Mukasey Launches Probe of CIA Tapes
The Justice Department is (finally) treating the CIA’s decision to destroy videotapes of agents using severe interrogation methods on terrorism suspects as cause for a criminal investigation. Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey acknowledged that the probe was a go on Wednesday and named John Durham as the outside prosecutor for the case.
AP via Breitbart.com:
Mukasey named John Durham, a federal prosecutor in Connecticut, to oversee the case. Durham has a reputation as one of the nation’s most relentless prosecutors. He served as an outside prosecutor overseeing an investigation into the FBI’s use of mob informants in Boston and helped send several Connecticut public officials to prison.
“The CIA will of course cooperate fully with this investigation as it has with the others into this matter,” agency spokesman Mark Mansfield said.
The CIA has already agreed to open its files to congressional investigators, who have begun reviewing documents at the agency’s Virginia headquarters. The House Intelligence Committee has ordered Jose Rodriguez, the former CIA official who directed the tapes be destroyed, to appear at a hearing Jan. 16.