We live in a lawless country where no one at the top is ever accountable for anything:

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department asked the House Intelligence Committee on Friday to postpone its investigation into the destruction of videotapes by the Central Intelligence Agency in 2005, saying the Congressional inquiry presented “significant risks” to its own preliminary investigation into the matter.

The department is taking an even harder line with other Congressional committees looking into the matter, and is refusing to provide information about any role it might have played in the destruction of the videotapes. The recordings covered hundreds of hours of interrogations of two operatives of Al Qaeda.

The Justice Department and the C.I.A.’s inspector general have begun a preliminary inquiry into the destruction of the tapes, and Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey said the department would not comply with Congressional requests for information now because of “our interest in avoiding any perception that our law enforcement decisions are subject to political influence.” Over all, the position taken by Mr. Mukasey, who took office last month, represented what Justice Department officials described as an effort to caution Congress against meddling in the tapes case and other politically explosive criminal cases.

The Justice Department request was met with anger from both Republican and Democratic members of the House Intelligence Committee, who said the department was trying to interfere with their investigation. The committee had summoned two C.I.A. officials to testify at a hearing next week, a session that will now almost certainly be postponed.

The inquiry by the House committee had been shaping up as the most aggressive investigation into the destruction of the tapes, and in a written statement on Friday, the two senior members of the panel said they were “stunned” by the Justice Department’s request. The lawmakers, Representative Silvestre Reyes, Democrat of Texas, and Representative Peter Hoekstra, Republican of Michigan, threatened to issue subpoenas to get testimony and other information from the C.I.A. “There is no basis upon which the attorney general can stand in the way of our work,” they said.