CIA Chief Can’t Answer Key Questions About Destroyed Tapes
CIA director Michael Hayden told the Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday that he couldn’t answer key questions about two interrogation videotapes made and destroyed before he took over leadership of the agency in 2006.
“Other people in the agency know about this far better than I,” Hayden told reporters after the closed door hearing, according to a Washington Post account.
Committee chairman John D. Rockefeller told reporters Hayden was unable to say who authorized the destruction of the tapes.
The CIA admitted last week that it had destroyed the interrogation tapes of two al-Qaida suspects. A former intelligence official has told the New York Times that lawyers working under Jose Rodriguez Jr., the former chief of the CIA’s clandestine branch, gave written advice that the tapes could be destroyed.
Hayden said the tapes were made in 2002 under director George Tenet and destroyed in 2005 when Porter Goss was in charge of the agency.
Hayden said the CIA had informed congressional leaders about destruction of the videos, but lawmakers could not find a record of formal notification, the New York Times reports.
