Tapes’ destruction a move to guard CIA

Published 9:37 pm Monday, December 24, 2007

WASHINGTON — Shortly after he arrived as CIA director in 2004, Porter Goss met with the agency’s top spies and general counsel to discuss a range of issues, including what to do with videotapes showing harsh interrogations of al-Qaida detainees.

“Getting rid of tapes in Washington,” Goss said, according to an official involved in the discussions, “is an extremely bad idea.”

But at the operational levels of the CIA — especially within the branch that ran the network of secret prisons — the idea of holding onto the tapes and hoping they would never be leaked to the public seemed even worse.

Citing what CIA veterans regard as a long record of abandonment by politicians in times of scandal, current and former U.S. intelligence officials said the decision to destroy the tapes was driven by a determination among senior spies to guard against a repeat of that outcome.

The order to destroy the recordings came from Jose Rodriguez Jr., head of the CIA’s clandestine service, the division that deploys spies overseas and carries out covert operations.

The clandestine service “is almost tribal in nature,” said a former senior CIA official. “They believe that no one else will look out for them so they have to look out for themselves.”

That culture, current and former intelligence officials said, helps to explain why Rodriguez ordered the tapes destroyed despite cautions from senior lawmakers, White House lawyers and even the agency’s director.

It may also account for why Rodriguez was not punished or fired after that decision was disclosed. Rodriguez is now in the CIA’s retirement program and is expected to leave the agency in coming months.

Current and former officials close to Rodriguez said he issued the order largely out of a sense of obligation to undercover officers whose identities would have been exposed if the tapes were to surface.

Even with the possibility of criminal charges looming, some CIA veterans who worked with Rodriguez said destroying the tapes was the honorable course at an agency that reveres leaders who protect spies and guard agency secrets.

“This boiled down to an issue of who had the responsibility to protect our officers’ identities,” said a former U.S. intelligence official. “That fell to Jose and he did the right thing.”

The tapes were considered explosive because they included footage of CIA interrogators using rough interrogation tactics on al-Qaida captives.

The CIA has maintained that all of its interrogation methods were lawful and approved in advance by the Justice Department. The agency has also defended its handling of the tapes.

However, the Sept. 11 Commission had asked the CIA for all relevant materials related to the plot as part of its inquiry. After news of the tapes became public, panel members said they should have been given access to the tapes.

The Justice Department and two congressional committees have launched investigations of the matter. The House Intelligence Committee issued a subpoena last week to compel Rodriguez to testify before the panel in January.