The CIA has confirmed that it destroyed at least two videotapes showing the interrogation of two suspected al-Qaeda operatives in 2005.
Government officials said the tapes showed agency operatives in 2002 subjecting terrorism suspects to severe interrogation techniques, according to the New York Times.
CIA chief Gen Michael Hayden yesterday said the decision to destroy the tapes was made within the CIA in 2005.
He claimed the tapes were destroyed to protect the safety of undercover officers and because they no longer had intelligence value.
The American Civil Liberties Union has voiced concern at the CIA's action on the videotapes.
It said the destruction of the tapes appears to be part of an extensive, long-term pattern of misusing executive authority to insulate individuals from criminal prosecution for torture and abuse.
John Rockefeller, Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, said the committee must review the full history and chronology of the tapes, how they were used and the reasons for destroying them, and any communication about them that was provided to the courts and Congress.
He said they were provided with very limited information about the existence of the tapes, were not consulted on their usage, or the decision to destroy the tapes.
Mr Rockefeller said they did not learn until much later in November 2006 that the tapes had in fact been destroyed in 2005.
CIA chief Hayden, in a letter to employees, said the tapes posed a serious security risk, that there was no legal or internal reason to keep them and that the sessions had already been 'exhaustively detailed'.
The letter went on to mention that if the tapes were ever to leak, they would permit identification of CIA colleagues who had served in the program, 'exposing them and their families to retaliation from al-Qaeda and its sympathisers.'
The US, following the 11 September attacks, launched a programme allowing intelligence services to detain and question terrorist suspects, including questioning techniques that remain secret.
A 2004 report warned that some CIA-approved interrogation procedures appeared to violate the international Convention Against Torture.
