NYT Editorial: The Right Move on the C.I.A. Tapes

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Editorial


The Justice Department’s announcement that it has ordered a formal criminal investigation into the destruction of Central Intelligence Agency interrogation videotapes is a heartening, and unaccustomed, sign that the attorney general is doing his duty to get to the bottom of a roiling scandal.

After years of watching his predecessor excuse and obscure government wrongdoing, Attorney General Michael Mukasey’s choice of a tough-minded career federal prosecutor to lead the criminal inquiry also strikes us as a good sign. This is especially true considering Mr. Mukasey’s faltering performance at his confirmation hearing, where he refused to say whether he considered waterboarding — a brutal interrogation method believed to be shown on the tapes — to be torture.

It is essential that the truth of what was on those tapes and how they came to be destroyed now comes out and that all of the government officials involved in their destruction be held legally accountable — whether they are C.I.A. officers or top White House officials who spent three years debating whether to destroy the tapes.

The tapes, which depicted the interrogations of two Al Qaeda operatives in 2002, may themselves have amounted to evidence of a crime — torture — carried out under the president’s authority. The decision to destroy them appears to be one more move by the Bush administration to cover up the many abuses it has committed in the name of fighting terrorism.

Reporting by The Times has shown that the destruction was, indeed, driven by fear of public scrutiny.

Government officials may also have engaged in illegal obstruction when they failed to provide the tapes to the bipartisan commission that President Bush assigned to review the events surrounding the Sept. 11 attacks, or to the courts. Mr. Mukasey’s decision followed a joint preliminary inquiry by the Justice Department and the C.I.A.’s inspector general, which determined a full criminal investigation was warranted.

John Durham, a federal prosecutor from Connecticut who will be in charge of the inquiry, has the experience for the job. We hope that he will also have the independence he needs to do it correctly.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/03/opinion/03thu2.html?ex=1357102800&en=00d4aa7a17b750a7&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss