From hero to scapegoat for Dems

NY Times:

At a conference in El Paso in mid-August, Representative Silvestre Reyes of Texas, the Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, heaped praise on a man whose exploits, he joked, had been the inspiration for the television show “24.”

From fast cars to fine wines, Mr. Reyes said, the appetites of the man, Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., are the stuff of legend. Then turning serious, Mr. Reyes hailed Mr. Rodriguez’s three decades of undercover work for the Central Intelligence Agency, where he recently stepped down as head of its clandestine service, and called Mr. Rodriguez an “American hero.”

Four months later, Mr. Rodriguez’s role in the destruction of hundreds of hours of videotape of harsh interrogations of two operatives of Al Qaeda is at the center of an inquiry by Mr. Reyes’s committee on Capitol Hill. With a separate Justice Department inquiry that could lead to a full criminal investigation into the matter, the man who spent a career in the shadows has been thrust uneasily into the spotlight.

Mr. Rodriguez is hardly the only current or former agency official under scrutiny. In the months ahead, investigators will try to reconstruct the chain of events leading up to the decision in November 2005 to destroy the interrogation tapes, and to determine who else inside the agency may have approved the decision.

According to a former top intelligence official who has spoken to Mr. Rodriguez in recent days, Mr. Rodriguez remains confident that he acted lawfully and had the authority to destroy the tapes. He could not be reached for comment.

Whether C.I.A. lawyers in fact approved the destruction will be a question for investigators in Congress, the Justice Department, and the C.I.A. inspector general’s office. Some Congressional officials said that they want to know why Porter J. Goss, the C.I.A. director at the time the tapes were destroyed, appears never to have notified Congressional committees about the destruction.

...

After he announced his retirement from the C.I.A., he was asked to take over the National Counterterrorist Center after the departure of retired Vice Adm. John Scott Redd. He turned down the position.

Representative Reyes declined a request on Sunday for an interview about Mr. Rodriguez, but issued a statement saying his committee is planning not just to examine the circumstances of the destruction of the videotapes, but to conduct a “broad review” of the C.I.A.’s detention and interrogation program.

“I’m not looking for scapegoats,” his statement said.

Reyes may not want to scapegoat his friend, but his party appears to be looking to use his friend as a means of attacking the administration's interrogation of al Qaeda operatives. Now that they no longer fear attacks, the Democrats are reverting to a terrorist rights agenda and looking for people to punish for protecting us. The article briefly alludes to the Democrats' knowledge of waterboarding and their tacit approval, but does not discuss the shear hypocrisy of the current attacks on waterboarding by Democrats.