What happened to the Padilla interrogation videos?
The Bush administration's excuse that it "lost" the key evidence relating to the Padilla torture claims is patently incredible.
This is an infinitely bigger story than the media, thus far, seems to realize. In the Jose Padilla criminal trial, the judge — Bush-appointee and former federal prosecutor Marcia Cooke, who has a reputation for extreme objectivity — has ordered the Bush administration to turn over all tapes made of its interrogations of Padilla, as part of Padilla’s motion to dismiss the indictment on the ground that he was, in essence, tortured while being held incommunicado for 3 1/2 years. In particular, Padilla’s lawyers are most interested in the last interrogation session to which he was subjected — in March, 2004 — while still held as an “enemy combatant.”
Ten days ago, Newsweek‘s Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball reported that the administration had produced all of the DVDs it claimed it possessed, but the March, 2004 interrogation video was not among them. The government began claiming that the video “mysteriously disappeared.” Bush administration lawyers simply insist that they are “no longer able to locate the DVD.”
Associated Press now furthers the story by reporting that Bush lawyers seem to have committed themselves to the position that the video will not be found: “‘I don’t know what happened to it,’ Pentagon attorney James Schmidli said during a recent court hearing.” Judge Cooke is reacting exactly how she should — with utter disbelief in the veracity of this claim:
U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke was incredulous that anything connected to such a high-profile defendant could be lost.“Do you understand how it might be difficult for me to understand that a tape related to this particular individual just got mislaid?” Cooke told prosecutors at a hearing last month.
It is difficult to put into words how extraordinary this is. As the Newsweek article reported:
The disclosure that the Pentagon had lost a potentially important piece of evidence in one of the U.S. government’s highest-profile terrorism cases was met with claims of incredulity by some defense lawyers and human-rights groups monitoring the case.“This is the kind of thing you hear when you’re litigating cases in Egypt or Morocco or Karachi,” said John Sifton, a lawyer with Human Rights Watch, one of a number of groups that has criticized the U.S. government’s treatment of Padilla. “It is simply not credible that they would have lost this tape. The administration has shown repeatedly they are more interested in covering up abuses than getting to the bottom of whether people were abused.”
Then again, credible claims by a citizen that he was tortured while held for years without charges by his own government also used to be the kind of thing “you hear when you’re litigating cases in Egypt or Morocco or Karachi,” but is now what characterizes the United States.
The March, 2004 video is unlikely the only evidence which the Bush administration is concealing despite being ordered to produce. As the Associated Press reported:
But [Padilla lawyer Anthony] Natale said there may be more tapes missing and other interrogations that were not recorded.Defense lawyers say brig logs indicate that there were 72 hours of Padilla interviews that either were not taped or for which tapes may be missing. Natale said it seems unlikely that any interrogation session with Padilla was not videotaped “when he was videoed taking showers.”
Of course, even if administration’s patently unbelievable claim were true — namely, that it did “lose” the video of its interrogation of this Extremely Dangerous International Terrorist — that would, by itself, evidence a reckless ineptitude with American national security so grave that it ought to be a scandal by itself. But the likelihood that the key interrogation video with regard to Padilla’s torture claims was simply “lost” is virtually non-existent. Destruction of relevant evidence in any litigation is grounds for dismissal of the case (or defense) of the party engaged in that behavior.
But where, as here, the issues extend far beyond the singular proceeding itself — we are talking about claims by a U.S. citizen that he was tortured by his own government — destruction of evidence of this sort would be obstruction of justice of the most serious magnitude. This merits much, much more attention.
Blind faith in the Bush administration
The revelations of the FBI's illegal use of NSLs illustrate how our country has been functioning for the last six years.
(updated below)
Now that even Alberto Gonzales’ DOJ has acknowledged that the FBI has been violating the law with regard to its NSL powers, there are some important lessons that one can learn, if one is so inclined, about how our country has operated for the last six years. Let us begin with the fact that the Inspector General’s Office which issued this report is merely a mid-level subordinate DOJ office that reports to the Attorney General, and its conclusions (particularly its exculpatory ones) are hardly dispositive. The oversight here is not the Report itself. That is just the start. The oversight is the Congressional investigation which must follow to determine the scope of the wrongdoing and what actually motivated it.
Continue Reading CloseThe FBI’s lawbreaking is tied directly to President Bush
Media reports concerning the FBI's violations of its NSL reporting requirements ignore the real story: President Bush long ago proclaimed the right to ignore those requirements.
(updated below – updated again – Update III)
Multiple media outlets are focusing on the unsurprising story that the FBI seems to have been abusing its powers under the Patriot Act to issue so-called “national security letters” (NSLs), whereby the FBI is empowered to obtain a whole array of privacy-infringing records without any sort of judicial oversight or subpoena process. In particular, the FBI has failed to comply with the legal obligations imposed by Congress, when it re-authorized the Patriot Act in early 2006, which required the FBI to report to Congress on the use of these letters.
Continue Reading CloseVarious matters
The best hope for holding the president accountable for illegal warrantless eavesdropping. The L.A. Times kills a key story at the administration's behest. Exaggerating the terrorism threat.
(1) Wired‘s Ryan Singel covers issues of privacy, government secrecy and domestic surveillance as well as anyone around, and his specific coverage of the various litigations surrounding such issues is as comprehensive as can be. His Wired blog, 27B Stroke 6, is always informative and I highly recommend it.
Singel has an article in Wired News from a couple of days ago about the lawsuit which may present the best opportunity for obtaining a final judicial ruiling on whether the President’s warrantless eavesdropping program is illegal. The principal impediment for lawsuits challenging the legality of the program under FISA is standing — specifically, so the argument goes, because the government’s eavesdropping activities were undertaken in complete secrecy, nobody can prove that they were subject to warrantless eavesdropping, and they therefore lack “standing” to challenge the legality of the program.
Continue Reading CloseLewis “Scooter” Libby is a felon
The criminal conviction of one of the Bush administration's most powerful figures is a victory for the rule of law, and a warning that no official is invulnerable.
A unanimous federal jury today found former Cheney Chief of Staff Lewis “Scooter” Libby guilty of four of the five felonies for which he was indicted. Libby was convicted of two counts of perjury, one count of obstruction of justice and one false statement, all of which arise out of the lies he told to the FBI and grand jury as it investigated the “outing” of CIA operative Valerie Plame. What had appeared for several years to be a powerful shield possessed by top Bush officials against being held accountable under the law looks much less powerful today. Dick Cheney’s most trusted advisor is now a convicted felon.
Continue Reading CloseThe right-wing cult of contrived masculinity
Ann Coulter cannot and will not be "shunned" by the right-wing political movement because her tactics are central to its success.
(updated below)
In a very vivid way, this Ann Coulter moment is shining a light on the right-wing movement that is so bright that even national journalists would be able to recognize some important truths if they just looked even casually. Kirsten Powers was on Fox last night with Bill O’Reilly and Michelle Malkin and, as shocking as it is, Powers managed to ask the only question that matters with this whole episode, thereby forcing Malkin to make the critical concession, the one which right-wing pundits have been desperate to avoid:
KP: [Coulter] has said a lot of horrible things . . . . she’s done all these things. And I don’t understand why if this is the pre-eminent conservative movement place to be speaking, why she is chosen as a person to speak . . . Continue Reading Close
Page 319 of 334 in Glenn Greenwald







