CIA Held Al-Qaeda Suspect Secretly

The officials, who agreed to discuss limited aspects of the case on the condition of anonymity, said as many as five countries provided information that led to al-Iraqi's capture.

In a staff-wide e-mail, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden called the capture "a significant victory" and said the agency played a "key role in efforts to locate" al-Iraqi.

Anticipating concerns about the nature of the ongoing CIA program, Hayden told his staff that the secret detentions and interrogation methods conducted in the program are "legal and thoroughly reviewed by our government to ensure that they are fully in accordance with our laws and treaty obligations."

Cmdr. J.D. Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, said al-Iraqi and other detainees "have provided information essential to developing our knowledge of al-Qaeda's organizational structure, operations, communications, finances, logistics and criminal activities."

But human rights groups challenged the Bush administration and the CIA to publicly reveal their interrogation methods and disputed the legality of secret detention.

Yesterday's announcement "raises worrying questions about how long he has been detained by the CIA, where he was held, what kind of treatment he endured, and whether other prisoners still remain in CIA detention," the New York-based organization Human Rights Watch said in a statement, referring to al-Iraqi. The group called the secret detention "a blatant violation of international law."

Staff researcher Julie Tate and correspondent Craig Whitlock in Berlin contributed to this report.