At the very end of Froomkin's chat yesterday, there is this little gem:

Stony Brook, N.Y.: Everybody seems to accept the claim that the CIA tapes were destroyed. Given the long history of deceptions by this administration, shouldn't we ask for proof, or at least sworn statements to that effect?

Dan Froomkin: A good point. And consider this. Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball write in Newsweek: "At one point portions of the tapes were electronically transmitted to CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., so a small number of officials there could review them. A counterterrorism source, who also asked for anonymity when discussing this subject, said that there was no reason to believe that any recordings of such an electronic feed still exist."

No, no, of course not. No reason whatever. (Except that, as we know from the Stasi and, say, Guatemala, totalitarian regimes hang onto all their data.)

And who knows the dataflows? Where the data goes, its nature and volume, its timing, and who has privileges to see it? The techs. Could we talk to them, please? Didn't we get good results when we talked to Alexander Butterfield?

There are two examples I can think of where the techs--curiously, or not--were never talked to.

First, Abu Ghraib, where whistleblower Samuel Provance, though the administrator of the top secret Abu Ghraib network, was never asked what data moved across the network, and where it went, and who had the privileges to access it.

Second, gwb43.com, where, despite literally millions of White House emails being conveniently "lost," the companies that handled the offsite backup were never talked to, let alone subpoenaed.

And my own personal data point:

I do have a tech contracting world, and from that world I heard that indeed all torture was captured and yes, it went to the West Wing. (As of course it would, starting with the fact that they’re all 24 fans in the West Wing, and ending with the fact that torture corrupts everything it touches, and they like that, partly because they’re evil, and partly because making people complicit in their evil helps their policy objectives.)

So, please, can we try to work the old talk-to-the-small-fish to get to the big fish tactic by talking to the techs? Thank you. If you want the next Alexander Butterfield, that's where to look. Because you know all the Christianists on the administrative side are going to lie like rugs for Dear Leader, so what other kind of small fish is there?

Alternatively, we could write yet another Sternly Worded Letter ....

NOTE Reworked from a comment here.