WASHINGTON — Angry congressional Democrats demanded Friday that the Justice Department investigate why the CIA destroyed videotapes of the interrogation of two terrorism suspects.
The Senate’s No. 2 Democrat, Dick Durbin of Illinois, called on Attorney General Michael Mukasey to find out “whether CIA officials who destroyed these videotapes and withheld information about their existence from official proceedings violated the law.”
Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., accused the CIA of a cover-up. “We haven’t seen anything like this since the 18 1/2-minute gap in the tapes of President Richard Nixon,” he said in a Senate floor speech.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., 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.”
Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee sent letters to CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden and Mukasey asking whether the Justice Department gave legal advice to the CIA on the destruction of the tapes.
At least one White House official, then-White House Counsel Harriet Miers, knew about the CIA’s planned destruction of videotapes, The Washington Post reported Friday night. Sources told the Post that Miers urged the CIA not to destroy the tapes.
The spy agency destroyed the tapes in November 2005, at a time when the Senate Intelligence Committee was asking whether the videotapes showed CIA interrogators were complying with interrogation guidelines.
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