NYT REPORTS MORE WHITE HOUSE INVOLVEMENT IN CIA DESTRUCTION OF TORTURE TAPES

Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane write in today's The New York Times on the previously undisclosed involvement in the CIA tape destruction of White House lawyers over and beyond Harriet Miers.

"At least four top White House lawyers took part in discussions with the Central Intelligence Agency between 2003 and 2005 about whether to destroy videotapes showing the secret interrogations of two operatives from Al Qaeda, according to current and former administration and intelligence officials."

"The accounts indicate that the involvement of White House officials in the discussions before the destruction of the tapes in November 2005 was more extensive than Bush administration officials have acknowledged."

This is information not given out so far by the White House. So predictably, Dana Perino, the WH spokesperson, was upset and angry that it was revealed by the NYT.

The BBC reports on Perino's comments:

"We will continue to decline to comment on this issue, and in response to misleading press reports," press secretary Dana Perino said. Nevertheless, she said: "The New York Times' inference that there is an effort to mislead in this matter is pernicious and troubling."
She added that the White House was formally seeking a change to the story - particularly the sub-headline, which read: "White House role was wider than it said."

As Marty Lederman notes in the legal blog Balkinization, the WH is trying obfuscate the central issue on coming clean with all the facts regarding the destruction of the tapes. The WH really does not deny the NYT story:

"The [NY] Times did not write that the White House has lied about WH officials' involvement -- merely that they haven't yet come clean with the full story, which is true. There was some information coming from the White House about its involvement -- they tried to insinuate that the responsibility should be pinned on Harriet Miers alone, a story that was basically inaccurate.

"(Note the careful wording of the Press Statement: "Under direction from the White House General Counsel while the Department of Justice and the CIA Inspector General conduct a preliminary inquiry, we have not publicly commented on facts relating to this issue." One point of the Times piece is that the carefully orchestrated nonpublic leaks from the White House have been importantly incomplete and possibly misleading.)

"But all this is beside the point, which is not whether the White House has been misleading in its "public" comments over the past two weeks, but whether the White House has been complicit in crimes and other wrongdoing over the past several years. And on that question, what's most notable about today's Press Statement is that it does not deny the substance of the Times story."

There was a fire in the Old Executive Mansion building today. The smoke was caused by an electrical fire. Thus the adage about smoke pointing to a fire. We certainly seem to be seeing a lot of smoke on this issue coming from the WH. There must be fire in the story. Thus my question: what else remains that we don't know about the involvement of Bush and Cheney in the destruction of the CIA torture tapes?