Document Destruction

More than two years before the CIA destroyed interrogation videotapes, top officials were urged to preserve them by a senior lawmaker who warned that disposing of the recordings would "reflect badly on the agency." The warning came in a February 2003 letter from Rep. Jane Harman of Venice, then the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

The White House acknowledges recycling backup computer tapes of e-mail, a practice that may have wiped out many electronic messages from the early years of the Bush administration, including some pertaining to the CIA leak case. The disclosure about recycled backup tapes came minutes before midnight Tuesday under a court-ordered deadline that forced the White House to reveal information it previously had refused to provide.

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.

A federal judge said Thursday that CIA interrogation videotapes may have been relevant to a case he's presiding over, and he gave the Bush administration three weeks to explain why they were destroyed in 2005 and say whether other evidence was destroyed. Several judges are considering wading into the dispute over the videos, but U.S. District Judge Richard W. Roberts was the first to demand a written report on the matter.

PHOENIX -- In the latest example that Congress is keeping a focused eye on the NFL, a senior senator said Friday that he wants the league to explain why it destroyed the videotapes from a cheating scandal involving the New England Patriots. "I do believe that it is a matter of importance," Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said at a news conference, the same day his comments on the matter appeared in the New York Times.

Justice Department attorneys apparently have known since early 2006 that the CIA destroyed videotaped interrogations of a key terror suspect, federal court documents unsealed Wednesday showed. The disclosure that at least two prosecutors in the U.S. attorney's office in Alexandria, Va., were apparently aware of the agency's actions raises new questions about a matter now under investigation by a special Justice Department prosecutor.

Los Angeles County supervisors voted Tuesday to suspend the process used to evaluate many of the county's competitive contract bids and ordered a stop to a decades-old practice of shredding documents created during such reviews. The unanimous decision came a week after the board fought over how the bids for a multimillion-dollar-a-year welfare-to-work contract were scored, ultimately rejecting county staff's recommendation to switch contractors.

A lawyer for Vice President Dick Cheney told the Secret Service to eliminate data on who visited Cheney at his official residence, a newly disclosed letter states. The Sept. 13, 2006, letter from Cheney's lawyer says logs for Cheney's home are subject to the Presidential Records Act, which prevents the public from learning who visited him.

A federal judge on Monday ordered the White House to preserve copies of all its e-mails, a move that Bush administration lawyers had argued strongly against. U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy directed the president's executive office to safeguard the material, in response to two lawsuits that seek to determine whether the White House has destroyed e-mails in violation of federal law. The White House says it has been taking steps to preserve copies of all e-mails and will continue to do so.

The CIA said Thursday that it had destroyed videotapes of its secret interrogations of terrorism suspects, taking the action at a time when the agency's harsh methods were coming under intense congressional and legal scrutiny. CIA Director Michael V. Hayden acknowledged the destruction of the tapes in a message distributed to the CIA workforce.