Expert Witness Blog
Law and legal expert witness Stephen Saltzburg told the House Judiciary Committee Thursday that the CIA’s official explanation for destroying at least two videotapes depicting severe interrogation techniques “fails the straight-face test.” Expert witness Saltzburg is general counsel for the National Institute of Military Justice and a George Washington University Law School professor. RawStory.com also writes:
‘The rationale for destroying the tapes to protect the identity of the interrogators is almost as embarrassing as the destruction itself,’ said Saltzberg. He said that the tapes could easily have been modified to obscure the faces of those involved, and that regardless, the CIA keeps a written record of which officers interrogated detainees.
‘And so the explanation for destruction fails the straight-face test,’ he said. “The only plausible explanation, I believe, is that the CIA wanted to assure that those tapes would never be seen by any judicial tribunal — not even a military commission — and they would never be seen by a committee of Congress.’
Continued Saltzburg, ‘With [the CIA tapes] gone, we have the ultimate cover-up. The indisputable evidence no longer exists, and memories will undoubtedly differ about what happened.’blockquote>