Senator seeks investigation of CIA's destruction of videotapes

WASHINGTON — Congressional Democrats Friday demanded a full Justice Department investigation into whether the CIA obstructed justice by destroying videotapes that documented the harsh 2002 interrogations of two alleged terrorists.

A day after CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden told agency employees the tapes were destroyed in 2005, members of Congress, human rights groups and lawyers for accused terrorists said the tapes may have been key evidence that the U.S. government had illegally authorized torture.

White House press secretary Dana Perino said Friday that President Bush did not have any recollection about the tapes or about their destruction. But she could not rule out White House involvement in the tapes' destruction, saying that she asked only the president about it, not others.

Perino refused to comment on whether the destruction could represent obstruction of justice or a threat to cases against terrorism suspects. She said that if the attorney general decides to investigate, "of course the White House would support that."

In a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, the Senate's No. 2 Democrat, Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois, asked for a probe of "whether CIA officials who destroyed these videotapes and withheld information about their existence from official proceedings violated the law."

In a Senate floor speech Durbin dismissed the CIA's explanation that it was trying to protect the identities of the interrogators. "We know that it is possible and in fact easy to cover the faces" of those who appear on camera, Durbin said. "This is not an issue that can be ignored."

Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., accused the CIA of a coverup. "The agency was desperate to cover up damning evidence of their practices," he said in floor remarks. "We haven't seen anything like this since the eighteen-and-a-half-minute gap in the tapes of President Richard Nixon."

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Armed Services Committee, told reporters the CIA's explanation that the tapes were destroyed to protect the identify of agents is "a pathetic excuse," adding: "You'd have to burn every document at the CIA that has the identity of an agent on it under that theory."

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said his committee would conduct a full review of the matter. Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Clinton, D- N.Y., also called for an investigation.

House Judiciary Committee Democrats sent letters to Hayden and Mukasey Friday asking whether the Justice Department gave legal advice to the CIA on the destruction of the tapes, and whether it was planning an obstruction-of-justice investigation.

Hayden told CIA employees that House and Senate intelligence committee leaders were informed about the tapes and the CIA's intention to destroy them in 2003, which some members of Congress disputed. He also said the CIA's internal watchdog watched the tapes and verified that the interrogation practices were legal. The tapes were destroyed in late 2005.

The CIA taped the interrogations of the first two terror suspects the agency held, one of whom was Abu Zubaydah. Zubaydah, under harsh questioning, told CIA interrogators about alleged 9/11 accomplice Ramzi Binalshibh, President Bush said publicly in 2006.

Hayden told agency employees the interrogations were legal, and said the tapes were not relevant to "any internal, legislative, or judicial inquiries."

The Center for Constitutional Rights, which coordinates the work of all attorneys representing U.S. prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, says the CIA may have destroyed crucial evidence a court said it was entitled to in 2004.

The group filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in 2004 that has forced the Defense Department and other government agencies to release thousands of documents.

CCR said Friday it is now "deeply concerned" the CIA may have destroyed evidence relating to Majid Khan, a former CIA detainee now held at Guantanamo.

The tapes' revelation may affect ongoing terrorism trials.

Convicted terrorism conspirator Jose Padilla's lawyers claimed in a Florida federal court that Zubaydah was tortured into saying Padilla was an al-Qaida associate involved in a "dirty bomb" plot. In a November 2006 response, the Justice Department dismissed Padilla's allegations as "meritless," saying Padilla's legal team could not prove that Zubaydah had been tortured.

Padilla and two co-defendants were convicted in August of three terror-related charges and face life in prison at sentencing next month. The dirty bomb allegations were dropped.

Padilla's lawyers asked to interview Zubaydah to determine the circumstances of his interrogations but the judge denied the request. Padilla and his two co-defendants will be sentenced next month. They face life in prison on three terror-related convictions.

Then-U.S. District Judge Michael Mukasey, now the U.S. attorney general, signed the warrant used by the FBI to arrest Padilla in May 2002 at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. That warrant relied in part on information obtained from Zubaydah, court records show.

In a separate case, attorneys for al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui in 2003 began seeking videotapes of interrogations they believed might help them show their client wasn't a part of the 9/11 attacks. These requests heated up in 2005 as the defense slowly learned the identities of more detainees in U.S. custody.

On Nov. 3, 2005, a U.S. District judge ordered the government to disclose whether it had video or audio tapes of specific interrogations. Eleven days later, the government denied it had tapes relevant to the request.

The tapes were destroyed at a time when there was increasing pressure from defense attorneys to obtain videotapes of detainee interrogations. The 2004 scandal over the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq had focused public attention on interrogation techniques. The tapes also were not provided to the 9/11 Commission, which relied heavily on intelligence reports about Zubaydah and Binalshibh's 2002 interrogations.

CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield said the agency did not subvert the 9/11 commission's work.

"Because it was thought the commission could ask about tapes at some point, they were not destroyed while the commission was active," he said.

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Associated Press writers Curt Anderson in Miami and Jennifer Loven and Deb Riechmann in Washington contributed to this report.