Hearing on CIA tapes ordered

WASHINGTON – The administration must answer questions about the destruction of CIA interrogation videos of two al-Qaida suspects, a federal judge said Tuesday, rejecting the government’s efforts to keep the courts out of the investigation.

U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy ordered Justice Department lawyers to appear before him Friday at 11 a.m. to discuss whether destroying the tapes, which showed two al-Qaida suspects being questioned, violated a court order.

The Justice Department has urged Congress and the courts to back off, saying its investigators need time to complete their inquiry. Government attorneys say the courts don’t have the authority to get involved in the matter.

For now, at least, Kennedy disagreed.

In June 2005, Kennedy ordered the Bush administration to safeguard “all evidence and information regarding the torture, mistreatment, and abuse of detainees now at the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay.”

Five months later, the CIA destroyed the interrogation videos. The recordings involved suspected terrorists Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. The Justice Department argued that the videos weren’t covered by the order because the two men were being held in secret CIA prisons overseas, not at the Guantanamo Bay prison.

The New York Times reported Tuesday night on its Web site that at least four top White House lawyers took part in discussions with the CIA between 2003 and 2005 about whether to destroy the tapes, according to current and former administration and intelligence officials the newspaper did not identify.

Alberto Gonzales, the former attorney general who served as White House counsel until early 2005, was among those who took part, the officials said.