The prosecutor who led the case in the destruction of CIA videotapes may get a call from U.S. District Court Judge Alvin Hellerstein of the Southern District of New York on how to resolve litigation over the recordings, the New York Law Journal reported Tuesday.
At a hearing before Hellerstein, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tara LaMorte told him that a career federal prosecutor in Connecticut, John Durham, could speak with him over the case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union.
The ACLU first filed the Freedom of Information Act suit in 2003 to obtain the records. But CIA officials destroyed the tapes in 2005, violating Hellerstein’s order from 2004 to preserve the evidence.
In 2008, then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey chose Durham to lead the Justice Department’s investigation into the destruction of the 92 videotapes, two of which showed accused al-Qaeda detainees Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri being subjected to waterboarding. Al-Nashiri is accused of planning the 2000 USS Cole bombing in Yemen.
President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have both called waterboarding torture. In 2009, Holder asked Durham to also probe the alleged abuse of about a dozen prisoners whom CIA personnel or contractors interrogated. Former Vice President Dick Cheney had said that Holder’s decision to expand the investigation was “political.”
Durham found no criminal wrongdoing in the investigation and did not recommend that the DOJ bring charges over the destruction of the tapes.
Hellerstein wants the ACLU lawyers and prosecutors to submit briefs on what steps should be taken to resolve the case. “This kind of destruction never should have occurred,” Hellerstein said, according to the New York Law Journal. “It tells the court the CIA does not trust the judges to have proper regard for the security interests of the United States.”
