Maureen Groppe

WASHINGTON – The Senate report on CIA interrogations of terrorism suspects disclosed that the agency destroyed videotapes of the interrogations after Sen. Carl Levin pushed for an independent investigation of the treatment of detainees.

“It reminds me of Watergate,” the retiring Michigan Democrat, who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, told reporters Wednesday.

The report released Tuesday by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence includes a 2005 email from the CIA’s acting general counsel expressing concern that Levin’s push for an outside commission was gaining traction and, if created, would uncover the interrogation videos.

“I think I need to be the skunk at the party again and see if the director is willing to let us try one more time to get the right people downtown on board with the notion of our destroying the tapes,” wrote John Rizzo.

The report says a senior CIA attorney who had viewed the videotapes agreed that “the sooner we resolve this the better.” Another respondent who was not identified said the tapes “should have been destroyed in the normal course of business two years ago.”

Levin’s proposal for an independent investigation was voted down by the Senate on Nov. 8, 2005. The videotapes were destroyed the next day, according to the report.

The committee released a 500-page summary of its 6,700-page report detailing the CIA’s use of waterboarding and other interrogation techniques on prisoners. The report concluded that the techniques did not produce information crucial to save lives and that the CIA gave “extensive inaccurate information” about the detention and interrogation programs to Congress and the White House.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Georgia Sen. Saxby Chambliss – the top Republican on the intelligence committee – called the report an “ideologically motivated and distorted recounting of historical events.” McConnell and Chambliss disputed the conclusion that the CIA’s detention and interrogation programs did not work.

Levin said people have to make up their own minds after reading the report.

“My own conclusion is that there’s no evidence that it did (work),” he said.

And the danger is that the U.S. will have no defense if torture is used on American troops, he added.

In addition, Levin said, torture wastes resources “on wild goose chases and false leads because people who are being tortured will say anything.”

“We know that we don’t need to use torture to get information,” Levin said. “I’m not saying there’s not going to be a rare case where somebody has tortured somebody and gets something useful. All I’m saying is, if we do that, we’re walking down the road which is a very dangerous road for our troops, for our country and for our resources for our intelligence.”

Contact Maureen Groppe at mgroppe@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter: @mgroppe