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Tapes' Destruction Roils Congress

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By GREG MILLER, Los Angeles Times

Published: December 8, 2007

WASHINGTON - Key members of Congress on Friday called for multiple investigations into the CIA's destruction of interrogation videotapes, charging the agency may have eliminated evidence of torture, obstructed justice or engaged in an illegal coverup.

The CIA's disclosure that it had destroyed tapes showing harsh interrogations of terrorism suspects rekindled the emotional controversy surrounding U.S. practices and threatened to reopen the tense confrontation between Congress and the Bush administration first begun more than three years ago.

Democratic leaders demanded Friday that Attorney General Michael Mukasey order a full Justice Department probe into whether the CIA had acted illegally in destroying the tapes, which recorded interrogations of two terrorism suspects.

"We haven't seen anything like this since the 18 1/2 -minute gap in the tapes of President Richard Nixon," Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., said in a blistering speech on the Senate floor. A Justice Department spokesman said the congressional requests for an investigation are under review.

At the same time, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee said that panel has opened a probe of the matter and challenged a CIA assertion that key lawmakers had been briefed on the decision to dispose of the recordings.

"I was not told of the CIA's decision to destroy the tapes, and I was not aware of their destruction until ... press reports," Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV, D-W.Va., said in a statement. He added that "the CIA's description of notifying Congress is inconsistent with our records."

Bush Informed Thursday

The handling of the tapes raised questions on other fronts.
CIA Director Michael Hayden had said the tapes were "not relevant to any internal, legislative, or judicial inquiries." Critics, however, said the tapes could have been pertinent to inquiries by Congress, to the Sept. 11 commission and in the criminal trials of two terrorism suspects.
White House press secretary Dana Perino said President Bush had no recollection of being aware of the tapes or their destruction before he was informed about the issue by Hayden on Thursday.

Perino said the White House counsel's office was working with the CIA to gather information on the handling of the tapes. She said the White House would support Mukasey if he decided to investigate.

When asked whether there was concern that laws were broken, Perino said, "I'll decline to comment."

In a statement to agency employees Thursday, Hayden said the CIA had done nothing illegal. He said the agency began videotaping interrogations in 2002 as part of "an internal check on the program in its early stages" and discontinued the practice later that year.

Many of Hayden's assertions were challenged by lawmakers, lawyers and advocacy groups that have campaigned against the CIA's secret detention program.

Hayden said leaders of congressional oversight committees had been informed of the existence of the videos "years ago," and subsequently were told of the agency's plans to destroy them.

Rep. Jane Harman of California - who was the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee at the time the videotapes were destroyed - said the panel was never informed.

Harman acknowledged receiving a classified briefing in 2003 in which the existence of the tapes was disclosed. She said that prompted her to send a letter to the CIA general counsel's office cautioning "against destruction of any videotapes."

In a letter to Mukasey, the Senate's No. 2 Democrat, Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, said the Justice Department should "investigate whether CIA officials who destroyed these videotapes and withheld information about their existence from official proceedings violated the law."

The tapes were not shared with the commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks. The executive director of that panel said the commission had asked for such materials as part of the documents and records it requested from the CIA.

There were also questions about whether the CIA had improperly withheld information from the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, who was convicted of conspiring to kill Americans as part of the Sept. 11 plot.

Moussaoui's attorneys had sought records they hoped might show that al-Qaida operatives in CIA custody did not know their client, thereby helping to establish that he was not tied to the plot.

Impact On Moussaoui Case

Attorneys for Moussaoui revealed Friday that they had filed a motion under seal with a federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., to have the case sent back to U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema for further investigation.

Federal prosecutors would have had an obligation under the law to turn over to the defense any evidence that might exonerate Moussaoui.

The Justice Department said in an Oct. 25 letter to Brinkema that it recently had become aware that the CIA had taped interrogations of three potential witnesses in the case. U.S. Attorney Chuck Rosenberg said in the letter that officials had reviewed the tapes and that the failure to turn over the evidence did not "prejudice" the defense.

In Moussaoui's case, the disclosure that the tapes had been destroyed seemed unlikely to persuade Brinkema to order a new trial because of Moussaoui's decision to enter a guilty plea in 2005. A jury subsequently sentenced him to life in prison, rejecting the death penalty sought by prosecutors.

Some defense attorneys said it is important for Brinkema to get to the bottom of potential misrepresentations to the court about the existence of CIA taping of interrogations because they could affect other cases. The judge still could order sanctions against the government if she finds intentional withholding or destruction of relevant evidence.

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