What happened to the Padilla interrogation videos?

What happened to the Padilla interrogation videos?

This is an infinitely bigger story than the media, thus far, seems to realize. In the Jose Padilla criminal trial, the judge -- Bush-appointee and former federal prosecutor Marcia Cooke, who has a reputation for extreme objectivity -- has ordered the Bush administration to turn over all tapes made of its interrogations of Padilla, as part of Padilla's motion to dismiss the indictment on the ground that he was, in essence, tortured while being held incommunicado for 3 1/2 years. In particular, Padilla's lawyers are most interested in the last interrogation session to which he was subjected -- in March, 2004 -- while still held as an "enemy combatant."

Ten days ago, Newsweek's Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball reported that the administration had produced all of the DVDs it claimed it possessed, but the March, 2004 interrogation video was not among them. The government began claiming that the video "mysteriously disappeared." Bush administration lawyers simply insist that they are "no longer able to locate the DVD."

Associated Press now furthers the story by reporting that Bush lawyers seem to have committed themselves to the position that the video will not be found: "'I don't know what happened to it,' Pentagon attorney James Schmidli said during a recent court hearing." Judge Cooke is reacting exactly how she should -- with utter disbelief in the veracity of this claim:

more:http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/03/10/padilla/index.html?source=rss

missing evidence, missing witnesses, falsified records, illegal warrantless spying,

we have become more like the Soviet Union than the USA.

The soviets produced very detaiuled evidence at their "show" trials. Of course, it was all faked but at least they produced the "evidence"

the intrusion of the government, the wiretapping, the invasion of privacy, the illegal spying on us. Lost evidence is just another symptom of a very big AND GROWING problem.

PB

be released, and if he is indeed not competent to live alone, then Bush and Cheney should support him for the rest of his life personally.