Bush Lawyers Discussed Fate of C.I.A.Tapes

Bush has famously said that he "has no recollection" of any discussion of the videotapes of CIA interrogations of some al Qaeda suspects or of plans to destroy the tapes.

I love the fact that "no recollection" isn't even a proper denial. It's bang in the middle of Alberto Gonzales's territory of, "I don't recall".

However, it is emerging that many people within the Bush administration had very strong opinions about those tapes and what should be done with them.

At least four top White House lawyers took part in discussions with the Central Intelligence Agency between 2003 and 2005 about whether to destroy videotapes showing the secret interrogations of two operatives from Al Qaeda, according to current and former administration and intelligence officials.

The accounts indicate that the involvement of White House officials in the discussions before the destruction of the tapes in November 2005 was more extensive than Bush administration officials have acknowledged.

Those who took part, the officials said, included Alberto R. Gonzales, who served as White House counsel until early 2005; David S. Addington, who was the counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney and is now his chief of staff; John B. Bellinger III, who until January 2005 was the senior lawyer at the National Security Council; and Harriet E. Miers, who succeeded Mr. Gonzales as White House counsel.

It was previously reported that some administration officials had advised against destroying the tapes, but the emerging picture of White House involvement is more complex. In interviews, several administration and intelligence officials provided conflicting accounts as to whether anyone at the White House expressed support for the idea that the tapes should be destroyed.

One former senior intelligence official with direct knowledge of the matter said there had been “vigorous sentiment” among some top White House officials to destroy the tapes.

Bush's attempt to keep the courts out of the investigation has stalled with a court insisting that the Bush administration answer questions regarding the destruction of the tapes and whether or not their destruction has violated a court order.

In June 2005, Kennedy ordered the Bush administration to safeguard "all evidence and information regarding the torture, mistreatment, and abuse of detainees now at the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay."

Five months later, the CIA destroyed the interrogation videos. The recordings involved suspected terrorists Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. The Justice Department argued that the videos weren't covered by the order because the two men were being held in secret CIA prisons overseas, not at the Guantanamo Bay prison.

To claim that the videos weren't covered by the court order, as the persons detained weren't being held at Guantanamo Bay, might turn out to be technically correct; but we are still left with lawyers at the top of the Bush administration scrambling around trying to cover up just what they have been engaging in over the past few years.

It's an unedifying spectacle to say the least. And, as they are so anxious to hide what they have been doing from the public gaze, there is certainly room to argue that - for all their legal linguistics - they know that if we ever saw what they have been doing, we would condemn it as illegal.

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