JURIST - Paper Chase: CIA insists it cooperated with 9/11 Commission inquiries despite holding tapes

[JURIST] A CIA spokesman insisted Saturday that the agency cooperated with the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (also known as the 9/11 Commission) [official website] in its requests for information and materials concerning the interrogation of detainees, disputing claims that it had not been forthcoming [JURIST report] by not disclosing the existence of interrogation tapes that were later destroyed. Mark Mansfield said in a statement quoted by AP that "The notion that the CIA wasn't cooperative or forthcoming with the 9/11 commission is just plain wrong. It is utterly without foundation", and observed in a separate e-mail to the wire service that because the Commission could have asked for them the tapes were not destroyed until after the Commission had finished its work.

Earlier this month a panel of former Commission members led by former executive director Philip D. Zelikow said in a memo [PDF text] obtained by the New York Times that the agency never disclosed the specific existence of the tapes despite repeated requests for relevant information by the Commission, and the assurances of one senior CIA official that the CIA had "produced or made available for review" everything the Commission had asked for. The panel concluded that the question of whether the CIA had violated federal law by withholding the tapes under thees circumstances warranted "further investigation." AP has more.

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