The House intelligence committee will also be investigating the CIA torture tapes, according to a just-released statement from committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes:
“While I welcome this preliminary inquiry, this Administration cannot be trusted to police itself. For that reason, the House Intelligence Committee will begin its own inquiry this week. We will follow the facts wherever they may lead, and we will use every tool at our disposal to conduct a fair and complete review on behalf of the House of Representatives and the American people.
“In these matters, there is often a temptation to find a single scapegoat and not address broader issues. We must resist that temptation. Our review will therefore not only focus on the decision regarding the tapes. We must also review what was depicted on the tapes — the interrogation practices that were authorized at the highest levels of government and that, if released, had the potential to do such grave damage to the United States of America.”
Not sure what to make of that last line. Is he suggesting that the damage done by such interrogation practices was avoided by the tapes being destroyed? In terms of damage to the U.S. from our pro-torture policies, that horse has long left the barn, so I suspect that’s just a poorly constructed sentence.
In any event, let the investigations begin! As Larry Johnson notes, this is a holiday gift for D.C. lawyers that will keep on giving.
