The top Republican on the House of Representatives' Intelligence Committee defied the Bush administration and pledged to investigate the destruction of CIA interrogation tapes.
"We want to hold the community accountable for what's happened with these tapes. I think we will issue subpoenas," Republican Representative Peter Hoekstra said on Sunday.
The Department of Justice has urged Congress not to investigate and advised intelligence officials not to cooperate with a legislative inquiry.
"You've got a community that's incompetent. They are arrogant. And they are political," Hoekstra said. "And I think that we're going to hold [CIA Director] Mike Hayden accountable."
Earlier this month, the CIA acknowledged destroying videos showing the harsh interrogation of top al-Qaeda suspects. Hayden said the videos, which were made in 2002, were destroyed in 2005 out of fear the tapes would leak and reveal the identifies of interrogators.
The House panel subsequently vowed to investigate, requesting documents and making plans to call several witnesses.
But on Friday, Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Wainstein and CIA Inspector General John Helgerson, who are heading a separate Justice-CIA preliminary inquiry into the videotape destruction, asked Hoekstra and House Intelligence Chairman Silvestre Reyes, a Democrat, to postpone the review until it is clear where the government's preliminary inquiry will lead. They said they could not predict how long that would take.
Democratic Representative Jane Harman said on Sunday that a congressional review was necessary because it was an "independent branch of government." She noted that Congress and the Justice Department have conducted many parallel inquiries in the past.
Harman said that when she was the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee in 2003, she sent a letter to the CIA warning the agency not to destroy the videotapes and "they did it anyway and they didn't tell us."
"So I am worried. It smells like the cover-up of the cover-up," Harman said.
Democratic Senator Joe Biden on Sunday reiterated his call for Attorney General Michael Mukasey to appoint a special counsel to investigate, citing Mukasey's refusal during confirmation hearings in October to describe waterboarding as torture.
"I don't have confidence in the president. I don't have confidence in the vice president. And I don't have confidence in the Justice Department," Biden said.
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
DEMONSTRATIONS: A protester said although she would normally sit back and wait for the next election, she cannot do it this time, adding that ‘we’ve lost too much already’ Thousands of protesters rallied on Saturday in New York, Washington and other cities across the US for a second major round of demonstrations against US President Donald Trump and his hard-line policies. In New York, people gathered outside the city’s main library carrying signs targeting the US president with slogans such as: “No Kings in America” and “Resist Tyranny.” Many took aim at Trump’s deportations of undocumented migrants, chanting: “No ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], no fear, immigrants are welcome here.” In Washington, protesters voiced concern that Trump was threatening long-respected constitutional norms, including the right to due process. The
APPORTIONING BLAME: The US president said that there were ‘millions of people dead because of three people’ — Vladimir Putin, Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelenskiy US President Donald Trump on Monday resumed his attempts to blame Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for Russia’s invasion, falsely accusing him of responsibility for “millions” of deaths. Trump — who had a blazing public row in the Oval Office with Zelenskiy six weeks ago — said the Ukranian shared the blame with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who ordered the February 2022 invasion, and then-US president Joe Biden. Trump told reporters that there were “millions of people dead because of three people.” “Let’s say Putin No. 1, but let’s say Biden, who had no idea what the hell he was doing, No. 2, and
RSS