(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-01-03 10:38

In June 2005, US District Judge Henry H. Kennedy, who was overseeing a case in which US-held terror suspects were challenging their detention at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, ordered the Bush administration to safeguard "all evidence and information regarding the torture, mistreatment and abuse of detainees now at the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay."

Five months later, the CIA destroyed the interrogation videos. The recordings involved suspected terrorists Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. The Justice Department has argued to Kennedy that the videos weren't covered by his order because the two men were being held in secret CIA prisons overseas, not at Guantanamo Bay.

The tapes' destruction has riled members of the commission that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. In an opinion piece in Wednesday's New York Times, commission chairmen Tom Keane and Lee Hamilton accused the CIA of failing to respond to requests for information about the 9/11 plot.

Anyone at the agency who knew about the tapes and failed to disclose them "obstructed our investigation," said Keane, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, and Hamilton, a former Democratic House member from Indiana.

The CIA has asserted that Keane and Hamilton's panel had not been specific enough in their requests and they should have asked for interrogation videos if that is what they wanted.

On Capitol Hill, the House Intelligence Committee wants to know who authorized the tapes' destruction; who in the CIA, Justice Department and White House knew about it and when, and why Congress was not fully informed.

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