William M. ``Mac'' Thornberry: “this idea has been proposed and rejected before, partly because it makes no sense to stop what is happening on the…”

“this idea has been proposed and rejected before, partly because it makes no sense to stop what is happening on the battlefield and go film. The author of this amendment says, no, it only applies to theater level detention facilities. The problem is that if somebody is really going to commit some sort of abuse, they will just conduct that abuse somewhere else. This amendment only applies in certain places. The problem is that video recordings of interrogations creates a discoverable record, and disclosure of that record complicates the criminal prosecution. That is why a lot of jurisdictions in this country, Federal and State, do not require these sorts of recordings. In addition, as the former chairman said, having interrogators on camera threatens them, because their face and their voice could well be made public and, therefore, the danger to their lives could increase. Secondly, these things could be made public, and the techniques and tactics that are used and the procedures would also be made available to the enemy in the future. The bottom line is that when you have got a camera there, these interrogations are most likely going to be less effective. So here, again, we have an example of putting our military folks in the category as suspects, because we assume they are going to do some sort of abuse and so we have got to film them because we don't trust them and limit the effectiveness of what they do.”