The CIA has announced that Cerberus, the guard dog at the organization's archives unit in Langley, Virginia who ate the videos of terror suspect interrogations, has been punished and "will probably not destroy any more really important records ever again, or at least any time pretty soon."
A spokesperson added that it is "pure coincidence" that the nine-year-old Labrador, formally held responsible for the disappearance in 2005 of videotapes alleged to document "extreme techniques" that critics say are tantamount to torture, is the same animal who in 2003 accidentally consumed and later vomited into a New York Times correspondent's mailbox a copy of an executive branch memo identifying Valerie Plame as a CIA operative.
The agency's press release continues, "Cerberus has been taken off active guard duty and has been punished by being slapped with a slipper, swatted with a rolled-up newspaper, called a 'bad pooch', denied biscuits and subjected to a special obedience optimization procedure we developed in-house called 'water bowling'."
