Today’s Must Read

We all can get along. At least for the time being.

After the House intelligence committee threatened to issue subpoenas yesterday, the Justice Department backed down. Now the CIA will begin forking over documents relating to the destruction of the torture tapes, and the committee will hear from their second witness, the CIA’s general counsel John Rizzo.

The DoJ seemed keen to paint Congress’ reaction to their letter last Friday as an overreaction. Spokesman Brian Roehrkasse told the New York Times that “the department has ‘no desire to block any Congressional investigation’ and has not advised the C.I.A. against cooperating with the committee.” And the AP relays that Department officials “denied they had changed their stance on the investigation.”

And indeed, if you look at their letter to the committee from last Friday, where they “respectfully request” that the committee sit on their thumbs until the DoJ probes into the tapes’ destruction wraps up, they have a point. They were just askin’. But somehow the graciousness and subtlety of the letter was lost on the House intelligence committee, who pronounced themselves “stunned” that the Department would move to block their investigation and said that, indeed, they’d been “notified that the Department of Justice has advised CIA not cooperate with our investigation.”

Really, if the DoJ was just asking, it should have been pretty clear off the bat that the answer was “no.” But apparently the threat of subpoenas was needed to drive the point home.

Now, while The Washington Post, straightforwardly calls this a reversal on the Department’s part, the Times hedges, calling it a “partial resolution.” Take, for instance, Roehrkasse (take him, please!):

“The wisdom, propriety and appropriateness of the decision to destroy these tapes are worthy and compelling subjects of an oversight investigation,” Mr. Roehrkasse said. But he said officials were still concerned that a Congressional inquiry could cause “disruption of our initial witness interviews, the delay and disruption of our document collection, and the tainting of any future criminal prosecutorial action because of Congressional grants of immunity to witnesses.”

Accordingly, things will get interesting when it comes to Jose Rodriguez, the CIA official who ordered the tapes’ destruction. The committee wants to talk to him in January, along with Rizzo. But, with Rodriguez’s lawyer crying about witchhunts and scapegoats, that’s going to be hairy:

Officials said Mr. Rodriguez’s appearance before the committee might involve complex negotiations over legal immunity at a time when the Justice Department and the intelligence agency were reviewing whether the destruction of the tapes broke any laws.

So enjoy the inter-branch comity while it lasts.