By Scott Shane, New York Times
The prosecutor investigating the Central Intelligence Agency’s destruction of interrogation videotapes is reviewing whether government officials violated any of 17 court orders requiring the preservation of evidence or broke the law by concealing the tapes’ existence or approving their destruction, according to court papers filed late Friday night.
The seven-page declaration by the prosecutor, John H. Durham, gives the most detailed account to date of plans for his month-old criminal investigation, involving hundreds of hours of video recordings of harsh interrogations of two Qaeda suspects, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri.
It gives no indication that his team of F.B.I. agents and lawyers intends, at least for now, to go beyond the tapes to examine whether the C.I.A.’s harsh interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, themselves violated the law.
“The investigation team is actively reviewing whether any person or persons obstructed justice, made false statements, or acted in contempt of courts or Congress in connection with the destruction of the videotapes,” Mr. Durham wrote.
He described the “central questions” for investigators as including “who within the federal government knew of the existence of the videotaped interrogations at issue; who was aware of the various orders that might have required the preservation of the videotapes; and who was involved in any way, in the decision and/or directive to destroy the videotapes.”