THE CIA has acknowledged making videotapes to document interrogations of terrorism suspects that used techniques critics have denounced as torture, and said it had destroyed the recordings.
Michael Hayden, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency told employees in a letter on Thursday that the videotapes were made in 2002 as part of a secret detention and interrogation programme that began with the arrest of suspected al-Qaeda li
eutenant Abu Zubaydah.
The taping was discontinued later that year and the tapes were destroyed in 2005, Mr Hayden said. "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,"
He said he was discussing the programme because of pending news reports on it. The New York Times published a story on the tapes on its website.
Democrats called for congressional investigations. Senator John Rockefeller of West Virginia, Democratic chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said: "While we were provided with very limited information about the existence of the tapes, we were not consulted on their usage nor the decision to destroy the tapes."
Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, said the tapes' destruction was another troubling aspect of the interrogation programme. The news also drew fire from the American Civil Liberties Union, which has mounted a legal effort to acquire Justice Department documents it believes authorised harsh interrogations.
The detention and interrogation programme was confirmed by President George Bush in 2006. Under it, terrorism suspects have been subjected to harsh interrogation methods, including a form of simulated drowning known as waterboarding.
Many countries, US politicians and human rights groups have denounced waterboarding as torture. It is believed three "high-value" CIA detainees were subjected to waterboarding and that technique has not been used since 2003.
