They Destroyed The Tapes To Cover Up The Crime

Not only have federal courts ordered preservation of all relevant documents AFTER the revelation of the destroyed CIA torture tapes, apparently the same orders were in place before.

The Bush administration was under court order not to discard evidence of detainee torture and abuse months before the CIA destroyed videotapes that revealed some of its harshest interrogation tactics.

Normally, that would force the government to defend itself against obstruction allegations. But the CIA may have an out: its clandestine network of overseas prisons.

While judges focused on the detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and tried to guarantee that any evidence of detainee abuse would be preserved, the CIA was performing its toughest questioning half a world away. And by the time President Bush publicly acknowledged the secret prison system, interrogation videotapes of two terrorism suspects had been destroyed.

That certainly fits with the torture timeline of the tapes being destroyed soon after Dana Priest uncovered the CIA black sites on the pages of the Washington Post. Now the ACLU is asking that the CIA be held in contempt for destroying the tapes. I'm not sure what that means (are you going to throw the whole CIA in jail), but clearly this controversy is spinning out of control. And more and more detainees and suspects are revealing that their interrogations were videotaped and audiotaped, long after the CIA claims it ended the practice. Michael Hayden has now admitted that the agency failed to disclose to Congress what the hell was going on. This all points to the failure of intelligence oversight, which has been going on more some time (although I don't think David Ignatius has a clue about what to do about that). Destruction of evidence and lack of disclosure is a persistent problem, not a brand new thing. We have to determine a way to oversee the intelligence collection meaningfully and with due haste. Part of that comes from getting leaders in those oversight committees who are committed to the rule of law. The other part may come in the form of legal liability, which always tends to button things up for a while.