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CIA Director Speaks to Senate Committee | |
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THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW - December 13, 2007
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CIA Director Speaks to Senate Committee
By Mark Mazzetti and David Johnston
The New York Times
Washington - Gen. Michael V. Hayden, director of the
Central Intelligence Agency, distanced himself on Tuesday
from the decision to record and subsequently destroy
hundreds of hours of video taken during the interrogations
of senior Qaeda captives.
Speaking in public after delivering classified testimony
before a Senate committee, General Hayden said that the
decision to record the interrogations in 2002 was made
under George J. Tenet, then the director of central
intelligence, and that the destruction of those tapes in
2005 came under the watch of Porter J. Goss, who succeeded
Mr. Tenet.
"There are other people at the agency who know about this
far better than I," he said after he testified before the
Senate Intelligence Committee. He had become the agency
director in May 2006, six months after intelligence
officials have said the tapes were destroyed.
Congressional officials said Tuesday that they would
probably call Mr. Goss and Mr. Tenet before the committee
as part of its investigation into the matter.
In a statement to agency employees on Thursday, General
Hayden indicated that he supported the decision to destroy
the videos. He did not reiterate that support in his public
comments on Tuesday, although he did not say the decision
was wrong.
Congressional officials said General Hayden tried to
provide a timeline of events surrounding the destruction
of the tapes that he had constructed from agency records.
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Emerging from the meeting, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV,
the West Virginia Democrat who is chairman of the committee,
called the hearing "useful" but said he still had questions
about who authorized the destruction of the tapes in 2005
and why Congress was not told at the time.
General Hayden, said Thursday that the C.I.A. had informed
leaders in Congress about the destruction of the videos,
which documented the interrogations of two suspects, Abu
Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. But Republicans and
Democrats have said that they can find no record of any
formal notification.
"Trouble arises, as we see with the C.I.A. tape case,
when intelligence leaders refuse to comply with their
constitutional duty to keep Congress 'fully and currently'
informed," said Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan,
the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, in
a statement.
One Democratic aide said the Senate Intelligence Committee
also planned to meet with John L. Helgerson, the agency's
inspector general, to learn more about a joint, preliminary
investigation of the tapes' destruction that he is conduct-
ing with the Justice Department.
The aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because
he is not a spokesman for the committee, said members
did not want to get in the way of what could become an
investigation that could ultimately lead to criminal
charges.
"We have to be very careful not to interfere with their
ability to bring those charges," he said.
In an interview with ABC News on Tuesday, President Bush
said, "It will be interesting to know what the true facts
are," after the inquiry by the Justice Department and
C.I.A. inspector general is complete.
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But lawmakers from both houses showed far less patience.
The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, delivered
a blistering indictment of the agency's decision to destroy
the videos, questioning whether there was a broader cover-
up behind the agency's decision.
One Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Represent-
ative Rush Holt of New Jersey, said the Justice Department
inquiry was not sufficient and asked that Attorney General
Michael B. Mukasey appoint an independent counsel in the
matter.
Mr. Mukasey indicated that he would probably turn down such
calls, saying the Justice Department "is capable of doing
whatever it needs to do."
During his first news conference as attorney general,
Mr. Mukasey said Assistant Attorney General Kenneth
Wainstein, who is leading the investigation, would "go
wherever the facts lead him."
Much of the news conference was dominated by questions
about Mr. Mukasey's views on the harsh interrogation
technique known as waterboarding, in which a subject is
made to believe he is being drowned. The issue nearly
cost Mr. Mukasey his Senate confirmation after he refused
to say if he considered the technique to be torture.
He said Tuesday that he still had not decided and that he
was still reviewing classified legal opinions within the
Justice Department.
Government officials have said that during Mr. Zubaydah's
interrogation sessions, his C.I.A. questioners used tactics
including noise, stress positions, isolation and water-
boarding.
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The Justice Department's role in the videotape episode was
questioned Tuesday by the leaders of the Senate Judiciary
Committee, who in a letter to Mr. Mukasey asked for a
complete account of the department's involvement in the
matter.
The letter was signed by Senators Patrick J. Leahy, the
Vermont Democrat who is the chairman, and Arlen Specter of
Pennsylvania, the committee's senior Republican. It asked
for responses to several questions that have gone unanswer-
ed by Justice Department officials about whether officials
viewed the tapes, whether they were ever aware of plans to
destroy them and when they were first told they had been
destroyed.
Elsewhere in Washington, a three-judge panel of the United
States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia issued
an interim order on Tuesday directing the government not
to destroy any evidence of torture that lawyers for a
Guantánamo Bay detainee say they believe exists.
The order came after lawyers for the detainee, Majid Khan,
filed a request asserting that he had been tortured in
secret C.I.A. prisons for more than three years before he
was transferred to Guantánamo last year.
J. Wells Dixon, one of Mr. Khan's lawyers, said Tuesday
that he believed the judges would not have issued the order
"if they did not think there was any risk" that the govern-
ment might destroy evidence of torture.
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Philip Shenon contributed reporting from Washington, and
William Glaberson from New York.
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