began videotaping the first top Al Qaeda operative in our custody Zubayadh. He was also the first terrorist subjected to the Agency's Enhanced Interrogation Techniques which included controversial water boarding. The sessions were captured on the tapes, apparently in graphic detail."
Recorded in August, 2002, the tapes mainly "showed Zubaydah alone in his cell, either saying prayers, sleeping, reading, or otherwise … entertaining himself," Rizzo claims. "The res of the tapes showed the interrogation sessions … the scenes were 'tough to watch.'"
Worse, they showed the faces of several CIA employees overseeing the investigation. As such, Jose Rodriguez, the chief of the CIA's Counterterroist Center, began lobbying Rizzo, the acting general counsel of the CIA at the time, for legal permission to destroy the tapes immediately, thereby protect the agents' identities from being leaked to the public. Rizzo says he refused.