Why Were the 9/11 Tapes Destroyed?

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS |CounterPunch.org

Many Americans are content with the 9/11 Commission Report, but the two chairmen of the commission, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton are not. Neither was commission member Max Cleland, a US Senator who resigned from the 9/11 Commission, telling the Boston Globe (November 13, 2003): “This investigation is now compromised.” Even former FBI director Louis Freeh wrote in the Wall Street Journal (Nov. 17, 2005) that there are inaccuracies in the commission’s report and “questions that need answers.”

Both Kean and Hamilton have twice stated publicly, once in their 2006 book, Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission, and again in the January 2, 2008, New York Times, that there are inaccuracies in their report and unanswered–or mis-answered–questions.

On the second day of this new year, Kean and Hamilton accused the CIA of obstructing their investigation: “What we do know is that government officials decided not to inform a lawfully constituted body, created by Congress and the President, to investigate one of the greatest tragedies to confront this country. We call that obstruction.”

In their book, Kean and Hamilton wrote that they were unable to obtain “access to star witnesses in custody who were the only possible source for inside information about the 9/11 plot.”

The only information the commission was permitted to have about what was learned from interrogations of alleged plot ringleaders, such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, came from “thirdhand” sources. The commission was not permitted to question the alleged plotters in custody or even to meet with those who interrogated the alleged plotters. Consequently, write Kean and Hamilton, “We had no way of evaluating the credibility of detainee information” that was fed to them by third party hands. “How could we tell if someone such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was telling us the truth?”

The fact that video tapes of the interrogations existed was kept secret from the 9/11 Commission.

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DePauw University

 January 2, 2008, Greencastle, Ind. - Writing in today’s New York Times, 9/11 Commission co-chairs Lee H. Hamilton and Thomas H. Kean state, “the recent revelations that the CIA destroyed videotaped interrogations of Qaeda operatives leads us to conclude that the agency failed to respond to our lawful requests for information about the 9/11 plot. Those who knew about those videotapes — and did not tell us about them — obstructed our investigation.” Hamilton is a 1952 graduate of DePauw University. (photo, l-r, Kean and Hamilton on NBC’s Meet the Press in December 2005) Read the rest of this entry »

http://georgewashington.blogspot.com/2008/01/justice-department-appoints-insider-to.html
After the co-chairs of the 9/11 Commission said that the CIA (and the White House) “obstructed our investigation”, attorney general Mukaseyappointed a prosecutor to conduct a criminal probe.Sounds good, right?Well, the prosecutor: 

• “will not serve as a special prosecutor such as Patrick Fitzgerald, who operated autonomously” (AP)

• There’s nothing really “outside” about [prosecutor] John Dunham. He’s a career DOJ prosecutor, the number two official in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Connecticut. . . .” (former DOJ official Marty Lederman, )

• The prosecutor “will report to the deputy attorney general”, acting Deputy attorney general Craig Morford (Washington Post)

• The prosecutor will lack independence, contrary to the Justice Department’s own regulations:
• 
  

“While I certainly agree that these matters warrant an immediate criminal investigation, it is disappointing that the Attorney General has stepped outside the Justice Department’s own regulations and declined to appoint a more independent special counsel in this matter. . . . 

The Justice Department’s record over the past seven years of sweeping the administration’s misconduct under the rug has left the American public with little confidence in the administration’s ability to investigate itself. Nothing less than a special counsel with a full investigative mandate will meet the tests of independence, transparency and completeness. Appointment of a special counsel will allow our nation to begin to restore our credibility and moral standing on these issues.” (House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers)

Bottom line: Just another whitewash.

Agency Defends Its Role as Information Provider in Commission’s Investigation of Terrorist Plots
By Joby Warrick and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Former members and staffers of the 9/11 Commission have concluded that the CIA withheld videotapes of harsh interrogation sessions even after specific and “very detailed” requests about the two prisoners whose tapes were later destroyed, according to a review of classified material by the panel.

A seven-page report for former commission members by the panel’s former executive director, Philip Zelikow, says the group made broad initial requests for intelligence information from interrogations, “including repeated requests for very detailed information” about the interrogations and how they were carried out.

The commission also made specific inquiries about the interrogations of suspected al-Qaeda operatives Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, commonly known as Abu Zubaida, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the report says. The CIA revealed earlier this month that tapes of those prisoners’ interrogations were destroyed in 2005.
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By MARK MAZZETTI/New York Times
Published: December 22, 2007

WASHINGTON — A review of classified documents by former members of the Sept. 11 commission shows that the panel made repeated and detailed requests to the Central Intelligence Agency in 2003 and 2004 for documents and other information about the interrogation of operatives of Al Qaeda, and were told by a top C.I.A. official that the agency had “produced or made available for review” everything that had been requested.

The review was conducted earlier this month after the disclosure that in November 2005, the C.I.A. destroyed videotapes documenting the interrogations of two Qaeda operatives.

A seven-page memorandum prepared by Philip D. Zelikow, the panel’s former executive director, concluded that “further investigation is needed” to determine whether the C.I.A.’s withholding of the tapes from the commission violated federal law.

In interviews this week, the two chairmen of the commission, Lee H. Hamilton and Thomas H. Kean, said their reading of the report had convinced them that the agency had made a conscious decision to impede the Sept. 11 commission’s inquiry.
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By Steve Benen/TalkingPointsMemo.com
The CIA withheld information about its interrogation videos from quite a few people, but we can include the 9/11 Commission among those who are annoyed about having been misled.

[I]n separate interviews on Friday, the co-chairmen, Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, said they had made clear in hours of negotiations and discussions with the C.I.A., as well as in written requests, that they wanted all material connected to the interrogations of Qaeda operatives in the agency’s custody in order to get a complete understanding of the events leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks for their 2004 report. […]

“The C.I.A. certainly knew of our interest in getting all the information we could on the detainees, and they never indicated to us there were any videotapes,” Mr. Hamilton said. “Did they obstruct our inquiry? The answer is clearly yes. Whether that amounts to a crime, others will have to judge.”

Mr. Kean said, “I’m upset that they didn’t tell us the truth.”
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Even the chair of the 9/11 Commission now admits that the official evidence they were given was ‘far from the truth’.

Peter Tatchell
London Guardian original article

Six years after 9/11, the American public have still not been provided with a full and truthful account of the single greatest terror attack in US history.

What they got was a turkey. The 9/11 Commission was hamstrung by official obstruction. It never managed to ascertain the whole truth of what happened on September 11 2001.

The chair and vice chair of the 9/11 Commission, respectively Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, assert in their book, Without Precedent, that they were “set up to fail” and were starved of funds to do a proper investigation. They also confirm that they were denied access to the truth and misled by senior officials in the Pentagon and the federal aviation authority;
and that this obstruction and deception led them to contemplate slapping officials with criminal charges.

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