Surprise, Surprise

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.

  NYT

But! How could that be? George himself just found out about those tapes being destroyed a few weeks ago! He said so himself.

One former senior intelligence official with direct knowledge of the matter said there had been “vigorous sentiment” among some top White House officials to destroy the tapes. The former official did not specify which White House officials took this position, but he said that some believed in 2005 that any disclosure of the tapes could have been particularly damaging after revelations a year earlier of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

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Some other officials assert that no one at the White House advocated destroying the tapes. Those officials acknowledged, however, that no White House lawyer gave a direct order to preserve the tapes or advised that destroying them would be illegal.

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The current and former officials also provided new details about the role played in November 2005 by Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., then the chief of the agency’s clandestine branch, who ultimately ordered the destruction of the tapes.

The officials said that before he issued a secret cable directing that the tapes be destroyed, Mr. Rodriguez received legal guidance from two C.I.A. lawyers, Steven Hermes and Robert Eatinger.

[...]

On Wednesday, the White House press secretary, Dana Perino, issued a statement saying “The New York Times’ inference that there is an effort to mislead in this matter is pernicious and troubling.”

You think maybe this girl who didn’t know what the Cuban Missile Crisis was is in over her head?

The White House has kicked back against the Times on various other front-page reports in recent years but today it has asked for something specific: a "correction" of the [NYT] headline's deck.

The Hill, the Washington, D.C. newspapers, reports, "Catherine Mathis, senior vice president of corporate communications for the newspaper, stated that the sub-headline has been changed, adding that a correction would be printed. However, Mathis also pointed out that the White House did not challenge the contents of the article."

  Editor & Publisher

Yeah, sure. But they know their supporters don’t read past the headlines. The subheadline that the Times “corrected” read: "White House Role Was Wider Than It Said.” They pulled it. Pansies.

Attorney Jonathan Turley comments on the tapes fiasco:

First, the Bush Administration tell Congress and courts that no such evidence exists. Second, while members of Congress, judges, and defense attorneys are demanding the evidence, the Bush Administration methodically gathers every copy and destroys the evidence. Third, while people uniformly demand a special prosecutor, the Justice Department insists that it will investigate itself. Fourth, almost immediately upon rejecting a special prosecutor, the Justice Department then claims its own investigation of its own misconduct as an excuse not to turn over any evidence of its misconduct to courts.

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I have seen more reputable conduct from mob attorneys.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.