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CIA destroyed tapes of terror quizzes

* Agency’s chief says the measure was meant to protect officers from Al Qaeda reprisals
* ACLU voices concern at CIA’s action

WASHINGTON: The CIA in 2005 destroyed at least two videotapes of the interrogation of two Al Qaeda operatives, amid increasing questions about the agency’s detention programme, The New York Times reported on Friday.

Citing current and former government officials, the report said the tapes “showed agency operatives in 2002 subjecting terrorism suspects - including Abu Zubaydah, the first detainee in CIA custody - to severe interrogation techniques.”

CIA chief Gen. Michael Hayden on Thursday told colleagues “the decision to destroy the tapes was made ‘within the CIA’ and that they were destroyed to protect the safety of undercover officers and because they no longer had intelligence value,” the report said.

Yet the “destruction of the tapes raises questions about whether agency officials withheld information from Congress, the courts and the September 11 commission about aspects of the programme,” it added.

Fears of reprisals: Hayden, in a letter to employees obtained by CNN television, said of the tapes that “beyond their lack of intelligence value - as the interrogation sessions had already been exhaustively detailed in written channels - and the absence of any legal or internal reason to keep them, the tapes posed a serious security risk.” “Were they ever to leak, they would permit identification of your CIA colleagues who had served in the programme, exposing them and their families to retaliation from Al Qaeda and its sympathisers,” it added.The United States, following the September 11 terror strikes, launched a programme allowing intelligence services to detain and question terror suspects, including questioning techniques that are secret, while in the military these are clearly spelled out.

ACLU voices concern: The ACLU meanwhile voiced concern at the CIA’s action on the videotapes.“The destruction of these tapes appears to be part of an extensive, long-term pattern of misusing executive authority to insulate individuals from criminal prosecution for torture and abuse,” the American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement. Senate Intelligence Committee chairman John Rockefeller said in a statement that “our committee must review the full history and chronology of the tapes, how they were used and the reasons for destroying them, and any communication about them that was provided to the courts and Congress. afp

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