...depressingly familiar, we have the news that the CIA destroyed the videotapes of the interrogations of two alQaeda operatives.

Hayden told agency employees Thursday that the recordings were destroyed out of fear the tapes would leak and reveal the identities of interrogators.

He said the sessions were videotaped to provide an added layer of legal protection for interrogators using new, harsh methods authorized by President Bush as a way to break down the defenses of recalcitrant prisoners.

MSNBC

I've been savoring those two paragraphs since first reading the article. It's rare even these days to read two consecutives statements by a government official so perfectly balanced in contradiction.

This appears to be another one of those stories with sprawling ramifications. Apparently the CIA notified the House Intelligence Committee in 2003 of the existence of the tapes, but in 2004 withheld them from the 9/11 Commission and swore that it had turned over everything.

One of the tapes reportedly shows the suspect being waterboarded. It's unclear why the interrogators would require legal protection for using the technique under the cover of the White House's insistence that waterboarding is not torture, and therefore not illegal. It's not unreasonable to suppose that the tapes were destroyed not to protect the interrogators, but the Commander-in-Chief who ordered its use and at whose desk the buck stops. But of course, that's only supposition....