Government accused of biased CIA probe
on Dec 17, 2007 at 6:07 pm
Lawyers for a group of Guantanamo Bay detainees on Monday accused the Bush Adminisration of trying to arrange that only federal agencies “implicated in the destruction” of Central Intelligence Agency videotapes of harsh interrogation sessions have any role in probing that incident. In a new filing in the case of Abdah, et al., v. Bush, et al., in U.S. District Court (found here), detainees’ counsel said: “Plainly the government wants only foxes guarding this henhouse.”
While the Justice Department on Friday told U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy not to start a judicial inquiry into the tapes controversy partly because Congress was investigating, the detainees’ lawyer included in their new filing references to the fact that the Administration is trying to thwart legislative inquiries, too.
Kennedy has pending a motion by the detainees to start a court probe of the tapes’ destruction. In the new filing, the prisoners’ lawyers said the inquiry they have sought at this point would be an exploration only of “what steps, if any, might be appropriate.
The motion also made mention of a still classified document that the detainees’ counsel filed on Thursday, apparently complaining more broadly about the “government’s handling of evidence” that may bear on the government’s authority to keep detainees at Guantanamo Bay.
