The CIA argued in its response that some of the documents were the subject of an inquiry by the CIA's inspector general and requested a stay of the judge's order. Judge Hellerstein denied the CIA's request for a stay, but did not enforce his decision when the CIA immediately filed a motion for the judge to reconsider his ruling.
CIA lawyers have since kept the ACLU lawsuit at bay by filing repeated motions for continuance. With the agency's admission that it had destroyed the interrogation videos, the ACLU filed its contempt motion. If Judge Hellerstein holds the CIA in contempt, the resulting furor could snowball to a full-scale constitutional confrontation between the executive and judicial branches.
White House Balks at Sharing Info With Congress on Tapes Probe
Suspicions that the White House is engaging in a Watergate-style cover-up of CIA interrogation tactics banned as torture under U.S. and international law had intensified over the weekend as the White House balked Friday at providing Congress with details about the joint investigation by the Justice Department and the Central Intelligence Agency's inspector general into the destruction of hundreds of hours of videotapes of CIA agents interrogating suspected al-Qaida operatives.
Congressional leaders of both parties promptly fired back that the White House has no right to interfere with Congress' constitutional oversight authority to investigate the activities of the executive branch and vowed to press on with their probes -- issuing subpoenas if necessary.
Attorney General Michael Mukasey refused lawmakers' requests to furnish them with details of the administration's preliminary investigation into the videos' destruction, claiming that to do so "could raise questions about whether the inquiry is vulnerable to political pressure."
In a letter released Friday to the leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee that oversees the Justice Department, Mukasey also said there is "no need right now" to appoint a special prosecutor to lead the investigation, as congressional Democrats are demanding.
"I am aware of no facts at present to suggest that [Justice Department] attorneys cannot conduct this inquiry in an impartial manner," Mukasey wrote to Senators Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) and Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania), the chairman and highest-ranking minority-party member, respectively, of the Senate Judiciary Committee. "If I become aware of information that leads me to a different conclusion, I will act on it."
Mukasey said there is a longstanding policy by the Justice Department of not providing information to Congress about pending cases. "This policy is based in part on our interest in avoiding any perception that our law enforcement decisions are subject to political influence," he wrote.
"Accordingly, I will not at this time provide further information in response to your letter, but appreciate the committee's interests in this matter," the attorney general concluded in his letter, which was also sent to the leaders of the House Judiciary Committee.
AG Interfering With Congress' Oversight Authority, Lawmakers Say
Lawmakers of both parties reacted with anger, accusing Mukasey of acting like his predecessor, Alberto Gonzales, who refused to cooperate with congressional inquiries of administration practices in the past.
Gonzales -- who wrote a controversial 2002 memo to CIA interrogators that gave them the green light to use waterboarding -- resigned in disgrace in September amid accusations that he had eight U.S. attorneys fired for partisan political reasons, possibly in violation of the Hatch Act.
The lawmakers accused Mukasey of interfering with Congress' constitutional oversight authority over the Justice Department and the CIA by refusing to provide the Judiciary Committee with information and by advising the CIA against cooperating with a House Intelligence Committee inquiry into the tapes' destruction.
"Our staff was notified that the Department of Justice has advised CIA not cooperate with our investigation," House Intelligence Committee chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas) said Friday in a joint statement with Representative Peter Hoekstra (R-Michigan), the committee's ranking Republican.
"We are stunned that the Justice Department would move to block our investigation," Reyes and Hoekstra said. "Parallel investigations [by the administration, Congress and the judiciary] occur all of the time, and there is no basis upon which the attorney general can stand in the way of our work. . . It's clear that there's more to this story than we have been told, and it is unfortunate that we are being prevented" from learning the facts.
I'm a native of New York City who's called the Green Mountain state of Vermont home since the summer of 1994. A former freelance journalist, I'm a fiercely independent freethinker who's highly skeptical of authority figures -- especially when they're on the wrong side of the issues I care about. But I'm not afraid to also call into question those with whom I would usually be "on the same page" if and when they, too, are on the wrong side of the issues I care about.
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