Judge Schedules Hearing On CIA Tape Destruction
Agency Acted Despite Order to Preserve
Wednesday, December 19, 2007; Page A04
A federal judge in Washington yesterday ordered a court hearing Friday to examine whether the CIA violated a judicial order by destroying videotapes
showing harsh interrogation methods, rebuffing pleas from the Bush administration that he stay out of the matter while the executive branch's own probe
is underway.
The tapes were destroyed in November 2005, intelligence officials said. In June of that year, Kennedy had ordered the government to preserve detention and interrogation records as part of an ongoing civil lawsuit by a group of detainees held at the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The lawsuit is only one of several cases in which courts have ordered the government to preserve documents or other records related to interrogations, and the destruction of the tapes has been raised by multiple lawyers as a possible obstruction of justice by the CIA that could interfere with efforts to determine whether some clients were tortured into making false admissions.
Lawyers for a man convicted of terrorism charges alongside al-Qaeda operative Jose Padilla asked a federal judge in Miami yesterday, for example, to order the government to turn over any new information on Abu Zubaida, who had helped identify Padilla to U.S. authorities.
In the Washington case, lawyers for the plaintiffs sought a hearing to examine whether the destruction of the tapes violated the June 2005 preservation order or otherwise undermined the government's credibility.
An attorney in the case, David H. Remes, wrote in a brief filed Monday that the plaintiffs' concerns "reach well beyond whether the government has violated the Court's preservation order, to the more general question of the government's handling of evidence that may be relevant to this case."
The Justice Department declined comment yesterday on the judge's scheduling decision.


