Original source URL: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/121707J.shtml http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-tapes17dec17,1,7842737.story?coll=la-headlines-nation House Vows to Pursue CIA Inquiry By Julian E. Barnes The Los Angeles Times Monday 17 December 2007 Also see below: The Democrat Who Wants the CIA's Cameras Running (Guardian) A key GOP lawmaker says his committee will investigate the destruction of interrogation tapes over the objections of the Justice Department. Washington - The top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee vowed Sunday to press ahead with the congressional investigation of the CIA's destruction of interrogation videotapes, despite the strenuous objections of the Justice Department. Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan said Congress would call witnesses and demand documents in order to investigate the CIA's decision to destroy videotapes of the interrogations of two suspected Al Qaeda operatives. "We want to hold the [intelligence] community accountable for what's happened with these tapes," Hoekstra said. "I think we will issue subpoenas." On Friday, the Justice Department said it would not cooperate with any congressional investigation, contending that giving lawmakers information could subject the inquiry to political pressures. Immediately after that announcement, Hoekstra and the committee chairman, Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas), said they were stunned that the Justice Department was trying to block the investigation. The two lawmakers have requested all of the CIA's records related to the creation and destruction of the tapes. Appearing on "Fox News Sunday," Hoekstra said he believed his committee would defy the Justice Department's demand that Congress halt its inquiry and would force the Bush administration to provide information. Although Hoekstra said it was likely the committee would issue subpoenas to force testimony and documents, members have not decided whether to offer immunity to potential witnesses. Interviewed with Hoekstra, Rep. Jane Harman of Venice, the intelligence panel's top Democrat from 2003 to 2006, told Fox that she had warned the CIA in 2003 not to destroy the tapes. "It smells like the coverup of the coverup," she said. Harman, who is no longer on the intelligence committee, said that Congress and the Justice Department had conducted parallel inquires before. Hoekstra was extremely critical of the intelligence community and its leaders, calling them arrogant, political and incompetent. "They've clearly demonstrated through the tapes case that they don't believe that they are accountable to Congress," Hoekstra said. "And when we are at war, that is a terrible position for the intelligence community to be." The tapes were created in 2002 and destroyed three years later. The reason cited was concerns that if they were leaked, the identities of the CIA interrogators would be compromised. They reportedly showed CIA officers interrogating Abu Zubaydah, an Al Qaeda suspect linked to the Sept. 11 plot, using a technique known as waterboarding. Human rights advocates, many Democratic lawmakers and Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who was tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, say waterboarding is a form of torture and is banned under U.S. law and international treaties. The technique involves strapping a prisoner to a board, covering his face with cloth or other material and dousing the cloth with water to simulate drowning. In the Fox interview, Harman said that she did not believe waterboarding worked and that she hoped the CIA's interrogation program would be forced to operate under the rules of the Army Field Manual, which prohibits harsh techniques and almost all physical stress. The House has passed legislation, which President Bush has threatened to veto, mandating such a requirement. But Hoekstra would not swear off waterboarding. "The last thing we ought to do is telegraph to Al Qaeda or other terrorist organizations exactly what may happen if and when they are captured," Hoekstra said. "I don't want to give them our playbook." --------- •••@••.••• http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2227856,00.html The Democrat Who Wants the CIA's Cameras Running Elana Schor The Guardian UK Friday 14 December 2007 Amid the growing furore in Congress over the CIA's destruction of videos showing al-Qaida suspects under brutal questioning, the senior Democrat on the House of Representatives' intelligence oversight panel is offering a unique solution: require the taping of all interrogations. Representative Rush Holt, named by senior Democrats to head the new oversight panel this year, has long advocated the recording of all interrogations conducted in US custody. Required videotaping would not only protect terrorism suspects from possible abuses, Holt contends, but also shield US operatives from unjustified suspicion and ensure higher-quality intelligence is received. Now that the destroyed CIA tapes have upended the spy agency and sparked multiple inquiries, Holt told Guardian America, "I figured the time was right to re-introduce the videotape bill, partly because a major objection of the intelligence community-that it can't be and never is done-has been removed." When CIA director Michael Hayden came before Holt's panel yesterday, the Democrat urged him to consider supporting the videotaped interrogations proposal. But the Bush administration has opposed the bill since its first introduction, before the revelations of prisoner abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison facility in Iraq, and is unlikely to bend despite the pressure of the destroyed tapes scandal. Holt declined to discuss where the House intelligence committee's investigation, which plans its first hearing on the interrogation tapes next week, would ultimately lead. But he pointedly disputed Hayden's claim, in a December 6 letter to CIA staff, that the tapes were trashed after the agency determined they were "not relevant to any internal, legislative, or judicial inquiries". "That's just not correct," Holt said. "It was apparent - and it was apparent to the CIA - that there was use for the tapes, at least judicial if not legislative." Two federal judges had ordered the Bush administration to hold onto all materials relating to treatment of detainees at Guantánamo Bay months before the tapes were destroyed, and the American Civil Liberties Union had filed freedom of information requests that required preservation of all records on prisoner interrogation. Under the bill Holt proposed today, the taped interrogations conducted by US troops, spies and contractors would be kept under classified cover and military prosecutors would develop rules to ensure the recordings do not infringe upon the human rights of detained suspects. The Democrat draws a parallel between the CIA's resistance to his plan and state police in the US who initially protested laws ordering them to keep records of suspects under questioning. Police officers now welcome the taping as a protection and a boon to their work, Holt said. "I believe the lessons those law enforcement organizations have learned can be applied to our current detainee policies, particularly in light of the revelations about the CIA's destruction of video and/or audio recordings of detainee interrogations," Holt wrote in a letter to colleagues seeking support for his bill. Five Democrats are currently co-sponsors of the proposal. 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