Top House Democrats want special counsel in CIA tape case

Source: AP

Associated Press - January 15, 2008 6:13 PM ET

CAPITOL HILL (AP) - Top House Democrats are calling for an outside lawyer to investigate the CIA's destruction of interrogation videotapes.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers and nearly 20 other House Democrats say the Justice Department's ability to conduct an independent investigation is compromised. They say the CIA apparently consulted Justice and White House lawyers about the tapes and their destruction in 2005.

Conyers tells the attorney general in a letter that nothing less than a special counsel "will meet the tests of independence, transparency and completeness."



Read more: http://www.khq.com/global/story.asp?s=7629171

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Years of discussion preceded destruction of CIA tapes
Officials believed they were carrying out agency's intentions, in the absence of any formal opposition.
By Joby Warrick and Walter Pincus
The Washington Post
Article Last Updated: 01/16/2008 01:49:33 AM MST


WASHINGTON — In late 2005, the retiring CIA station chief in Bangkok sent a classified cable to his superiors in Langley, Va., asking if he could destroy videotapes recorded at a secret CIA prison in Thailand that, in part, portrayed intelligence officers using simulated drowning to extract information from suspected al-Qaeda members.

The tapes had been sitting in the station chief's safe, in the U.S. Embassy compound, for nearly three years. Although those involved in the interrogations had pushed for the tapes' destruction in those years and a secret debate about it had twice reached the White House, CIA officials had not acted on those requests.

This time was different.

The CIA had a new director and an acting general counsel, neither of whom sought to block the destruction of the tapes, according to agency officials. The station chief was insistent because he was retiring and wanted to resolve the matter before he left, the officials said. And in November 2005, a published report that detailed a secret CIA prison system provoked an international outcry.

more:http://www.denverpost.com/ci_7982439?source=rss

I am glad we have writers like Walter Pincus (!).

we will have a special prosecutor AND a war crimes commission.
These assholes better be hiding out somewhere more remote than Paraguay.

Are YOU not chair of the House Judiciary committee? Does YOUR committee not have subpoena power? You've got Republicans on your committee, as well as Democrats.

START YOUR OWN FUCKING INVESTIGATION. Or, are you afraid that might force you to start impeachment proceedings against the POS who sits in the oval office?

elsewhere. I knew that they would start trying to destroy the records of what they have done.