Mukasey: Criminal inquiry begins into CIA tapes

[lily]

Sounds like Mukasey might be a man of his word. (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22474868/)

Mukasey: Criminal inquiry begins into CIA tapes
CIA said last month it had destroyed recordings of harsh interrogations


WASHINGTON - The U.S. Justice Department opened a criminal investigation
into the destruction of CIA interrogation videotapes, and Attorney General
Michael B. Mukasey said Wednesday that he appointed an outside prosecutor to
oversee the case.

The CIA acknowledged last month that it destroyed videos of officers using
tough interrogation methods while questioning two al-Qaida suspects. The
acknowledgment sparked a congressional inquiry and a preliminary
investigation by Justice.

"The Department's National Security Division has recommended, and I have
concluded, that there is a basis for initiating a criminal investigation of
this matter, and I have taken steps to begin that investigation," Mukasey
said in a statement released Wednesday.



Mukasey named John Durham, a federal prosecutor, to oversee the case. Durham
has a reputation as one of the most relentless U.S. prosecutors. He served
as an outside prosecutor overseeing an investigation into the FBI's use of
mob informants in Boston and helped send several Connecticut public
officials to prison.

"The CIA will of course cooperate fully with this investigation as it has
with the others into this matter," agency spokesman Mark Mansfield said.

The CIA has already agreed to open its files to congressional investigators,
who have begun reviewing documents at the agency's headquarters. The House
Intelligence Committee has ordered Jose Rodriguez, the former CIA official
who directed the tapes be destroyed, to appear at a hearing Jan. 16.

The videos destroyed in 2005 included hundreds of hours of tapes from the
interrogations of two al-Qaida suspects, prompting an outcry from Democrats,
human rights activists and some legal experts.

The interrogations, which took place in 2002, were believed to have included
a form of simulated drowning known as waterboarding, condemned
internationally as torture.

President Bush has said the United States does not torture but has declined
to be specific about interrogation methods.

Rodriguez's attorney, Robert S. Bennett, had no comment.

[ECW]

I thought that about Fitzgerald but I was proven wrong. The illusion of going after criminals but not locking anyone up to make them talk the way Kenny Starr did to Ms McDougal shows the utter hypocrisy of the "investigation." They molly-coddle the people they are after and then throw up their hands in dismay saying, "Waaaa! No one will talk to us!" Then it all goes away and nothing is done. The guilty skate.

I'm not convinced. Missourians have the perfect motto for this situation: show me.

When I see serious indictments and some convictions with jail time that Bush has to commute, I'll believe it. Of course, the best course of action is to drag out the whole affair and convict them AFTER Bush leaves office so there will be some accountability but I don't expect accountability from anyone associated with Bush. Never has been. Never will be.

[bobbylien]

The actions of this administration really make me question the effectiveness of the justice department when it comes to accountability. How can we ever trust a department with a Bush appointee at the head to be impartial and relentless when it comes to seeking truth and justice for the American people?

[ECW]

If there was ever a need for a special prosecutor, this is it.

[lily]

Link (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/03/AR2008010303544.html?hpid=moreheadlines)

CIA in 2003 Planned Destruction of Tapes
Congresswoman Argued Against the Move

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 4, 2008; Page A03

A key member of Congress disclosed yesterday that the CIA said in February
2003 that it planned to destroy videotapes of harsh interrogations after the
agency's inspector general finished probing the episodes, an account that
adds detail to recent CIA statements about the circumstances surrounding the
tapes' destruction.



Harman at that time had recently become the ranking Democrat on the House
intelligence committee, and in her letter she urged Muller to "reconsider"
that plan and predicted that the tapes' destruction "would reflect badly on
the agency." Agency officials nonetheless destroyed the tapes in 2005, and
on Wednesday, Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey ordered a formal criminal
probe into the destruction.

In recent public accounts about the tapes, CIA officials have said that no
definitive decision was made about destroying the tapes until 2005.
Beginning in early 2003, senior officials expressed an "intention to
dispose" of the videos, according to a Dec. 6 statement by CIA Director
Michael V. Hayden. But an internal debate over the tapes' disposition
continued for two more years, with senior CIA lawyers advising against their
destruction.

According to several senior intelligence officials, who spoke on the
condition of anonymity because the matter is under criminal investigation,
the videotaping at issue was conducted at secret CIA detention sites
overseas with the approval of CIA headquarters. The interrogations got
underway after the administration in August 2002 authorized what Muller
described in a Feb. 28, 2003, letter to Harman as a "handful of specially
approved interrogation techniques."

"As we informed both you and the leadership of the Intelligence Committees
last September, a number of Executive branch lawyers including lawyers from
the Department of Justice participated in a determination that, in the
appropriate circumstances, use of these techniques is fully consistent with
US law," Muller wrote.

By that time, videotaping of Abu Zubaida and a second terrorism suspect, Abd
al-Rahim al-Nashiri, had stopped and CIA Inspector General John L. Helgerson
was just beginning his inquiry.

The video of Abu Zubaida's interrogation, according to a former CIA official
familiar with the situation, was meant to show "that the interrogators
stayed within the guidelines and they didn't do anything to him that could
lead to his death."

Helgerson, in a statement released Wednesday, said he and his staff reviewed
the tapes as part of their inquiry, which ended in May 2004.

Harman's recommendation to Muller that the tapes not be destroyed was
reported earlier. In her letter, she said: "Even if the videotape does not
constitute an official record that must be preserved under the law, the
videotape would be the best proof that the written record is accurate, if
such record is called into question in the future." In a telephone
interview, Harman said she never received a direct reply.

In his letter to Harman, Muller did not respond to Harman's direct request
for information about whether President Bush had authorized and approved the
harsh interrogation techniques, saying in his letter to her that it was "not
appropriate for me to comment on issues that are a matter of policy, much
less the nature and extent of Executive Branch policy deliberations."

Muller, reached by e-mail, declined to comment yesterday on the letters or
on any other aspect of the CIA's handling of the tapes. Other officials have
said Muller did not disagree with Harman and counseled colleagues not to
destroy the tapes.

Harsh interrogation techniques, including a form of simulated drowning known
as waterboarding, were used on Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the prime architect of
the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, after he was captured in March 2003. But,
according to present and former intelligence officials, that technique was
no longer needed or used after August 2003.

Helgerson concluded in his May 2004 report that the interrogations might
violate international law, and he recommended changes in the treatment and
handling of detainees. The tapes were eventually destroyed, CIA officials
have said, at the instruction of then-CIA Deputy Director for Operations
Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., after Muller had left the CIA.

[Elrathin]

There should be a criminal investigation. If the administration says they shouldn't have been destroyed, somebody is at fault. Prosecute them and send them to GITMO, even if it is the president himself.