Citing Destruction of Torture Tapes, ACLU Asks Court to Hold CIA in Contempt (12/12/2007)
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NEW
YORK - The American Civil Liberties Union today filed a
motion asking a federal judge to hold the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in
contempt, charging that the agency flouted a court order when it destroyed at
least two videotapes documenting the harsh interrogation of prisoners in its
custody. In response to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests filed by the
ACLU and other organizations in October 2003 and May 2004, the United States
District Court for the Southern District of New York ordered the CIA to produce
or identify all records pertaining to the treatment of detainees in its custody.
Despite the court’s ruling, the CIA never produced the tapes or even
acknowledged their existence. Last week, in anticipation of media reports
concerning the tapes, CIA Director Michael Hayden publicly acknowledged that the
CIA had made the tapes in 2002 but destroyed them in 2005.
“The CIA’s secret
destruction of these tapes displays a flagrant disregard for the rule of law,”
said Amrit Singh, a staff attorney with the
ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project. “It must be sanctioned for violating the
court’s order and the obligation to preserve records that fell within the scope
of our Freedom of Information Act requests.”
The tapes, which showed
CIA operatives subjecting suspects to extremely harsh interrogation methods,
should have been identified and processed for the ACLU in response to its FOIA
request demanding information on the treatment and interrogation of detainees in
U.S. custody.
The tapes were also withheld from the 9/11 Commission, appointed by President
Bush and Congress, which had formally requested that the CIA hand over
transcripts and recordings documenting the interrogation of CIA prisoners.
“These tapes were clearly
responsive to the Freedom of Information Act requests that we filed in 2003 and
2004, and accordingly the CIA was under a legal obligation to produce the tapes
to us or to provide a legal justification for withholding them,” said
Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU’s
National Security Project. “By destroying these
tapes, the CIA violated the statute as well as an order of the court. In the
circumstances, it would be entirely appropriate for the court to hold the agency
in contempt.”
The motion filed today
relates to a lawsuit that was filed in 2004 to enforce a FOIA request for
records concerning the treatment of prisoners in
U.S. custody
abroad. The ACLU brought the FOIA lawsuit with the Center for Constitutional
Rights, Physicians for Human Rights, Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans for
Peace.
The motion filed today
asks the court to hold the CIA in contempt; to require the CIA to produce a
complete list of all records that fall within the scope of the FOIA requests
that have been destroyed (including tapes); and to require the CIA to file with
the court a detailed written description of the substance of the destroyed
tapes.
“The interrogation
techniques employed by our government raise fundamental questions of human
rights and decency,” said Arthur Eisenberg, New York Civil Liberties Union Legal
Director. “The CIA cannot avoid those questions by simply destroying the
evidence.”
The ACLU brief and
related legal documents are available online at: www.aclu.org/torturefoia
Many of these documents
are also contained and summarized in Administration of Torture, a
recently published book by Jaffer and Singh. More information is available
online at:
www.aclu.org/administrationoftorture
Attorneys in the FOIA
case are Lawrence S. Lustberg and Melanca D. Clark of the New Jersey-based law
firm Gibbons P.C.; Jaffer, Singh and Judy
Rabinovitz of the ACLU; Arthur Eisenberg and Beth Haroules of
the New York Civil Liberties Union; and Shayana Kadidal and Michael Ratner of
the Center for Constitutional Rights.
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