House Panel Subpoenas C.I.A. Official Over Destroyed Tapes
WASHINGTON — The House Intelligence Committee subpoenaed the former chief of the Central Intelligence Agency’s clandestine service on Thursday to testify about his role in the destruction of videotapes documenting the interrogation of two suspected operatives of Al Qaeda.
The subpoena for the official, Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., who current and former officials say ordered the destruction of the tapes in 2005, came after the committee’s staff spent hours at C.I.A. headquarters poring over classified documents related to the matter.
Lawmakers are planning to have Mr. Rodriguez and John A. Rizzo, the C.I.A.’s top lawyer, testify before the committee in mid-January, the first public hearing about the episode since the destruction of the tapes was disclosed this month.
President Bush said Thursday that he was confident that a preliminary inquiry by the Justice Department and the C.I.A., along with Congressional investigations, would “end up enabling us to find out what exactly happened.”
In a news conference, Mr. Bush disputed a suggestion that White House officials had been ambiguous about when he learned about the destruction of the tapes. Echoing earlier comments, Mr. Bush said he learned about the tapes only on Dec. 6, when Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the C.I.A. director, briefed him about them. That was the day after The New York Times notified the C.I.A. that it was planning to publish an article about the tapes.
Mr. Bush declined to comment about whether he agreed with the decision to destroy the tapes, saying, “Let’s wait and see what the facts are.”
Mr. Bush’s comments came after reports this week that several top White House lawyers were involved in discussions about the tapes between early 2003 and their destruction in November 2005. The tapes documented hundreds of hours of interrogations during 2002 of Abu Zubaydah and Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri, the two Qaeda suspects, who were taken into C.I.A. custody that year.
Although Mr. Rodriguez announced his retirement from the C.I.A. over the summer, he will not leave the agency until next month.
Representative Silvestre P. Reyes, chairman of the Intelligence Committee, promised in a statement on Thursday that his committee’s investigation would be “fair and complete.”
“We have been told that Mr. Rodriguez would like to tell his story, but his counsel has advised us that a subpoena would be necessary,” Mr. Reyes said, suggesting that Mr. Rodriguez could be seeking immunity in exchange for his testimony.
Robert S. Bennett, an attorney for Mr. Rodriguez, declined to comment about the subpoena.
Mr. Bush, when asked whether he was concerned that his administration once again faced criticism about its handling of terror suspects, broadly defended the aggressive interrogation methods.
“We’re asking people to do hard things, for starters, which is intercept and find terrorists, and to spread freedom,” he said.
But he appeared to acknowledge the damage these disclosures could do to America’s reputation abroad.
“I don’t want people to get the wrong impression of our country,” he said, “but I’m not surprised we get criticized on a variety of fronts.”
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