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Lawmakers want answers about destroyed CIA tapes
| Top lawmakers are demanding to know why the CIA destroyed videotapes of interrogation techniques being used on terror suspects and who knew about it. "Were there things on those tapes that they did not want to have seen, that did not conform to what the attorney general would allow them to do?" Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-West Virginia, said Sunday on CBS' "Face the Nation." CIA Director Michael Hayden will testify Tuesday before the Senate Intelligence Committee, which Rockefeller chairs. Over the weekend, the Justice Department and the CIA opened a preliminary inquiry into the destruction of the tapes. The tapes, shot in 2002, showed harsh interrogation techniques of two al Qaeda suspects. The tapes were destroyed in 2005. The probe is to determine "whether further investigation is warranted," the Justice Department's assistant attorney general for national security, Kenneth L. Wainstein, said Saturday in a letter to the CIA's top lawyer, John Rizzo. But Sen. Joe Biden, D-Delaware, said the current investigations are not enough. The Democratic presidential candidate wants Attorney General Michael Mukasey to appoint a special prosecutor. |
