This should be enlightening — a little too enlightening. Wonder if we’ll ever get to see them, or know what they contain? (Or, for that matter, if they were altered during their “missing” period?”)
WASHINGTON—The CIA has videotapes of Sept. 11, 2001, plotter Ramzi Binalshibh being interrogated in a secret overseas prison. Discovered under a desk, the recordings could provide an unparalleled look at how foreign governments aided the U.S. in holding and questioning suspected terrorists.
The two videotapes and one audiotape are believed to be the only remaining recordings made within the clandestine prison system.
The tapes depict Mr. Binalshibh’s interrogation sessions at a Moroccan-run facility the CIA used near Rabat in 2002, several current and former U.S. officials told the Associated Press. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because the videos remain a closely guarded secret.
When the CIA destroyed its cache of 92 videos of two other al Qaeda operatives, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Nashiri, being waterboarded in 2005, officials believed they had wiped away all of the agency’s interrogation footage. But in 2007, a staffer discovered a box tucked under a desk in the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center and pulled out the Binalshibh tapes.
A Justice Department prosecutor who is already investigating whether destroying the Zubaydah and al-Nashiri tapes was illegal is now also probing why the Binalshibh tapes were never disclosed. Twice, the government told a federal judge they did not exist.
And how about an arson investigation of that “mysterious” fire in Cheney’s man-size safe, hmm?