CIA Finds Terrorist Tapes Under Desk

What does it take to get an effective coverup around here? Recordings of terrorist Ramzi Binalshibh being interrogated in a secret overseas prison have been discovered under a desk by the CIA, the Associated Press reports. The tapes, two video and one audio, show Binalshibh’s interrogation in a prison in Rabat, Morocco, in 2002. In 2005, the CIA destroyed its 92 recordings of al Qaeda plotters Abu Zubaydah and Abd al Nashiri being waterboarded, believing it had eliminated all such footage, several current and former U.S. officials said. But in 2007, a CIA Counterterrorism Center staffer found the tapes under a desk. Despite this, the government twice told the Justice Department that the tapes did not exist during an investigation into whether destroying the other recordings was illegal. The discovery could throw a wrench in American efforts to prosecute Binalshibh, a “key facilitator” in the 9/11 attacks; the tapes not only make clear Morocco’s role in the clandestine CIA interrogation program, but also could give Binalshibh’s lawyers a stronger case that he was made mentally unstable by his detention. He’s now being treated for schizophrenia.