CIA releases report clearing Haspel in destruction of waterboarding tapes

FAN Editor

The Central Intelligence Agency has declassified and sent to Congress an eight-page disciplinary review memorandum that cleared President Trump’s nominee to lead the agency, Gina Haspel, of any wrongdoing in the destruction of videotapes made of interrogations of al-Qaeda detainees at secret “black site” prisons in 2002.  It is the latest step in the agency’s ongoing efforts to cast light on some of the darkest parts of own past and on that of its potential future director.

The memorandum, obtained by CBS News, was written in 2011 by former CIA acting director and CBS News contributor Michael Morell at the request of General David Petraeus, who led the agency at the time. It places responsibility for the destruction of 92 tapes on Jose Rodriguez, Jr., then the head of the agency’s directorate of operations, while noting Haspel drafted the cable authorizing the measure.

“I have found no fault with the performance of Ms. Haspel,” Morell’s report says. “I have concluded that she acted appropriately in her role as Mr. Rodriguez’s Chief of Staff.”

“[Haspel] drafted the cable on the direct orders of Mr. Rodriguez; she did not release that cable. It was not her decision to destroy the tapes; it was Mr. Rodriguez’s,” it says.

Twelve of the interrogation tapes, which were destroyed in 2005, were believed to contain footage of the enhanced interrogations of senior al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who was alleged to have orchestrated the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole. Haspel was chief of base at the black site in Thailand when al-Nashiri was subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques.

The memorandum also says Haspel “incorrectly” believed that Rodriguez would obtain approval for releasing the cable from the then-head of the agency, Porter Goss, and followed up with Rodriguez after it had been sent.

“I have found fault with the performance of Mr. Rodriguez, and I have decided to issue to him a letter of reprimand to remain in his official personnel file for two years,” Morell wrote, though Rodriguez did not face additional sanctions.

The review memorandum was one of several investigations launched in the aftermath of the tapes’ destruction. A nearly three-year criminal investigation, led by special prosecutor John Durham and concluded in 2010, resulted in no charges against Rodriguez, Haspel or any other CIA officer. The accountability report was written after the Justice Department concluded its investigation.

The CIA has been slowly and systematically pulling back the curtain on Haspel, releasing limited information about the contours of her career and a smattering of her interests, describing her as a polyglot Johnny Cash fan who reads Jane Austen novels and who, over three decades spent in the agency’s clandestine service, distinguished herself while serving in some of the most dangerous countries in the world. 

But as more details about Haspel have emerged, so have criticisms of what is still secret. While most members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence have maintained a public ambivalence about how they will vote on Haspel’s nomination, several – including Senators Wyden, Heinrich and Feinstein – have expressed impatience and displeasure that repeated requests for more declassified information on Gina’s career have gone unanswered.

This memorandum’s release appears to be part of CIA’s response. “At the request of members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and consistent with its commitment to be as transparent as possible, CIA has declassified, with limited redactions, the 2011 disciplinary review memorandum relating to CIA’s destruction of tapes,” said CIA spokesman Ryan Trapani. 

In a statement provided to CBS News, Morell said, “Ms. Haspel did not destroy the tapes, she did not oversee the destruction of the tapes, and she did not order the destruction of the tapes.  She drafted a cable, under instruction from her boss, Mr. Rodriguez, that he sent, under his name and authority, ordering that the tapes be destroyed. Mr. Rodriguez ordered the destruction of the tapes, not Ms. Haspel,” Morell said. “My decision on the question of accountability was that Mr. Rodriguez was who should be held accountable and reprimanded,” he said.

Morell also said his report was shared with both the White House and Congress at the time it was submitted. “There were no follow-up questions from either,” he said.

In a statement posted on his own website, Rodriguez said, “I have consistently taken full responsibility for the destruction of interrogation tapes from the very beginning,” noting he had given interviews to “60 Minutes” and other documentaries on the matter and detailed his decision in his own book. “My primary motivation in ordering the destruction of the tapes was to do what many in the intelligence community and the White House had failed to do at the time: protect the identities of the CIA personnel whose faces were seen on those tapes.”

“Nobody ever gave me an order not to destroy them,” Rodriguez wrote.

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