From Huffington Post

The Senate's No. 2 Democrat on Friday asked the Justice Department to investigate 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.

White House press secretary Dana Perino said Friday that President Bush did not have any recollection about the tapes or about their destruction.

"I spoke to the president this morning about this. He has no recollection of being made aware of the tapes or their destruction before yesterday" when he was briefed by Hayden, she said.

In a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, 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 speech on the Senate floor, 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."

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said his committee would conduct a full review of the matter. Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Clinton, D- N.Y., also called for a full investigation.

"We've got to really clean house here and get to the bottom of what's been going on," she said Friday.

In his Thursday message to CIA employees, Hayden said that House and Senate intelligence committee leaders were informed about the tapes and the CIA's intention to destroy them in 2003. He also said the CIA's internal watchdog watched the tapes and verified that the interrogation practices were legal. The tapes were destroyed in late 2005.

The CIA taped the interrogation of the first two terror suspects the agency held, one of whom was Abu Zubaydah. Zubaydah, under harsh questioning, told CIA interrogators about alleged 9/11 accomplice Ramzi Binalshibh, President Bush said publicly in 2006.

Hayden told agency employees the interrogations were legal, and said the tapes were not relevant to "any internal, legislative, or judicial inquiries."

The Center for Constitutional Rights, which coordinates the work of all attorneys representing U.S. prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, says the CIA may have destroyed crucial evidence a court said it was entitled to in 2004.

The group filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in 2004 that has forced the Defense Department and other government agencies to release thousands of documents.

CCR said Friday it is now "deeply concerned" the CIA may have destroyed evidence relating to Majid Khan, a former CIA detainee now held at Guantanamo.

The tapes' revelation may affect several ongoing terrorism trials.

Convicted terrorism conspirator Jose Padilla's lawyers claimed in a Florida federal court that Zubaydah was tortured into saying Padilla was an al-Qaida associate. In a Nov. 16 response, the Justice Department dismissed Padilla's allegations as "meritless," saying Padilla's legal team could not prove that Zubaydah had been tortured.

Padilla's lawyers asked to interview Zubaydah to determine the circumstances of his interrogations but the judge denied the request. Padilla and his two co-defendants will be sentenced next month. They face life in prison on three terror-related convictions.

In a separate case, attorneys for al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui in 2003 began seeking videotapes of interrogations they believed might help them show their client wasn't a part of the 9/11 attacks. These requests heated up in 2005 as the defense slowly learned the identities of more detainees in U.S. custody.

On Nov. 3, 2005, a U.S. District judge ordered the government to disclose whether it had video or audio tapes of specific interrogations. Eleven days later, the government denied it had tapes relevant to the request.

Rep. Jane Harman of California, who was the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee in 2003, said she told the CIA in a classified letter not to destroy the tapes. She was not informed in 2005 when the CIA went ahead with its plan to destroy them.

The Senate Intelligence Committee did not learn of the tapes' destruction until November 2006.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., who was chairman of the House Intelligence Committee from August 2004 until the end of 2006, said through a spokesman that he doesn't remember being informed of the videotaping program.

"He believes the committee should have been fully briefed and consulted on how this was handled," said Jamal Ware, senior adviser to the committee.

The tapes were destroyed at a time when there was increasing pressure from defense attorneys to obtain videotapes of detainee interrogations. The 2004 scandal over the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq had focused public attention on interrogation techniques. The tapes also were not provided to the 9/11 Commission, which relied heavily on intelligence reports about Zubaydah and Binalshibh's 2002 interrogations.

CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield said the agency did not subvert the 9/11 commission's work.

"The agency went to great lengths to meet the requests of the 9/11 Commission. In fact, because it was thought the commission could ask about tapes at some point, they were not destroyed while the commission was active," he said.