OK, let's see what happens now...

The U.S. Justice Department opened a criminal investigation into the destruction of CIA interrogation videotapes, and Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey said Wednesday that he appointed an outside prosecutor to oversee the case.

The CIA acknowledged last month that it destroyed videos of officers using tough interrogation methods while questioning two al-Qaida suspects. The acknowledgment sparked a congressional inquiry and a preliminary investigation by Justice.

"The Department's National Security Division has recommended, and I have concluded, that there is a basis for initiating a criminal investigation of this matter, and I have taken steps to begin that investigation," Mukasey said in a statement released Wednesday.

Mukasey named John Durham, a federal prosecutor, to oversee the case. Durham has a reputation as one of the most relentless U.S. prosecutors...read on

And we know how much Republicans like "outside prosecutors." Or is that special prosecutors? I mean this in the Patrick Fitzgerald kinda way. We'll be talking about this a whole lot more as time goes on...

UPDATED: CNN's Jeffrey Toobin just said that this case is going to take a fairly long time to complete and there will be tons of subpoenas being thrown around

Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton wrote an op-ed for the NY Times: "Stonewalled by the C.I.A."

MORE than five years ago, Congress and President Bush created the 9/11 commission. The goal was to provide the American people with the fullest possible account of the “facts and circumstances relating to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001” — and to offer recommendations to prevent future attacks. Soon after its creation, the president’s chief of staff directed all executive branch agencies to cooperate with the commission.

The commission’s mandate was sweeping and it explicitly included the intelligence agencies. But the recent revelations that the C.I.A. destroyed videotaped interrogations of Qaeda operatives leads us to conclude that the agency failed to respond to our lawful requests for information about the 9/11 plot. Those who knew about those videotapes — and did not tell us about them — obstructed our investigation...read on