By PAMELA HESS, Associated Press Writer
December 19, 2007
WASHINGTON - The House Intelligence Committee threatened on
Wednesday to subpoena two top CIA officials to testify about
the destruction of interrogation videotapes, rejecting a Bush
administration request that the panel's inquiry be deferred
while the executive branch investigates.
Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, said he wants
acting CIA general counsel John Rizzo and Jose Rodriguez, the
former head of the National Clandestine Service, to testify
to the committee on Jan. 16. Rodriguez is the official who
directed that the tapes, which document the harsh interrogation
of two al-Qaida suspects in 2002, be destroyed.
Reyes told reporters the CIA had agreed to begin providing
documents regarding the 2005 destruction of the tapes this
week. If that doesn't happen, the committee will subpoena them,
too, he said.
The committee's announcement is another sign of increasing
tensions between Congress, the judiciary and the White House
over the interrogation tapes. Congressional overseers are angry
they were not fully informed of the tapes and their destruction,
and want to know what else they have not been told. A federal
judge has summoned Justice Department lawyers to his courtroom
Friday to determine whether the destruction of the tapes violated
a court order to preserve evidence about detainees.
Reyes' threat of subpoenas was triggered by a letter the Justice
Department and the CIA inspector general sent to his committee
on Friday. It asked the committee to delay its investigation
to avoid interfering with an ongoing preliminary inquiry by
those two agencies. Reyes and the committee's top Republican,
Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, had asked for immediate delivery
of all documents, cables and records regarding the taping of
detainee interrogations, as well as for testimony from Rizzo
and Rodriguez at a planned Tuesday hearing. The officials did
not come and the documents were not provided.
Reyes said the Justice Department letter chilled the CIA's
willingness to comply with the committee's requests for information
and witnesses. That has since been clarified, he said. The
Justice Department told the committee Tuesday that "they
have given a green light to the agency to cooperate," he
said.
Justice Department officials denied they had changed their
stance on the investigation. They said their letter did not
specifically forbid the CIA to testify or provide documents,
something the officials said they have no authority to do.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they
were not authorized to talk publicly about the letter.
Attorney General Michael Mukasey has refused, however, to
immediately provide details of the Justice Department's own
investigation to the congressional judiciary committees out
of fear that could taint what may become a criminal case.
Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Wainstein and CIA Inspector
General John Helgerson, who are heading the joint Justice-CIA
preliminary inquiry into the videotape destruction, told the
intelligence committee they could not predict how long their
inquiry would take. They said they would need the same documents
and witnesses the committee has requested.
The New York Times reported in Wednesday editions that at
least four White House lawyers had multiple discussions between
2003 and 2005 about whether the CIA tapes should be destroyed.
They included Alberto Gonzales and Harriet Miers, both former
White House counsels; John Bellinger, then a lawyer at the
National Security Council, and David Addington, a senior adviser
to Vice President Dick Cheney.
A senior official familiar with Bellinger's account of the
2003 White House discussion of the tapes said Bellinger and
other lawyers involved had come to a consensus that the tapes
should not be destroyed. Bellinger could not be reached for
comment Wednesday.
"The clear recommendation of Bellinger and the others
was against destruction of the tapes," the official said,
speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity
of the matter. "The recommendation in 2003 from the White
House was that the tapes should not be destroyed."
The official said Congress had been briefed about the White
House appraisal.
After Bellinger left the White House to become the State Department's
top lawyer in January 2005, he was not a part of any discussions
about the tapes, according to the official.
White House press secretary Dana Perino called the Times story "pernicious
and troubling." In a tense back-and-forth with reporters,
Perino was adamant her opposition to one of the headlines on
the story that said: "White House role was wider than
it said."
How could it be wider, she asked, when she had never commented
on the White House role? She said the headline made it appear
that the White House had been misleading the public.
"The White House has not commented on anybody's involvement
or knowledge, save for me telling everybody that the president
had no recollection of being briefed on the existence or the
destruction of the tapes before he was briefed by (CIA Director
Michael) Hayden," Perino said. "After that, I did
not comment on anybody's knowledge or involvement. So if somebody
has information that contradicts the one thing that I've said,
then this would be true but it's not. And that is why I asked
for a correction and The New York Times is going to correct
it."
___
Associated Press writers Matthew Lee, Deb Riechmann and Lara
Jakes Jordan contributed to this report.
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