First of all, doesn’t it just creep you out that this woman could have been on the Supreme Court of the land? It just makes me shudder.

Ms. Miers is a lawyer. As a lawyer it is her obligation to uphold the law. Here we have a situation where CIA employees evidently contacted the White House to alert them that they were going to destroy evidence. Read this carefully — it doesn’t matter what that evidence was, the content, the cases it might be used for in the future, whether plaintiff or defense or prosecutor — it only matters whether a reasonable person could expect that one party or another would request that evidence. Does it seem, given the following from the New York Times that there’s a reasonable presumption these tapes could be used in a court of law?

Current and former intelligence officials say the videotapes showed severe interrogation techniques used on two Qaeda operatives, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who were among the first three terror suspects to be detained and interrogated by the C.I.A. in secret prisons after the Sept. 11 attacks.

I suppose Harriet Miers assumed that the tapes would be requested as evidence by one party or another in the proceedings concerning Zubaydah or Al-Nashiri, so she counseled that they not destroy the tapes.

Here’s Harriet Miers, perhaps a close friend of President Bush. She’s got his ear and she’s got a powerful role in the White House. Harriet Miers could have alerted anyone else in the US government about these tapes, and I’ll argue that she could have stopped their destruction. She could have even ordered their preservation. So far we have not seen any evidence that she tried to do so beyond counseling the CIA guys not to destroy the tapes. And I’m wondering why we haven’t heard more.

This morning I went on a search of what Harriet Miers had to say about the tapes, since I’ve seen all sorts of headlines about how she, evidently bravely, counseled the CIA against destroying them. I’m thinking people have gotten out ahead of things. All we’ve got here is testimony that Harriet had seen the tapes and counseled against their destruction. We’ve seen no words of Harriet Miers herself. Now, I’ll believe that testimony, but it’s important to note that Harriet Miers herself has not spoken, and thus she hasn’t told anyone who else in the White House knew of the destruction of the tapes, nor who else worked with her in advising the CIA folks about not destroying those tapes. Meanwhile, Dana Perino is telling us that nobody, and especially not George Bush, knew about the existence of or destruction of those video tapes. From the WaPo:

White House press secretary Dana Perino said Friday that President Bush did not recall being told about the tapes or their destruction. But she could not rule out White House involvement in the decision to destroy the tapes, saying she had only asked the president about it, not others.

Perino refused to say whether the destruction could have been an obstruction of justice or a threat to cases against terrorism suspects. If the attorney general decides to investigate, “of course the White House would support that,” she said.

In a daily press briefing dedicated almost solely to the topic of the CIA tapes, Perino responded 19 times that she didn’t know or couldn’t comment.

It’s not like the White House is eager to fully inform their Press Secretaries. But note that Perino does not rule out that Miers consulted with others in the White House, nor even that someone in the White House may have been involved in the decision to destroy those tapes. That in itself is cause for an independent counsel to investigate what went on here, and this isn’t just a little issue of obstruction of justice. It is very, very serious if this is a case of the CIA obstructing justice. It is far more serious if the White House, or anyone working there, with or without the permission of George Bush, helped in destroying those tapes in any way. Indeed, the White House should have taken an active role in preserving the tapes.

Why? This one’s easy. Heck, by destroying the tape of the interrogations of Zubaydah or Al-Nashiri, they have destroyed the cases they have against Zubaydah or Al-Nashiri. In any case that goes forward, that evidence must be presumed by the court to be highly prejudicial to the case of the government against Zubaydah or Al-Nashiri, whether they are arguing anything said during the interrogation or arguing the methods by which the information was extracted. Read that again. The destruction of these tapes equals the destruction of the legal cases against Zubaydah or Al-Nashiri because that taped evidence will be the most important evidence at the trial, and it will be assumed that whatever was on the tape, even if it was ACTUALLY only of Zubaydah or Al-Nashiri eating ice cream, is prejudicial to the case of the CIA. Of course, the tape was likely highly prejudicial to the case of the CIA against Zubaydah or Al-Nashiri, but now, by rule of law when any evidence is intentionally destroyed, it MUST be assumed to be prejudicial. Yeah, even a stacked Bush Supreme Court will hold to those findings. The only way out of this is if Zubaydah or Al-Nashiri somehow die in custody.

Let’s not get carried away with what will be the legacy media main taking points this weekend: making Harriet Miers into a temporary hero while villifying a CIA that is, even now, thinking they did nothing wrong. As gchaucer2 notes on DKos, this information about the destruction of the tapes came to the NY Times from people at the CIA. There’s evidently some folks over there very angry at business as usual that intentionally breaks the law. We had huge pressure and threats of leaks that led to the revealing of the NIE about Iran, and now we’ve got actual leaks that tells us that the CIA has destroyed evidence in an important case.

Of course, we’re still wondering who at the White House was involved in this decision. No Congressional investigation is going to answer that question. We need an independent counsel, and we need an order from Attorney General Mukasey RIGHT NOW for all members of every agency to preserve all documents.