CIA Confirms 12 of 92 Videotapes Destroyed Showed Prisoners Tortured

Heavily redacted government documents filed in a New York federal court Friday afternoon say the CIA destroyed 12 videotapes that specifically showed two detainees being tortured.

The documents were filed in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union. In December 2007, the ACLU filed a motion to hold the CIA in contempt for its destruction of the tapes in violation of a court order requiring the agency to produce or identify all records requested by the ACLU. That motion is still pending.

On Monday, the Justice Department revealed in court documents that the CIA destroyed 92 interrogation videotapes, which is now the subject of a criminal probe. According to Friday's court documents, 90 tapes relate to one detainee and two tapes relate to another detainee.

In a letter filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Acting U.S. Attorney Lev Dassin said a complete list of summaries, transcripts or memoranda related to the videotapes would be filed with the court by March 20.

"The government is needlessly withholding information about these tapes from the public, despite the fact that the CIA's use of torture -- including waterboarding -- is no secret," said Amrit Singh, staff attorney with the ACLU. "This new information only underscores the need for full and immediate disclosure of the CIA's illegal interrogation methods. The time has come for the CIA to be held accountable for flouting the rule of law."

On March 2, the Justice Department said in court documents the CIA destroyed 92 videotapes -- far more than previously known -- to prevent disclosure of evidence revealing how the agency's interrogators subjected "war on terror" detainees to waterboarding and other brutal methods.

"The CIA can now identify the number of videotapes that were destroyed," said a letter written by Acting U.S. Attorney Lev Dassin and filed in federal court in New York. "Ninety-two videotapes were destroyed."

Previously, the CIA had disclosed that it had destroyed two videotapes and one audiotape of harsh interrogations of detainees. The tape destruction has been the subject of a yearlong criminal investigation by John Durham, the Acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, who was appointed special prosecutor last year by Attorney General Michael Mukasey.

In the March 2 filing, Dassin noted that a stay of a contempt motion filed by the ACLU seeking release of the tapes was allowed to expire on February 28 without a request for a continuation -- signaling that Durham's investigation is now complete.

In January, Durham had indicated in a court filing that he expected to wrap up his probe by the end of February. The CIA has asked the court to give the agency until Friday to produce a list of all destroyed records, any memos relating to reconstruction of those records, and identification of witnesses who may have watched the videotapes before they were destroyed.

Dassin's letter said some information sought by the ACLU may be classified or "protected from disclosure, such as the names of the CIA employees who viewed the videotapes."

Dassin said the CIA "intends to produce all of the information requested to the court and to produce as much information as possible on the public record to the plaintiffs."

The videotaped interrogations, which were also withheld from the 9/11 Commission, were destroyed in November 2005 after The Washington Post published a story exposing the CIA's use of so-called "black site" prisons overseas to interrogate terror suspects with techniques that were not legal on U.S. soil.

The Zubaydah Case

The Post's story focused on alleged al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah and the harsh methods that the CIA used on him and other detainees. Abu Zubaydah was captured in Pakistan on March 28, 2002, and was reportedly whisked to a secret prison site in Thailand for interrogation.