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The Justice Department and the CIA's internal watchdog have announced a joint inquiry into the spy agency's destruction of videotaped interrogations of two suspected terrorists as the latest scandal to rock United States intelligence gathered steam.
The review will determine whether a full investigation is warranted.
"I welcome this inquiry and the CIA will co-operate fully," CIA director Mike Hayden said. "I welcome it as an opportunity to address questions that have arisen over the destruction back in 2005 of videotapes."
The House Intelligence Committee is launching its own inquiry next week. It will investigate not only why the tapes were destroyed and Congress was not notified, but also the interrogation methods that "if released, had the potential to do such grave damage to the United States of America," said Chairman Representative Silvestre Reyes yesterday. "This Administration cannot be trusted to police itself."
The Senate Intelligence Committee also is investigating.
Hayden told agency employees on Friday that the recordings were destroyed out of fear the tapes would leak and reveal the identities of interrogators. He said the sessions were videotaped to provide an added layer of legal protection for interrogators using new, harsh methods authorised by President George W. Bush as a way to break down the defences of recalcitrant prisoners.
The CIA's acting general counsel, John Rizzo, is preserving all remaining records related to the videotapes and their destruction. Kenneth L. Wainstein, an assistant attorney-general, asked that they be handed over along with any relevant internal reviews.
The man now at the centre of the storm is Jose Rodriguez, who retired as head of the CIA's clandestine directorate of operations in August 2007, but will leave the agency at the end of the year. Rodriguez decided the tapes should be destroyed, one former and one current intelligence official said. A career spy, Rodriguez was promoted to the job by then-CIA director Porter Goss.
Goss learned of the tapes' destruction "a couple of days" after it happened, a government official familiar with the events said. The official said Goss did not order an investigation or inform Congress.
Goss was upset by the tapes' destruction but did not take any action because the decision was within Rodriguez's authority, a former intelligence official told AP.
The CIA's spy service has broad latitude to take actions to protect operational security.
The tapes were destroyed shortly after the Washington Post in late 2005 revealed the existence of secret overseas prisons, which angered the co-operating governments.
Another intelligence official said Rodriguez was concerned the tapes would leak and the interrogators seen in the tapes would be targeted by al Qaeda.
The Justice Department and CIA inspector-general inquiry is expected to focus on whether Rodriguez had the inherent authority to destroy the tapes or had the endorsement of CIA legal advisers or any senior officials.
The tapes showed interrogations of Abu Zubaydah, the first high-value detainee taken by the CIA in 2002. Zubaydah, under harsh questioning, told CIA interrogators about alleged September 11 accomplice Ramzi Binalshibh.
The two men's confessions also led to the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who the US Government said was the mastermind behind the September 11 terrorist attacks.
The other taped interrogations showed Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the alleged mastermind of the 2000 attack on the USS Cole, which left 17 US sailors dead. He and Zubaydah are now being held at Guantanamo.
- AP
