Contempt and civil suits

Paul Kiel at TPM reports:

House Judiciary Committee Chair John Conyers (D-MI) introduced two resolutions this afternoon related to the subpoenas. The first is a criminal contempt resolution against White House chief of staff Josh Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet Miers -- both were subpoenaed and did not respond, citing the White House's invocation of executive privilege. But Conyers also filed a resolution that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) file a civil suit against the White House.

Things could get interesting.
--the BB

Tapes? What tapes? Torture? What torture?

White House lawyers who were involved in discussions with the C.I.A. on its interrogation videotapes, from left: Harriet Miers, John Bellinger, Alberto Gonzales and David Addington. (based on NYT photo)

Mark Massetti and Scott Shane report today at the New York Times that the destruction of torture tapes was the subject of rather high-level discussion among the White House counsel team.

WASHINGTON — At least four top White House lawyers took part in discussions with the Central Intelligence Agency between 2003 and 2005 about whether to destroy videotapes showing the secret interrogations of two operatives from Al Qaeda, according to current and former administration and intelligence officials.

The accounts indicate that the involvement of White House officials in the discussions before the destruction of the tapes in November 2005 was more extensive than Bush administration officials have acknowledged.

You can read the whole thing by clicking on the link above.

Bellinger seems to stay under the radar but we have Miers and Gonzales, notorious lap dogs for Bush, and Addington who is Dick Cheney's Dick Cheney. (If there are evil machinations to be machinated, look for Addington in the background.)

One former senior intelligence official with direct knowledge of the matter said there had been “vigorous sentiment” among some top White House officials to destroy the tapes. The former official did not specify which White House officials took this position, but he said that some believed in 2005 that any disclosure of the tapes could have been particularly damaging after revelations a year earlier of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

You could probably put some good money on Addington being a "top White House official" favoring destruction of evidence. Don't know that for a fact, of course. Just saying. I must add, to be fair, that the NYT article goes on to say others deny that anyone advocated for destruction (but I'm stopping at three cited paragraphs to stay within fair use).

UPDATE: drational at Daily Kos speculates that tapes were destroyed to eliminate potential evidence of Alberto Gonzales' perjury before Congress.
--the BB

Fire at the White House office building-Updates

Photos from CNN

I just heard about it on the radio. Is it so wrong of me to wonder if this is an attempt to destroy records with plausible deniability?
--I wasn't always this cynical

UPDATE 1: CNN's report included a couple of tidbits:

Vice President Dick Cheney's working offices are in the West Wing of the White House, where he was at the time of the fire.

and

There were no reports of injuries from the blaze, which appeared to be confined to the third floor, said D.C. Fire Department spokesman Alan Etter. Etter said the blaze appeared to have started in an electrical closet or a telephone bank.

Hmm, a telephone bank....

Communications

"We're sorry, folks, it is impossible to recreate communications that may or may not have happened between the OVP and other parties since the unfortunate incident when the fire broke out...."

UPDATE 2: Great photo with snarky caption over at Dependable Renegade.