The Latest Exposure

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CIA admissions that the agency destroyed at least two videotapes documenting harsh interrogations -- amid court and congressional inquiries on the matter -- underline how high a cost the U.S. has paid since 9/11 for trying to fight terrorism with methods only fit to be hidden.

Current and former government officials tell the New York Times the videotapes showed CIA agents using severe interrogation techniques on Abu Zubaydah and other captured al Qaeda operatives in 2002. The tapes were destroyed in 2005 by the then-head of the agency's Directorate of Operations and apparently without the knowledge at the time of then-CIA chief Porter Goss, the Times reports. But they were still around when lawyers for the agency told investigators for the 9/11 commission and the judge in the trial of terror suspect Zacarias Moussaoui that the CIA didn't possess such recordings. Law professor Daniel Marcus, who served as the commission's general counsel and dealt with discussions about interviews with al Qaeda leaders, tells the Times he had heard nothing about tapes being destroyed. If that happened, he adds, "it's a big deal, it's a very big deal," because such destruction, essentially the withholding of evidence in a criminal matter, could amount to obstruction of justice.

Several officials tell the Times the tapes were destroyed in part out of concern that exposure of the video depicting harsh interrogation posed legal risks for agency officials. Current CIA Director Gen. Michael V. Hayden said in a statement to staffers yesterday that the tapes were destroyed because they no longer had intelligence value, but also because if they became public they'd expose CIA officials "and their families to retaliation from al Qaeda and its sympathizers," as the Times reports. But it is the fear of such retaliation against American personnel that so many formerly senior American military officers and congressional critics have cited in opposing the use of such methods in the first place.

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… That Doesn't Bolster U.S. Counterterror
The CIA's admission came the same day "House and Senate negotiators reached an agreement on legislation that would prohibit the use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics by the CIA and bring intelligence agencies in line with rules followed by the U.S. military," the Washington Post notes. And it will undoubtedly affect that debate, at a time when many Republican lawmakers and presidential candidates support the use of such tactics as necessary to protecting the U.S. from terrorism, and with President Bush threatening to veto any bill that tries to ban them. The Times says it informed the CIA Wednesday evening that it was about to publish an article on the tapes, and Gen. Hayden acknowledged he was informing CIA employees about the matter "because the press has learned" about it. That line of reasoning has been a theme of late in Washington. Newsweek cites current and former U.S. intelligence officials saying the release of the latest National Intelligence Estimate on Iran this week came in part because "some officials feared leaks and accusations of a cover-up."

Allegations of misuse of intelligence and intelligence tactics and a long-held penchant for secrecy have played against the administration in Mr. Bush's second term. The leaders of France and Germany, for example, are still promoting an international effort to shut down parts of Iran's nuclear programs, as the Times reports, but they face an uphill battle at the United Nations thanks to a perceived disconnect between what the NIE says and White House rhetoric. The U.S. also now faces rising opposition to the planned installation of a missile-defense system in Europe -- a pressure point in quarrels with Russia -- thanks to the NIE, as the Associated Press reports. The Supreme Court face-off over trials at Guantanamo is all about bringing terror prosecutions into the open. And the U.S. rendition program and once-secret participation by allies in Europe shoved public opinion on the Continent even farther away from sympathy with Washington when it was made public, in part because of how it clashed with principles shunning what the BBC calls "the unhindered use of government power."

Lacking geopolitical capital, the administration has reversed itself on what The Wall Street Journal describes as "numerous foreign-policy fronts," most notable yesterday through Mr. Bush's letter directly to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. Addressing a regime he once grouped in the "axis of evil" and a man he said he loathed, Mr. Bush was asking for greater "cooperation in implementing a pact to dismantle its nuclear arms in exchange for full normalized relations," the Journal notes. The University of Maryland professor of Middle East studies Shibley Telhami once argued that "In every conflict, the extent to which a party can muster domestic support and international support, and the extent to which its public will withstand higher thresholds of pain, is very much a function of the degree of international legitimacy for that cause." The righteousness the U.S. wielded following 9/11 was an important asset in counterterror efforts, at home and abroad. And it's one directly affected by admissions like yesterday's from the CIA.

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Strauss-Kahn Plans Layoffs at the IMF
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the new managing director of the International Monetary Fund, tells The Wall Street Journal that as part of overhaul and budgetary mending of the institution he plans to cut about 15% of the staff, the first significant series of layoffs since the IMF's founding in 1945. In addition to shoring up its financial deficit, Mr. Strauss-Kahn is trying "to keep the IMF relevant at a time when developing nations are growing rapidly, often have fat reserves and have little need for IMF aid," the Journal notes. "The cuts are also part of his strategy to win U.S. and European backing for a plan to sell part of the IMF's gold hoard and invest in income-producing assets, to put the IMF on a sounder financial footing." But as Mr. Strauss-Kahn himself notes, "all this is possible only if ... I have the commitment by different governments" to boost IMF income. "If not," he adds, "nothing is done."

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William McGuire's $418 Million Surrender
A year after he was ousted from one of the highest paid chief-executiveships in corporate America, former UnitedHealth Group CEO William McGuire agreed to give up at least $418 million to settle claims that he improperly benefited from back-dated stock options. Coming on top of some $198 million he had already agreed to return to UnitedHealth, the payment is one of the largest a corporate leader has ever had to relinquish, as the backdating scandal continues to resonate in boardrooms -- and courtrooms -- across the country, the New York Times notes. The returned money is part of separate settlements Mr. McGuire reached with the Securities and Exchange Commission and UnitedHealth shareholders. "The forfeitures are the first time regulators have successfully employed corporate governance rules put in place after the collapse of Enron that force executives to disgorge ill-gotten gains," the Times adds. Compensation consultant Brian Foley tells The Wall Street Journal he believes Dr. McGuire's total repayment represents the largest such giveback due to executive-compensation abuses in history. "You have to applaud the sheer magnitude," Mr. Foley says. "On the other hand, he still walks away with a lot."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119701245980817016.html?mod=googlenews_wsj