A special prosecutor cleared the CIA’s former top clandestine officer and others [on November 9th] of any charges for destroying agency videotapes showing waterboarding of terror suspects […] The decision not to prosecute anyone in the destruction of the videotapes came five years to the day after the CIA destroyed its cache of 92 videos of two al-Qaida operatives, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Nashiri, being subjected to waterboarding […] Jose Rodriguez, who was the CIA’s top clandestine officer when the tapes were destroyed, worried that the videos would be devastating to the agency if they ever surfaced and approved their destruction. Rodriguez’s order was at odds with years of directives from CIA lawyers and the White House. Rodriguez’s lawyer, Robert Bennett, said the department made “the right decision because of the facts and the law” and called his client “a true patriot who only wanted to protect his people and his country” […] The department’s carefully phrased announcement did not rule out the possibility of charging someone with lying to investigators looking into the tape destruction.
The rest here.