Federal District Court Judge Henry Kennedy issued an order in the summer of 2005 directing the government to preserve all evidence in the case and ordered the government to appear before his court last month to answer charges that the tapes may have been covered by that order. However, in his ruling yesterday, Kennedy dealt a blow to the detainees' case, finding that the subjects on the tapes were not interrogated at Guantanamo, and therefore their interrogations were not covered by the court order. In declining to investigate the destruction of the tapes, Judge Kennedy rebuked the detainees' lawyers and ruled their contention that the Justice Department could not itself investigate the matter properly was completely without merit. He wrote that the detainees presented, "nothing to support their assertion that a judicial inquiry is warranted." He further said that he saw no reason to doubt the Justice Department's pledge to conduct a thorough investigation into the tapes' destruction.
That investigation will no doubt be impacted by the judge's ruling. Last Month, Attorney General Michael Mukasey appointed Federal prosecutor John Durham to head a criminal investigatrion into the decision making surrounding the fate of the tapes. The Bush Administration has said that the tapes were destroyed to protect the identities of the interrogators pictured on them. Democrats and civil liberties groups worry that there were more sinister motives involved. Judge Kennedy's ruling tends to support the government's version of events.