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Destruction of C.I.A. Tapes Cleared by Lawyers
The NY Times is reporting today that lawyers within the clandestine branch of the Central Intelligence Agency gave written approval in advance to the destruction in 2005 of videotapes documenting interrogations of two Al Qaeda terrorists.
The involvement of agency lawyers in the decision making would widen the scope of the inquiries into the matter that have now begun in Congress and within the Justice Department. Any written documents are certain to be a focus of government investigators as they try to reconstruct the events leading up to the tapes’ destruction.
The former intelligence official acknowledged that there had been nearly two years of debate among government agencies about what to do with the tapes, and that lawyers within the White House and the Justice Department had in 2003 advised against a plan to destroy them. But the official said that C.I.A. officials had continued to press the White House for a firm decision, and that the C.I.A. was never given a direct order not to destroy the tapes.
“They never told us, ‘Hell, no,’” he said. “If somebody had said, ‘You cannot destroy them,’ we would not have destroyed them.”
I have my doubts that anyone would have destroyed the tapes unless they felt the legal justification for doing so was iron clad. Destroying those tapes does not only run the risk of ruining your career, but could also land you in prison. So I believe that they believed they had the legal authority to destroy the tapes.
Whether or not that turns out to be the case (I’m betting it will) remains to be seen.
-Chris Jones
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hello,
I have my doubts that anyone would have destroyed the tapes unless they felt the legal justification for doing so was iron clad. Destroying those tapes does not only run the risk of ruining your career, but could also land you in prison. So I believe that they believed they had the legal authority to destroy the tapes.
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happy123
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lawyer directory-lawyer directory
hello,
I have my doubts that anyone would have destroyed the tapes unless they felt the legal justification for doing so was iron clad. Destroying those tapes does not only run the risk of ruining your career, but could also land you in prison. So I believe that they believed they had the legal authority to destroy the tapes.
=====================
happy123
======================
lawyer directory-lawyer directory