The Bush Administration are either very smart or one of the luckiest administrations in the history of governing. This week on the heels of the NIE report debacle comes the news of the CIA destroying tapes of torture. It strikes me as strange that all the bad news of this administration is coming out over a 2 week period. Scooter Libby has dropped his appeal of the Valerie Plain CIA outing case. The CIA defied judge by not even informing the court it had tapes. The 911 commission was misled about whether any actual video existed. The real debacle of this entire CIA tape destroying ignorance might be the appeal and release of 3 or more of the supposed Al Qaeda operatives.

Lawyers for Zacharias Moussaoui, the so-called 19th hijacker had requested these tapes during their court preceding. Convicted terrorism conspirator Jose Padilla's lawyers claimed in a Florida federal court that Zubaydah was tortured into saying Padilla and his 2 co-defendants were Al Qaeda associates. The Justice Department made claims during the trial that there was no proof Zubaydah had been tortured. Then U.S. District Judge Mukasey, now attorney general, signed the warrant used by the FBI to arrest Padilla in May 2002. That warrant relied in part on information obtained from Zubaydah, court records show. Officials from the September 11 commission told the New York Times yesterday they had formally requested from the CIA evidence of interrogations, and had been informed that all materials had been handed over.

Many cases have been reversed on appeal due to lesser circumstances. Most courts will find that the government conspired to get convictions in these highly publicized terrorist cases. This administration in its attempts to look tough on terror, while gaining reelection has driven this country straight down a path of lawlessness. Harriet Meyers then White House attorney warned against destroying these tapes. Jose Rodriguez Jr, then the director of the CIA's clandestine operations gave the order to destroy them anyway.

CIA director, Michael Hayden, has been making the claim that this was done in order to protect the CIA interrogators and their families from becoming known to Al Qaeda operatives and sympathizers. Evidently the CIA interrogator that performed the actual procedure does not find that to be the case. He came to the media over the weekend to declare the procedure as torture, and the destruction of the tapes to be wrong if not unlawful.