[image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>
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January 2, 2008
Op-Ed Contributors
Stonewalled by the C.I.A. By THOMAS H. KEAN and LEE H. HAMILTON
Washington
MORE than five years ago, Congress and President Bush created the 9/11
commission. The goal was to provide the American people with the
fullest possible account of the "facts and circumstances relating to
the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001" — and to offer
recommendations to prevent future attacks. Soon after its creation,
the president's chief of staff directed all executive branch agencies
to cooperate with the commission.
The commission's mandate was sweeping and it explicitly included the
intelligence agencies. But the recent revelations that the C.I.A.
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. rg
There could have been absolutely no doubt in the mind of anyone at the
C.I.A. — or the White House — of the commission's interest in any
and all information related to Qaeda detainees involved in the 9/11
plot. Yet no one in the administration ever told the commission of
the existence of videotapes of detainee interrogations.
When the press reported that, in 2002 and maybe at other times, the
C.I.A. had recorded hundreds of hours of interrogations of at least
two Qaeda detainees, we went back to check our records. We found that
we did ask, repeatedly, for the kind of information that would have
been contained in such videotapes.
The commission did not have a mandate to investigate how detainees
were treated; our role was to investigate the history and evolution of
Al Qaeda and the 9/11 plot. Beginning in June 2003, we requested all
reports of intelligence information on these broad topics that had
been gleaned from the interrogations of 118 named individuals,
including both Abu Zubaydah and Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri, two senior
Qaeda operatives, portions of whose interrogations were apparently
recorded and then destroyed.
The C.I.A. gave us many reports summarizing information gained in the
interrogations. But the reports raised almost as many questions as
they answered. Agency officials assured us that, if we posed specific
questions, they would do all they could to answer them.
So, in October 2003, we sent another wave of questions to the C.I.A.'s
general counsel. One set posed dozens of specific questions about the
reports, including those about Abu Zubaydah. A second set, even more
important in our view, asked for details about the translation process
in the interrogations; the background of the interrogators; the way
the interrogators handled inconsistencies in the detainees' stories;
the particular questions that had been asked to elicit reported
information; the way interrogators had followed up on certain lines of
questioning; the context of the interrogations so we could assess the
credibility and demeanor of the detainees when they made the reported
statements; and the views or assessments of the interrogators
themselves.
The general counsel responded in writing with non-specific replies.
The agency did not disclose that any interrogations had ever been
recorded or that it had held any further relevant information, in any
form. Not satisfied with this response, we decided that we needed to
question the detainees directly, including Abu Zubaydah and a few
other key captives.
In a lunch meeting on Dec. 23, 2003, George Tenet, the C.I.A.
director, told us point blank that we would have no such access.
During the meeting, we emphasized to him that the C.I.A. should
provide any documents responsive to our requests, even if the
commission had not specifically asked for them. Mr. Tenet replied by
alluding to several documents he thought would be helpful to us, but
neither he, nor anyone else in the meeting, mentioned videotapes.
A meeting on Jan. 21, 2004, with Mr. Tenet, the White House counsel,
the secretary of defense and a representative from the Justice
Department also resulted in the denial of commission access to the
detainees. Once again, videotapes were not mentioned.
As a result of this January meeting, the C.I.A. agreed to pose some
of our questions to detainees and report back to us. The commission
concluded this was all the administration could give us. But the
commission never felt that its earlier questions had been
satisfactorily answered. So the public would be aware of our
concerns, we highlighted our caveats on page 146 in the commission
report.
As a legal matter, it is not up to us to examine the C.I.A.'s failure
to disclose the existence of these tapes. That is for others. 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 the greatest tragedies to confront this country. We
call that obstruction.
Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton served as chairman and vice
chairman, respectively, of the 9/11 commission.
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Jobst Brandt