CIA tells employees: Preserve records, but don't produce records
The irony is not lost on us: after destroying detainee interrogation tapes, the CIA issues an order to all employees directing them to preserve all records on the issue. We wonder why they felt a need in the Order to point out that it was "not a request to produce records." Could it be that when they got a FOIA request for the tapes from the ACLU, which was a request to produce records, the agency did not see the need to preserve the requested records?
Here's the CIA "Employee Bulletin":
Odd to me
The order spends ZERO time explaining the specifics about the destruction of detainee tapes. No date, no news references, no nothing.
It is as if "destruction of detainee tapes" would be something generally known around the Agency.
Which would then suggest that "detainee tapes" are a commonly known quantity throughout the halls of the Agency. In other words, the memo is about as casual as if it were recommending that all CIA employees turn their lights off at the end of the day.
So what gives?
It's not Ironic, it's simple
It's not ironic at all. Producing a record is expensive. First, you have to get together a really good group of musicians, then you have to book studio time and everyone knows the really good studios are in the Cayman Islands. Then you have to buy airline tickets to the Cayman Islands, and get a penthouse suite in the best hotel. After eating a lot of gourmet food and drinking the finest wine you can find, you have to get all the musciians together and spend hours and hours laying down tracks. Then you have to edit down 300 hours of recording down to maybe 30 to 45 minutes. Then you have to shop it around to all the major record labels in New York and Los Angeles and suck up to a lot of blow hard record executives that can't tell a decent record from recycled cover tunes. Then, if you're really lucky, they produce it. Then you have to hassle with distribution rights.
It's just so much easier to party with a few close buddies at the waterboarding festival and leave your recording devices at home.
What happens in Guantanamo stays in Guantanamo.
George
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Enron
The "preservation order" sounds like the direction Enron-Arthur Andersen gave in re the financial scandal. It was a signal to do the opposite. Ask for the contractor-shredder billing numbers. There's smoke from the OVP office. Maybe the ICC needs as coutesty copy.