March 13, 2008: Pentagon Reviews At Least 50 Tapes of Detainee Interrogations

The Pentagon reviews a compendium of videotaped interrogations conducted at numerous US military detention facilities, including Guantanamo Bay and in Iraq. It identifies at least 50 tapes, including one showing the forcible gagging of a suspect. Defense Department officials say that only a few of the tens of thousands of interrogations conducted since 2001 were recorded. Most were “routinely destroyed” if they were found to have no continuing value, according to Pentagon spokesman Don Black. Among the 50 or so tapes already identified are interrogations of two high-level “enemy combatants,” Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri and Jose Padilla. Both were interrogated at the Naval brig in Charleston, South Carolina. A tape of an interrogation of al-Marri shows the terrorist suspect being gagged and manhandled by FBI agents (see March 13, 2008), but not waterboarded or otherwise tortured. Black says that the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lieutenant General Michael Maples, has reviewed the tape and is satisfied that al-Marri was treated in an acceptable fashion. As for other possible tapes, Admiral Mark H. Buzby, the military commander at Guantanamo, says, “We suspect that the recording devices contain recorded data but we are unable technologically to confirm whether data remains.” [New York Times, 3/13/2008]