The tapes in question recorded hundreds of hours of interrogation of two alleged Al Qaeda members, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, both captured by the CIA in 2002. Among the techniques used on the prisoners was water-boarding, a notorious torture method involving the near-drowning of the prisoner. Earlier this month, CIA director Michael Hayden acknowledged that the intelligence agency had destroyed the tapes in November 2005.

Since that admission, it has become clear that the Bush administration and leading congressmen of both parties knew about the CIA torture program and the existence of the tapes for years before the tapes were destroyed. The White House and officials in the Justice Department and CIA are now implicated in both the crime of torture and possible obstruction of justice and perjury in relation to the tapes’ destruction.

Even as it works to squelch inquiries into past torture, the White House and its congressional allies have moved to block a bill that would ban the CIA from using “enhanced interrogation techniques,” including water-boarding, in the future. Senate Republicans are using a procedural technicality to strip language from a bill passed by the House of Representatives that would require the CIA to follow the same rules as the US military. Bush has threatened to veto the bill if it gets through the House and Senate.

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