WASHINGTON — Shortly after he arrived as CIA director in 2004, Porter Goss met with the agency’s top spies and general counsel to discuss a range of issues, including what to do with videotapes showing harsh interrogations of al-Qaeda detainees.
“Getting rid of tapes in Washington,” Goss said, according to an official involved in the discussions, “is an extremely bad idea.”
But at the operational levels of the CIA — especially within the branch that ran the network of secret prisons — the idea of holding onto the tapes and hoping they would never be leaked to the public seemed even worse.
Citing what CIA veterans regard as a long record of abandonment by politicians in times of scandal, current and former U.S. intelligence officials said the decision to destroy the tapes was driven by a determination among senior spies to guard against a repeat of that outcome.
The order to destroy the recordings came from Jose Rodriguez Jr., head of the CIA’s clandestine service, the division that deploys spies and carries out covert operations.
It is one of three main divisions at the agency, and largely because of its unique capabilities, the clandestine service has long been the most influential branch.
The clandestine service “is almost tribal in nature,” said a former senior CIA official. “They believe that no one else will look out for them so they have to look out for themselves.”
That culture, current and former intelligence officials said, helps explain why Rodriguez ordered the tapes destroyed despite cautions from White House lawyers.
It may also account for why Rodriguez was not punished or fired. He is in the CIA’s retirement program and is expected to leave the agency in coming months.
“This boiled down to an issue of who had the responsibility to protect our officers’ identities,” said a former U.S. intelligence official. “That fell to Jose, and he did the right thing.”
