It was a foregone conclusion that Democrats would call for dog and pony shows hearings and investigations after the CIA admitted to destroying interrogation tapes. So right on cue that’s exactly what they did, complete with “faux” outrage and references to Richard Nixon.
From The Huffington Post:
Congressional Democrats Friday demanded a full Justice Department investigation into whether the CIA obstructed justice by destroying videotapes that documented the harsh 2002 interrogations of two alleged terrorists.
A day after CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden told agency employees the tapes were destroyed in 2005, members of Congress, human rights groups and lawyers for accused terrorists said the tapes may have been key evidence that the U.S. government had illegally authorized torture…
In a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, the Senate’s No. 2 Democrat, Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois, asked for a probe of “whether CIA officials who destroyed these videotapes and withheld information about their existence from official proceedings violated the law.”
In a Senate floor speech Durbin dismissed the CIA’s explanation that it was trying to protect the identities of the interrogators. “We know that it is possible and in fact easy to cover the faces” of those who appear on camera, Durbin said. “This is not an issue that can be ignored.”
Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., accused the CIA of a coverup. “The agency was desperate to cover up damning evidence of their practices,” he said in floor remarks. “We haven’t seen anything like this since the eighteen-and-a-half-minute gap in the tapes of President Richard Nixon.”
-Chris Jones
