Rodriguez is dumb enough to take this as a complement. His Wikipedia page looks like it was written by CIA PAO.
Ex-CIA official says tapes destroyed to prevent al Qaeda reprisals
(Reuters) – Jose Rodriguez said it took a “few hours” to destroy 92 videotapes showing his CIA colleagues using harsh interrogation techniques – including waterboarding – on al Qaeda leaders such as September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
But the former director of the CIA's National Clandestine Service told Reuters on Monday that he ordered the tapes destroyed to protect his colleagues from possible retaliation by al Qaeda.
The tapes of interrogations at a CIA “black site” included images of waterboarding – a form of simulated drowning – on Mohammed, Abd al Rahim al Nashiri and Abu Zubaydah, three al Qaeda leaders now held at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay.
Rodriguez said he was afraid the material would be leaked.
“You really doubt that those tapes would not be out in the open now, that they would not be on YouTube?” he said. “They would be out there, they would have been leaked, or somebody would have ordered their release.”
After the tapes were destroyed in an “industrial-sized disintegrator,” he said, “I felt good.”
Phi Beta Iota: Rodrigues is what you get when a clandestine service becomes a bureaucracy, and people are promoted for ass-kissing, going along, and generally playing the political game. Latin America Division has been a joke for decades, relying heavily on liaison for hand-outs, on making up stuff taken from the newspapers, on Chiefs of Station claiming recruitments that could never be turned over, and so on. One legitimate reason for DIA to want its own clandestine service (with full non-official cover options) is because CIA no longer know how to train, equip, or operate a clandestine service. It has lost its integrity across the board and despite the best of intentions, General Petraeus will never “get it” and not have time to fix it even if he did. Rodriguez' book is beneath contempt — a perfect companion to the books by Dick Cheney and Doug Feith. In retrospect, Rodriguez may merit investigation for his role in enabling Dick Cheney's many high crimes and now known lies. Between Rodriguez and Khost Kathy you have the disembowelment of CIA in a nutshell. This sort of stuff disgraces the profession of intelligence.
See Also:
Bauer, Cannistraro, Steele, Turner et all Letter Against Torture
Colin Powell Letter Against Torture
Journal: Reflections on Integrity UPDATED + Integrity RECAP
Journal: The Truth on Khost Kathy
Steele The Craft of Intelligence 2.6
