WASHINGTON - Attorney General Michael Mukasey said Wednesday that the Justice Department has elevated its inquiry into the destruction of CIA interrogation videotapes to a formal criminal investigation headed by a career federal prosecutor.
The announcement is the first indication investigators have reached a preliminary conclusion that CIA officers, possibly along with other government officials, might have committed crimes in their handling of the tapes, which recorded the interrogations in 2002 of two operatives with al-Qaida and were destroyed in 2005.
Mukasey assigned John Durham, a veteran federal prosecutor from Connecticut, to lead the criminal inquiry in tandem with the FBI.
The appointment of a prosecutor from outside Washington was an unusual move, and it suggested Mukasey wanted to give the investigation the appearance of an extra measure of independence, after complaints from lawmakers in both parties that Mukasey's predecessor,
Alberto Gonzales, had allowed politics to influence the Justice Department's judgment in criminal cases.
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