WASHINGTON (CNN)
December 13, 2007CIA Director Michael Hayden admitted Wednesday the agency could have done a better job of keeping the House Intelligence Committee in the loop when it destroyed videotapes showing agents using waterboarding and other “alternative” interrogation techniques on al Qaeda operatives.
I think it’s fair to say that particularly at the time of the [tapes’] destruction we could have done an awful lot better in keeping the committee alerted and informed as to that activity,” Hayden told reporters after emerging from a three-hour closed-door meeting with the committee.
Hayden disclosed the existence and destruction of the tapes in a memo to CIA employees last week after he learned a newspaper was about to publish the information. U.S. officials said the recordings were made as “an internal check” on the CIA’s use of interrogation techniques authorized in 2002 against suspected terrorists.
The tapes showed interrogations of two al Qaeda suspects in 2002. The tapes were destroyed in 2005 after it was determined they no longer had intelligence value, Hayden wrote.
One of the suspects, Abu Subayda, was “waterboarded” to get him to talk, and he yielded valuable information, a former CIA officer, John Kiriakou, told CNN on Tuesday.
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nice to meet everyone.



