(Updated 5:30 p.m. EST Wednesday, December 19, 2007)
By Skeeter Sanders
A U.S. District Court Judge in Washington ordered the Bush administration Tuesday to answer questions about the destruction of Central Intelligence Agency interrogation videos of two al-Qaida suspects, amid growing 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.
Rejecting the government's efforts to keep the courts out of the investigation, U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy ordered Justice Department lawyers to appear at a hearing scheduled for Friday morning to discuss whether destroying the tapes, which showed two al-Qaida suspects being questioned, violated his 2005 court order.
In documents filed late last Friday, government lawyers told Kennedy that for the judge to demand information about the CIA interrogation videotapes would interfere with current investigations by Congress and the Justice Department.
On Tuesday, Kennedy disagreed.
CIA Destroyed Tapes Despite 2005 Court Order to 'Preserve Evidence'
Acting in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of detentions at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Judge Kennedy ordered the Bush administration in June 2005 -- five months before the tapes were ordered destroyed by Jose Rodriguez, Jr., then the chief of the CIA's clandestine operations -- to safeguard "all evidence and information regarding the torture, mistreatment, and abuse of detainees now at. . . Guantanamo Bay."
Attorneys representing a group of Yemeni detainees at Guantanamo had asked Kennedy to hold a hearing on whether the tapes' destruction violated that order. The now-destroyed recordings involved suspected al-Qaida terrorists Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri.
Government lawyers told Judge Kennedy the tapes were not covered by his court order because because Zubaydah and al-Nashiri were being kept in secret prisons at the time, not at the Guantanamo military prison in Cuba. By the time President Bush acknowledged the existence of those prisons and Zubaydah and al-Nashiri were transferred to Guantanamo, the tapes were destroyed.
Acting Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Bucholtz was said in court documents to be concerned that Kennedy might order CIA officials to testify about the tapes. Bucholtz said that "could potentially complicate the ongoing efforts to arrive at a full factual understanding of the matter." Bucholtz also argued that Kennedy does not have jurisdiction over the matter in any case.
Kennedy's decision could, as a result of Friday's hearing, lead to charges of obstruction of justice levied against the government.
ACLU Seeks Contempt Citation Against CIA Over Destroyed Tapes
Attorneys in other cases, meanwhile, began pressing other judges to demand information about the tapes.
The ACLU filed a motion in U.S. District Court in New York last Wednesday seeking a contempt-of-court citation against the CIA for violating a judge's 2004 order to produce records concerning the treatment of all detainees apprehended after the 9/11 attacks and held in U.S. custody abroad -- not only at Guantanamo, but also at the CIA's secret prisons in Eastern Europe.
The ACLU had filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in June 2004. U.S. District Court Judge Alvin Hellerstein ordered the CIA and other government departments the following September to "produce or identify" all relevant documents by October 15.
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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