Intel Chair Reyes Big Fan of CIA Tape Destroyer

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C.I.A. Official in Inquiry Called a ‘Hero’

By MARK MAZZETTI
Published: December 10, 2007


WASHINGTON, Dec. 9 — At a conference in El Paso in mid-August, Representative Silvestre Reyes of Texas, the Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, heaped praise on a man whose exploits, he joked, had been the inspiration for the television show “24.”

From fast cars to fine wines, Mr. Reyes said, the appetites of the man, Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., are the stuff of legend. Then turning serious, Mr. Reyes hailed Mr. Rodriguez’s three decades of undercover work for the Central Intelligence Agency, where he recently stepped down as head of its clandestine service, and called Mr. Rodriguez an “American hero.”

Four months later, Mr. Rodriguez’s role in the destruction of hundreds of hours of videotape of harsh interrogations of two operatives of Al Qaeda is at the center of an inquiry by Mr. Reyes’s committee on Capitol Hill. With a separate Justice Department inquiry that could lead to a full criminal investigation into the matter, the man who spent a career in the shadows has been thrust uneasily into the spotlight.

Mr. Rodriguez is hardly the only current or former agency official under scrutiny. In the months ahead, investigators will try to reconstruct the chain of events leading up to the decision in November 2005 to destroy the interrogation tapes, and to determine who else inside the agency may have approved the decision.

According to a former top intelligence official who has spoken to Mr. Rodriguez in recent days, Mr. Rodriguez remains confident that he acted lawfully and had the authority to destroy the tapes. He could not be reached for comment.

Whether C.I.A. lawyers in fact approved the destruction will be a question for investigators in Congress, the Justice Department, and the C.I.A. inspector general’s office. Some Congressional officials said that they want to know why Porter J. Goss, the C.I.A. director at the time the tapes were destroyed, appears never to have notified Congressional committees about the destruction.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/10/washington/10intel.html?ref=washington