By Greg Gordon, McClatchy Newspapers
The CIA has three video and audio recordings of interrogations of senior al Qaida captives but misled federal judges about the evidence during the case against terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui, federal prosecutors revealed in a Nov. 9 court filing that was made public Tuesday.
The disclosure is unlikely to undo Moussaoui’s conviction because the agency said the material on the tapes doesn’t pertain to his case.
However, the disclosure that the government taped some interrogations of high-value detainees could invite fresh scrutiny of the CIA’s treatment of so-called “enemy combatants” who were held at secret prisons or U.S. bases overseas.
John Radsan, a former CIA assistant general counsel who teaches at the William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, Minn., called the revelation of the tapes “huge” news.
“So far, there has been great mystery about what was actually done to the high-value detainees,” he said. “A videotape is worth a thousand words.”