ANOTHER TAPE SCANDAL

Tape recordings can provide decisive evidence in all sorts of investigations and prosecutions. Now a new set of tapes has gone missing.

The surprising disclosure by the CIA that it had destroyed two videotapes of its interrogation in 2002 of two al-Qaida operatives inevitably recalled the unexplained 181/2 -minute gap in an Oval Office tape that helped send President Nixon into disgraced retirement.

CIA Director Michael V. Hayden broke the news Thursday with a statement that the destruction had been “done in line with the law,” that congressional committees “have been told” about it, and that the tapes “were no longer of intelligence value and not relevant to any internal, legislative or judicial inquiries,” and that they posed “a serious security risk” because they could expose the identity of interrogators.

That seemingly open explanation raised immediate questions. Hayden answered one of them himself: Why this obviously embarrassing disclosure? He volunteered that The New York Times had informed him the previous evening that it was preparing to publish an article about the destruction of the tapes.

Lawmakers promptly denied that they had been told about the destruction. In fact, CIA officials had claimed that no such tapes existed. As for their relevance to inquiries, the 9-11 commission had run into denials when it sought access to any records of harsh interrogation. Military defense lawyers had been trying to get any videotapes that might exist to use in representing accused terrorists. Now that the tapes have been destroyed, the lawyers can argue that essential evidence has been destroyed.

Director Hayden suggested that one reason for the tape destruction was to protect CIA interrogators and their families from possible terrorist attack. This is nonsense. Faces can be fuzzed up electronically. A more likely reason is that any public showing of the “enhanced” interrogations would have inflamed the smoldering controversy of whether the Bush administration, despite its denials, has been authorizing torture of war prisoners. Moving pictures of such techniques as waterboarding – pouring water on a cloth covering the face of a strapped down prisoner so as to make the victim believe he is drowning – would have aroused a major outcry.

Several investigations are in the works. The CIA and the Justice Department said Saturday that they had launched a joint inquiry to determine whether a full investigation with possible criminal charges is warranted. Congressional intelligence and judicial committees are preparing for possible hearings.

Can the CIA and the Justice Department properly investigate the matter? The CIA would be investigating itself, and the Justice Department drafted the secret memos that defined torture so narrowly that officials could deny it was taking place. An independent counsel may be the best solution.

Instead of burying the torture controversy, the tape destruction has pushed it into the spotlight.

In any case, what’s needed is to get to the bottom of this destruction of evidence. We need to know the who and the why, and, especially, how high it went.