Where are the CIA torture tapes?

The United States has engaged in numerous invasive efforts all over the world in the past couple decades to quell foreign threats to the nation. None more influential and costly than the invasions of Middle Eastern nations in order to continue our efforts in combating terrorist organizations such as Al-Qaeda. Ever since September 11, 2001 the United States has been combating threats in different parts of the Middle East such as Afghanistan and Iraq. But there needs to be a certain amount of intelligence and information that needs to be gathered and when there are high profile targets being captured, its almost an unlimited amount of information that could be gleaned.


While this sounds like it's wonderful news, the fact that the United States has information to be used, it must be obtained in some form or fashion. This is where things start to get a little scary. Ever since United States forces entered foreign soil there has been the necessity for prisons and interrogation facilities for high profile terrorists; or at least that is what the public is told. The public has been told that Enhanced Interrogation Techniques or EIT's are what are used to obtain information about certain threats. The general public now knows these techniques fall under a different sort of criteria, this being torture. The history of torture tactics being used has been quite rich in the fact that it is very graphic and incredibly disturbing. Reports from the main interrogation sites including Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay have shown that inhumane conditions, procedures, and a multitude of other humane rights violations had been committed at least one hundred times over and this makes for one of the absolute most horrifying cases of human desecration in the history of mankind.

Now coming to the real issue at hand, why was there no evidence to be seen? Once the images that were released in 2004 were viewed by the public eye, general outrage was sparked and the United States government now had to scrutinize its staff closely in the Middle East and had to monitor more closely how their prisoners were being treated and handled. There were hundreds of hours of this torturing that was documented on tape and in pictures but the CIA interrogation tapes were all destroyed and no one seemed to know by whom. The order was given by a lead CIA operations officer by the name of Jose Rodriguez but the actual destruction of the tapes was never documented, they just "disappeared" never to be seen. The effect of the public seeing the tapes would have been far worse than the reaction to them hearing about the existence of these tapes. The situation is ongoing and there are still investigations occurring but the only action that can be taken is against those who were documented taking part in the events and contributing to the illicit activities. The documentation of these torture tactics continue to spark public outrage and most likely will continue to do so.


More information can be found here: PBS New York Times