The CIA and the tapes

I guess the new story is that some lawyers working within the clandestine gave the OK for the tapes to be destroyed.

Lawyers within the clandestine branch of the Central Intelligence Agency gave written approval in advance to the destruction in 2005 of hundreds of hours of videotapes documenting interrogations of two lieutenants from Al Qaeda, according to a former senior intelligence official with direct knowledge of the episode.

The involvement of agency lawyers in the decision making would widen the scope of the inquiries into the matter that have now begun in Congress and within the Justice Department.

It seems as if the CIA was never given an order--by attorneys in either the DOJ or the White House--not to destroy the tapes, so they just took it upon themselves. Or something like that. I guess I don't know why this changes the scope of the investigation at all. Isn't the point here that the destruction of the tapes might have constituted a cover up and, therefore, a crime in and of itself? I'd have suspected that any inquiry into the matter would involve deposing lawyers and other mucky mucks in every relevant office to see who knew what when, who gave the order, and who provided cover. But the fact that somebody tried to gin up a legal excuse for this isn't particularly surprising. And even if some sort of documentary evidence of this legal analysis presents itself, it shouldn't be viewed even for a second as evidence that highers-up didn't also know about (or possibly aid) in the tapes' destruction.