Taking the Fifth?

The CIA official at the center of the controversy over the destruction of interrogation tapes may invoke his Fifth Amendment privileges and refuse to cooperate in investigations by Congress and the Justice Department, his lawyer warned today.

The lawyer, Robert Bennett, confirmed today that he has been retained by Jose Rodriguez, the former chief of the CIA's clandestine service. Rodriguez's testimony is considered essential to official inquiries into why highly sensitive interrogation tapes of key Al Qaeda suspects were destroyed in November, 2005.

But Bennett, one of Washington's premier criminal-defense lawyers, said Rodriguez may decline to testify if he concludes that the probes are a "witch hunt"—a threat that could significantly delay congressional efforts to get to the bottom of the matter. "I don't want him to become a scapegoat," Bennett said.

The House Intelligence Committee had notified the CIA that it wanted to call Rodriquez to appear as early as next Tuesday. But now that he has hired a private lawyer, it is far less likely that Rodriguez will show up at the session—if for no other reason than that Bennett must first get high-level security clearances in order to even represent his client. The lawyer, who said he already has a top-secret clearance for another case, estimates that process will probably take no more than a few weeks.

But Bennett made clear that Rodriguez's cooperation will depend on much more than getting his clearances. "One thing I'm not going to allow is for him to become a pinata in an election year for people with a political agenda," the lawyer said, adding "we'll have to see" whether the probes are going to be conducted responsibly. "Or is it a witch hunt?" Bennett said these comments apply "across the board"—to the inquiries by the House and Senate intelligence committees as well as the preliminary joint inquiry by the Justice Department's national security division and the CIA's inspector general.

The destroyed videotapes at issue were made by the CIA during the course of interrogations of two "high value" Al Qaeda captives—Abu Zubaydah, purportedly the logistics chief for Osama bin Laden's terror organization, and Abu Al-Rahim al-Nashiri, suspected of being the group's chief of operations in the Persian Gulf. The tapes allegedly document the agency's use of harsh interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, that critics have charged amount to torture and are therefore possibly illegal under federal law.