One less thing for the administration to worry about. From the AP:
A federal judge refused on Wednesday to delve into the destruction of CIA interrogation videos, saying there was no evidence the Bush administration violated a court order and the Justice Department deserved time to conduct its own investigation.
Update: It looks like the long-held secrecy of the black sites and the existence of the video tapes may have saved the administration here. From Judge Henry Kennedy’s decision (read it here):
The 2005 Order prohibits [the administration] from destroying evidence regarding any torture, mistreatment, or abuse of detainees that occurred at Guantánamo Bay. Petitioners do not assert that the destroyed tapes depict interrogations that occurred at Guantánamo Bay and respondents have represented to the court that the interrogations depicted on the tapes did not occur there. To the contrary, the videotapes were recorded in their entirety in 2002 before either of the suspected Al Quaeda operatives shown on the tapes had been at Guantánamo Bay…. Therefore, petitionersâ motion will be denied.
