WASHINGTON — A senior House Republican said information gathered by the House Intelligence Committee indicated that a high-ranking CIA official ordered the destruction of videotapes depicting agency interrogation sessions even though he was directed not to do so.
The remark by Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.) contradicts previous accounts that suggested that Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., the CIA official who ordered the tapes destroyed, was never instructed to preserve them. Hoekstra's statement was quickly challenged by Rodriguez's lawyer.
"It appears he hadn't gotten authority from anyone" to order the tapes' destruction, Hoekstra, the senior Republican on the panel, said of Rodriguez. "It appears that he got direction to make sure the tapes were not destroyed."
Hoekstra's comments came as the House Intelligence Committee held its second classified hearing on the matter, receiving closed-door testimony from the acting general counsel of the CIA.
Rodriguez, head of the CIA's clandestine service, also had been scheduled to appear at the hearing. But the committee withdrew its request that he testify after his lawyer said he would refuse to answer questions unless given immunity.
Rodriguez's lawyer, Robert Bennett, disputed Hoekstra's statements. "He's wrong," Bennett said of the Republican lawmaker.
Rodriguez "never got any direction not to do it," Bennett said. To the contrary, Bennett said, "He was told that as head of the clandestine service, he had the authority to destroy the tapes and that there was no legal impediment to doing it."
Rodriguez is at the center of a criminal obstruction of justice investigation by the Justice Department, as well as inquiries by the House and Senate intelligence committees, into his role in the destruction of videotapes that showed CIA interrogators using harsh methods to question suspected Al Qaeda members in 2002.
The tapes were destroyed in November 2005, at a time when the CIA was coming under intense scrutiny for its secret network of overseas prisons and its use of brutal interrogation tactics. Among the methods recorded on the tapes was waterboarding, or simulated drowning.
Critics have described waterboarding as torture, and accused the agency of disposing of the tapes to destroy evidence of potentially illegal behavior. The agency has denied that, and maintains that its interrogation methods were legal and approved in advance by the Justice Department.
