Tapes

State prosecutors recently questioned Monica S. Lewinsky for the first time and presented her answers to a Howard County grand jury investigating possible illegal wiretapping by Linda R. Tripp, said sources familiar with the case.Lewinsky's testimony is critical to the investigation, legal experts said, because she would likely testify that she did not know she was being taped by Tripp. That is an essential part of Maryland's law that bars taping others without their consent.Even with Lewinsky's testimony, however, prosecutors apparently lack a key element of their case -- the tapes.

BOSTON -- During the winter that followed the death of Joh F. Kennedy, a young naval aide was summoned to the Executive Office Building in Washington and instructed to begin transcribing reels of White House tapes secretly recorded by the president.The job put George Dalton in elite company. Only a handful of people even knew that the tapes existed: JFK's personal secretary, Evelyn Lincoln; his brother, Robert F. Kennedy; the two Secret Service technicians who installed and ran the system.

WASHINGTON -- 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 al-Qaida lieutenants, 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.

Seeking access to tapes Linda R. Tripp made of her conversations with Monica Lewinsky, the state prosecutor's office has filed a request for them with the judge who oversaw the federal grand jury investigation, sources familiar with the case said yesterday.The request shows the weakness of the state's case against Tripp, one of her lawyers said."It disturbs us that they would have to use information from the independent counsel," said the lawyer, Joseph Murtha. "It appears they have not been satisfied with the information they have been able to collect independently."

Top Carroll County school officials doctored videotapes of school board meetings and withheld other information regarding the troubled construction of Cranberry Station Elementary School, according to a lawsuit filed yesterday in Baltimore County Circuit Court.The suit, filed by Cranberry Station's original contractor, James W. Ancel Inc. of Towson, accuses school officials of violating Maryland's Public Information Act, which protects the public's access to government documents and materials.

WASHINGTON -- The CIA faced the threat of obstruction-of-justice investigations yesterday from the Justice Department and congressional committees over the destruction of videotapes of al-Qaida interrogations. The Justice Department said it would review calls for a formal inquiry into the destruction of the tapes, while the House and Senate intelligence committees said they were opening investigations of their own into the episode, which Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV, a West Virginia Democrat and chairman of the Senate panel, called "extremely disturbing."

McLEAN, Va. -- Gov. L. Douglas Wilder and Sen. Charles S. Robb, Virginia's two pre-eminent Democrats, are pummeling each other with such verbal ferocity that some party leaders and political analysts say they are endangering both their political futures and their party's dominance in Virginia.In the latest exchange, Mr. Wilder charged Friday that someone had taped personal calls he made on the cellular phone in his limousine and had passed on the contents of the conversations to Mr. Robb.

AUSTIN, Texas - Thirty-eight years ago today, network television was interrupted at 11:36 p.m. so President Lyndon B. Johnson could tell the nation that U.S. warships in a place called the Gulf of Tonkin had been attacked by North Vietnamese boats. In response to what he described as "open aggression on the open seas," Johnson ordered airstrikes on North Vietnam. The airstrikes opened the door to a war that would kill 1 million Vietnamese and 58,000 Americans and divide the nation. Over the years, debate has swirled around whether American ships were actually attacked that night, or whether, as some skeptics have suggested, the Johnson administration staged or provoked an event to get congressional authority to act against North Vietnam.

MIAMI -- A federal judge has ordered Cable News Network to stop broadcasting taped telephone conversations made from prison by ousted Panamanian leader Manuel Antonio Noriega, saying that the tapes may have damaged Noriega's right to a fair trial.But officials at CNN, calling the order unconstitutional, continued the coverage and network lawyers asked the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta for an emergency hearing today.Noriega's attorney, Frank Rubino, told U.S. District Court Judge William Hoeveler that the tapes broadcast by CNN include conversations between the deposed general and his lawyers.

Former White House intern Monica Lewinsky verged on an emotional breakdown as she fixated on forging a romantic relationship with President Clinton and landing a job near the Oval Office, according to a published report.In a taped message that she apparently sent to Clinton, Lewinsky makes no sexual overture but suggests that she visit the White House at night after the people "who hate me" have departed, according to this week's U.S. News & World Report.Lewinsky says she and Clinton could have box dinners, watch a movie and exchange hugs, the magazine says.