The White House hasn’t commented directly about the ongoing scandal regarding the destruction of CIA interrogation tapes, but it did comment on an article in today’s New York Times which asserts…

“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.”

The White House has called the article “pernicious”, claiming that the Times should correct assertions that the administration hid facts. The administration has also been leaning on Congress and the courts to “back off”, claiming that the courts do not have the authority to get involved. In most cases it has succeeded, but one U.S. Federal Judge, Henry H. Kennedy, recently asserted that the government must answer questions about the destruction of the tapes. Kennedy was the same judge that ordered the administration in 2005 to ensure the safety of “all evidence and information regarding the torture, mistreatment, and abuse of detainees” at the US detention facility at Guantanamo.

The tapes, which showed the interrogations of two al-Qaeda suspects, were not made at the US detention facility at Guantanamo, a fact that government attorneys claim renders Kennedy’s 2005 order moot.

The CIA has claimed that it destroyed the tapes to protect the identities of the interrogators, even though one of them has since come forward and done a television interview about his role in the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, claiming that vital intelligence was gleaned from the interrogation that ultimately helped disrupt significant terror activities. But because the tapes were destroyed, only the CIA and, by extension, the administration, knows whether the intelligence acquired was significantly actionable.