DOJ Announces CIA Tapes Investigation

Last month, former CIA agent John Kiriakou inserted himself into the waterboarding tapes scandal when he went public about the CIA's use of waterboarding. Today, Attorney General Michael Mukasey announced a criminal investigation into the destruction of those CIA videotapes.

Also today, the two (bi-partisan) leaders of the 9-11 Commission published a NYT column asserting that "recent revelations that the CIA destroyed videotaped interrogations of Qaeda operatives leads us to conclude that the agency failed to respond to our lawful requests for information about the 9/11 plot."

When the press reported that, in 2002 and maybe at other times, the C.I.A. had recorded hundreds of hours of interrogations of at least two Qaeda detainees, we went back to check our records. We found that we did ask, repeatedly, for the kind of information that would have been contained in such videotapes...

So, in October 2003, we sent another wave of questions to the C.I.A.’s general counsel. One set posed dozens of specific questions about the reports, including those about Abu Zubaydah. A second set, even more important in our view, asked for details about the translation process in the interrogations; the background of the interrogators; the way the interrogators handled inconsistencies in the detainees’ stories; the particular questions that had been asked to elicit reported information; the way interrogators had followed up on certain lines of questioning; the context of the interrogations so we could assess the credibility and demeanor of the detainees when they made the reported statements; and the views or assessments of the interrogators themselves.

Just before Christmas, Harper's reported that the CIA had demanded that the FBI launch a criminal investigation into Kiriakou's TV appearances.

What classified information did Kiriakou release? The last time the CIA asked the FBI to conduct a similar investigation, it was because CIA employee Valerie Plame had been "outed" as a covert agent. However, Kiriakou's insistence that the Justice Department and the White House approved waterboarding as an "interrogation technique" in 2002 is hardly in the same category: waterboarding is an illegal form of torture, according to international agreements signed by this country. In this instance, his going public is more like Deep Throat or even the leaking of the Pentagon Papers.

Harper's asks:

So why is it harmless when Dick Cheney talks about the CIA’s use of waterboarding, but a violation of national security concerns when Kiriakou does? The answer to that is fairly obvious. If you disclose things classified as “secret” for purposes of advancing the political agenda of the Bush Administration, things are fine. If you disclose things classified as “secret” and articulate even the slightest criticism, then you’re obviously a criminal. We call this using the criminal justice system to attack perceived political adversaries.

How either of these investigations will play out against Congressional inquiry remains anyone's guess. Will there be an independent prosecutor?

See

• Editorial: CIA's destruction of tapes isn't the worst (Minneapolis Star-Tribune)
• Editorial: Why were CIA tapes trashed? (Orange County Register)
• Editorial: Destroyed CIA tapes raise many concerns (San Antonio Express-News)
• Editorial: CIA was wrong to destroy tapes of interrogations (San Jose Mercury-News)
• Editorial: Investigate Fully (Seattle P-I)