Hayden Knew of Interrogation Videotapes

CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden speaks at the Intelligence and National Security Alliance in Washington, in this Sept. 18, 2007 file photo. The Bush administration was under court order not to discard evidence of detainee torture and abuse months before the CIA destroyed videotapes that revealed some of its harshest interrogation tactics.(AP Photo/Lauren Victoria Burke, File) (Lauren Victoria Burke - AP)

Hayden told CIA employees last week that the videotapes, made in 2002, showed the CIA's interrogations of two terror suspects. The CIA destroyed the tapes in 2005. The tapes were made to document how CIA officers were using new, harsh questioning techniques recently approved by the White House to force recalcitrant prisoners to talk.

They show the interrogations of Abu Zubayda and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri.

Abu Zubaydah, the first high-value detainee taken by the CIA in 2002, is now being held with other detainees at the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He told his interrogators about alleged 9/11 accomplice Ramzi Binalshibh, and the two men's confessions also led to the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who the U.S. government said was the mastermind behind the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Al-Nashiri is the alleged coordinator of the 2000 suicide attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, which killed 17 sailors. He is also now at Guantanamo.

The CIA has not described exactly what was shown on all the tapes. However, among the harsh interrogation techniques the White House approved in 2002 was waterboarding.

Waterboarding involves strapping down a prisoner, covering his mouth with plastic or cloth and pouring water over his face. The prisoner quickly begins to inhale water, causing the sensation of drowning.

The CIA is known to have waterboarded three prisoners _ Abu Zubaydah, Al-Nashiri and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

The CIA has not used the technique since 2003, according to a government official familiar with the program. Hayden prohibited waterboarding in 2006. The U.S. military outlawed it the same year.

The CIA destroyed the videotapes in November of 2005. Exactly when Congress was notified of that and in what detail is in dispute.

President Bush said he didn't know about the tapes or their destruction until last week.