WASHINGTON (AFP) — CIA chief Michael Hayden said Wednesday he knew of the existence of secret interrogation tapes but not that they had been destroyed, as the agency battled accusations that it was covering up torture.
Promising a "full accounting" of the videotape episode, General Hayden said "it is fair to say that, particularly at the time of the destruction, we could have done an awful lot better" in keeping Congress informed.
The revelation that the CIA taped harsh interrogations of at least two Al-Qaeda suspects after the September 11 attacks of 2001 has kept the White House on the defensive, despite denials that the United States uses torture.
Hayden was briefing reporters after undergoing a second day's grilling on Capitol Hill about the tapes' destruction, this time in front of the House of Representatives select committee on intelligence.
"We have a commitment from General Hayden for a full and complete accounting and record of everything that's available," the House committee's Democratic chairman, Silvestre Reyes, told reporters.
Hayden said: "Clearly there's more work to be done.
"We'll have some of our experts coming up here, people who were actually involved in the program, to answer specific questions that I have not been able to answer today."
Following press reports, Hayden revealed last week in a letter to CIA staff that the tapes were made in 2002 and destroyed in 2005, just as Congress was investigating allegations of US abuse of "war on terror" detainees.
Hayden has denied the use of torture and said the tapes, intended as an internal check on how interrogations were carried out, were destroyed to prevent any leak that could identify and endanger CIA agents.
The tapes reportedly showed interrogation methods, including a technique of simulated drowning called "waterboarding," that have been denounced as torture by human rights groups, lawmakers and one former CIA interrogator.
Hayden was not the head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) at the time but was deputy director of intelligence for a year until May 2006, serving under John Negroponte, who is now the number two at the State Department.
"I was aware of the existence of tapes, but really did not become focused on it until the summer of 2006 when I became (CIA) director," he said, adding, "I did not personally know beforehand" about the tapes' destruction.
The intelligence committees in both the House and Senate, where Hayden was questioned Tuesday, vowed to call on other high-ranking officials to testify.
The senior Republican on the House panel, Peter Hoekstra, said those would include Negroponte and Porter Goss, Hayden's predecessor who was in charge of the CIA when the tapes were destroyed.
Other names in the frame include Jose Rodriguez, the ex-chief of the CIA's clandestine service who reportedly made the decision to dispose of the tapes, and Goss's predecessor George Tenet.
The Department of Justice has launched an investigation, and Hoekstra queried whether the CIA had "followed any policy advice the administration might have put in place."
The White House has undergone intensifying criticism of its methods in the "war on terror" launched after the 9/11 attacks, but has repeatedly stressed "the United States does not use torture."
However, retired CIA agent John Kiriakou says that the decision to waterboard terror suspects was made at the White House with the agreement of the National Security Council and Department of Justice.
Kiriakou said the method broke the resistance of Abu Zubaydah, one of the two Al-Qaeda suspects said to have featured in the CIA tapes, in about 30 seconds.
"I have no doubt that the information gleaned from Abu Zubaydah stopped terror attacks and saved lives," he told CNN news on Tuesday, while querying whether waterboarding was compatible with US values.
In a separate case on Tuesday, a federal appeals court ordered the US government to preserve evidence related to claims by Guantanamo Bay inmate Majid Khan that he was tortured while in CIA detention.
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