Betrayal of the Tape

The public often assumes that what we do not know about the operations of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) cannot hurt us. Indeed, we hope that the CIA may protect us. Yet time and time again, hindsight has revealed that this trust was misplaced, as troubling facts about the CIA and its practices have come to light. These are trespasses for which the agency offers no apology, only evasion and qualification. The destruction of videotapes depicting the interrogation of terrorist operatives represents the latest in a series of violations of public trust in what seems like a return to the disconcerting Nixonian era of cover-ups and casuistry.

The 2002 recordings, in which two Al-Qaeda detainees are questioned, were destroyed because “they were no longer of intelligence value and not relevant to any internal, legislative, or judicial inquiries,” according to CIA Director Michael V. Hayden. As for the “alternative” means the CIA used to solicit information, Hayden insists the interrogation was “lawful, safe and effective.” In the absence of any evidence, this claim proves remarkably easy to make.

The New York Times, which broke the story, presents a far less benign version of the story. It insists that many intelligence officials were worried about the legality of the depicted techniques, as well as the reaction that CIA agents’ actions might inspire abroad. This uncertainty prompted the shadowy destruction of the tapes by the CIA’s clandestine service, in a direct subversion of orders from the White House and Congress. If the agency seeks to tout service to country and integrity as its core values, then its mutiny against elected representatives would seem to be unmitigated dereliction of its duty.

In the interest of transparency, our national espionage service today provides sophistic non-denials to the same questions—for instance, those concerning their involvement in assassination attempts and the Iran-Contra affair —that they simply ignored in the 1980s and earlier. But this pretension of openness makes little difference: The CIA proceeds today in similarly illicit, morally unacceptable endeavors with the winking complicity of an “ignorant” public.

Much of the rhetoric of the ongoing “war on terror”—and the policies that accompany it—invoke necessity and fear: what are the Patriot Act and rendition but responses to the shadowy and nebulous threat of Islamic extremism? The global state of affairs continues to demand clandestine activity and the classification of information, but the over-stepping exemplified by this episode only undermines the legitimacy of the CIA as a protective service. Instead, it makes the CIA appear renegade, reckless, and intent on doing harm to both its own image and that of the United States. Cultivating global sympathy becomes a much trickier task when the government’s own agents betray our ideals and then escape censure by destroying the evidence.

If the American electorate is plagued with apathy and ignorance, we need not look to sources as remote as changing technology and the rise of special interests. Rather, the demonstrated disdain of the CIA for the ideals of the United States, the rights of its citizens, and international law would appear to be a much more direct cause of cynicism. Even as the agency moralizes on its website, extolling “personal accountability” and patriotism, it obstructs justice and oversteps its legal bounds in back rooms and black sites. What is disillusionment but the theft of an ideal?