18.5 minutes

Perhaps the most famous case of destruction of evidence is the 18.5 minute gap that appears on one of the Nixon White House tapes associated with the Watergate scandal. After the existence of the tapes had become known, and portions of them had been subpoenaed by special counsel Archibald Cox, White House secretary Rose Mary Woods testified that she may have "erased" upwards of five minutes of conversations accidentally. However, the Advisory Panel on White House Tapes subsequently concluded that Ms. Woods 5 minute gap was inconsequential, and that the 18.5 minutes of erasure was deliberate. To this day it is still not known if any incriminating evidence was destroyed by the erasure.

Now we have learned that the CIA has "out-Nixoned" Richard Nixon, likely by many hours, if not days! Officials at the CIA have admitted to destroying video tapes of the interrogations of several high profile Al Qaeda suspects. It has virtually been admitted that the tapes contain graphic footage of the abuse and torture of these individuals, probably including details of the administrations' interpretation of waterboarding. CIA head Michael Hayden, in a statement that would make Orwell turn over in his grave, informed us that the tapes posed a "serious security risk," and therefore had to be destroyed. This is so patently false that it barely warrants refutation. For one thing, if true, what would it say about the CIA's ability to keep National Security information under its control protected? Or does the agency fear an inevitable leak of the material by one of it's own employees? Either way it doesn't paint a very comforting picture of supposedly the nation's top intelligence outfit, does it? Of course, the only risk involved in the existence of the tapes, and the real reason for their destruction, is the very real risk of criminal prosecution to those who ordered and carried out the torture allegedly captured on the videos. Moreover, since these suspects were purportedly "big fish" operatives, it would also seem likely that in this case the chain of command went up pretty high, perhaps as high as the "torturer in chief" himself.

As usual, Congress has fiddled and done nothing. Republicans that had been informed of the existence of the tapes, and their destruction, didn't even bat an eye. This is par for the course for the "Rubberstampicans", but it also appears that the handful of Democrats so notified, including "Lieberman-wannabe," representative Jane Harmon (she of the recent "Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act"), and Senate Intelligence Committee chair Jay Rockefeller, also turned a blind eye. Let's hope that some kind of investigation is initiated, after all, Nixon got far worse for a lousy 18.5 minutes.