Top CIA officials appear before grand jury over destruction of Tapes

Guardian | July 3, 2009
Chris McGreal

Senior Central Intelligence Agency officials, including the London station chief, have been brought before a grand jury in Virginia investigating the potentially illegal destruction of 92 video tapes recording the torture and interrogation of al-Qaida detainees.

A special prosecutor, John Durham, has called the CIA officials as part of an 18-month-long criminal probe in to the destruction of evidence of the agency's interrogators using waterboarding and other forms of torture against Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al Nashiri who are described by the Americans as "high value" detainees now held at Guantánamo Bay.

Those ordered to testify include the former CIA chief, Porter J Gross. Another is a woman who is not publicly named who heads the agency's London station. She previously worked as the chief of staff for the head of the CIA's clandestine branch, Jose Rodriguez, who is the focus of the investigation.

The New York Times reports that former CIA officers have identified the woman as having helped carry out Rodriguez's order to destroy the tapes which had been kept in a safe in at the agency's station in Thailand where the torture and interrogations were carried out.

Full article here

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