The decision to destroy two videotapes documenting the use of waterboarding (controlled drowning) against Abu Zubaydah and another high-value al-Qaeda detainee was made in November 2005 — as American media was just beginning to focus on the existence of the secret CIA prison network.

“The tapes posed a serious security risk,” CIAs director Michael Hayden told agency employees in a statement on Thursday. “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.”

Hayden’s message to CIA employees went out a day after he learned that the New York Times planned to publish an article on Friday about destruction of the videotapes.

Use of torture
The revelation is bound to reignite debate in Congress about the use of torture in the war on terror. But far more seriously for the Bush administration, it raises the prospect that the CIA withheld information from and obstructed the work of the commission investigating the September 11 attacks as well as lawyers for Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 11th hijacker. Officials from the September 11 commission told the New York Times on Thursday they had formally requested from the CIA evidence of interrogations, and had been informed that all materials had been handed over.

The Washington Post, which also carried a story on its website about the destroyed videotapes, reported that the order to destroy the tapes came from Jose Rodriguez Jr, then the director of the CIA’s clandestine operations.

The leaders of the house and Senate intelligence committees — which were then under Republican control — were aware of the existence of the footage and the CIA’s decision to destroy the material, Hayden said in his memo. He said the interrogations were filmed in 2002 after George Bush authorised the use of harsh interrogation, including controlled drowning, against al-Qaeda suspects.