CIA chief says Congress not fully informed

CIA Director Michael V. Hayden acknowledged Wednesday that the agency failed to keep key congressional committees adequately informed of the CIA’s decision to destroy videotapes of secret interrogations.

“I think that it’s fair to say that, particularly at the time of the destruction, we could have done an awful lot better in keeping the committee alerted and informed as to that activity,” Hayden said in brief remarks after a three-hour meeting with the House Intelligence Committee on the tapes controversy.

Hayden’s comment appeared to be a retreat from his initial statement on the matter last week, when he told the CIA’s workforce in a written memo that congressional oversight committees had known of the agency’s intention to dispose of the tapes and were notified after they were destroyed.

Hayden’s acknowledgment comes at a time when the director has been on a public relations campaign touting the agency’s commitment to congressional oversight as part of an effort to build public trust in the CIA’s handling of its activities in the war on terrorism.

The leaders of the House Intelligence Committee chastised the CIA for failing to keep the panel informed on a series of issues, including the creation and subsequent destruction of videotapes showing agency operatives using harsh interrogation techniques on Al Qaeda operatives.

“There is a tremendous amount of frustration,” said Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas), the committee chairman. “We feel, on a bipartisan level, that our committee was not informed, has not been kept informed, and we are very frustrated about that issue.”

Reyes added that members learned new information during Tuesday’s hearing with Hayden that lawmakers on the panel described as “stunning.” He did not elaborate.

A CIA official denied that Hayden was backpedaling from his earlier assertion on the tapes.

“He said last week that something was done and he said this week it could have been done much better,” said CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano. “That’s the point.”

An intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the political sensitivity of the situation, said that Congress should have been notified when the tapes were destroyed in 2005, but that Hayden wasn’t at the agency at the time.

Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the top Republican on the committee, said the case is part of a pattern that prompted him to write to President Bush last year expressing concern about the CIA and other agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community.

“I didn’t believe the administration and the community was fully keeping Congress informed on all of the different types of programs and issues that the intelligence community might be working on,” he said.

Hoekstra noted that many lawmakers still are seeking more information from U.S. intelligence agencies on the Israeli military strike on a suspected nuclear facility in Syria earlier this year.

Hoekstra suggested that Hayden didn’t deserve to be the focus of the criticism, saying that the committee knew less about the tapes “than maybe what Gen. Hayden had been led to believe” by his staff.

The tapes -- made in 2002, when George J. Tenet was in charge at the CIA -- included footage of agency officers using a technique called waterboarding while interrogating Abu Zubaydah, a suspected Al Qaeda operative linked to the Sept. 11 plot.

The technique involves strapping a prisoner to a board, covering his face with cloth or other material and dousing him with water to simulate drowning.

Hayden has said that the tapes were destroyed in 2005, while Porter J. Goss was director, largely out of concern that if the tapes ever leaked, they would expose undercover CIA operatives, making them and their families vulnerable to retaliation from Al Qaeda.

But other current and former U.S. intelligence officials have said that the tapes also were destroyed out of concern that they might expose CIA officers to legal liability for taking part in controversial interrogations that critics contend amounted to torture.

Reyes and Hoekstra said the committee also would seek testimony from a number of current and former high-ranking intelligence officials, including former Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte, Tenet and Goss.

“I think the list is going to be relatively long,” Hoekstra said.

Hayden has made a series of speeches and appearances in recent months in which he has sought to shore up the agency’s public reputation and to counter criticism, much of it focused on the CIA’s secret prisons and harsh interrogation methods.

“Contrary to some of the things you might read in a book, glean from a movie or read in the newspaper, we actually act at CIA within a strong framework of law and oversight,” Hayden said in a September speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. “We are responsive to both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.”

--

greg.miller@latimes.com