Paul Kiel December 6, 2007, 6:20 PM

The New York Times has a big one this afternoon: in 2002, the CIA videotaped the interrogations of at least two Al Qaeda operatives — interrogations that likely involved waterboarding and similar techniques. But no one who asked for videotapes of CIA interrogations — including the 9/11 commission and a federal judge — was told about it. The tapes were ultimately destroyed in 2005.

In a nutshell:

Daniel Marcus, a law professor at American University who served as general counsel for the Sept. 11 commission and was involved in the discussions about interviews with Al Qaeda leaders, said he had heard nothing about any tapes being destroyed.

If tapes were destroyed, he said, “it’s a big deal, it’s a very big deal,” because it could amount to obstruction of justice to withhold evidence being sought in criminal or fact-finding investigations.

CIA chief Mike Hayden announced the destruction of the tapes today in order to get ahead of the Times story, which was due to break tomorrow morning. “The tapes posed a serious security risk,” he explains. However, he doesn’t attempt to justify the decision to lie to investigators about their existence before they were destroyed.

As for why the tapes were destroyed:

A former intelligence official who was briefed on the issue said the videotaping was ordered as a way of assuring “quality control” at remote sites following reports of unauthorized interrogation techniques. He said the tapes, along with still photographs of interrogations, were destroyed after photographs of abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib became public in May 2004 and C.I.A. officers became concerned about a possible leak of the videos and photos.

CIA Tapes, Torture