Ethics Newsline®

“The commission did formally request material of this kind from all relevant agencies, and the commission was assured that we had received all the material responsive to our request. No tapes were acknowledged or turned over, nor was the commission provided with any transcript prepared from recordings.”

– Philip Zelikow, who served as executive director of the Sept. 11 commission and later as a senior counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, talking to the New York Times about the recent revelation that the CIA destroyed hundred of hours of taped interrogations in contravention of the advice of White House and Justice Department lawyers. Both the Justice Department and the CIA’s inspector general have launched a preliminary inquiry into the tapes’ destruction, which took place in 2005, but was only publicly revealed last week after pressure from the Times.