Paper Trail

The CIA repeatedly asked White House lawyer Harriet Miers over a two-year period for instructions regarding what to do with "very clinical" videotapes depicting the use of "enhanced" interrogation techniques on two top Al Qaeda captives, according to former and current intelligence officials familiar with the communications (who requested anonymity when discussing the controversial issue). The tapes are believed to have included evidence of waterboarding and other interrogation methods that Bush administration critics have described as torture.

Senior officials of the CIA's National Clandestine Service finally decided on their own authority in late 2005 to destroy the tapes—which were kept at a secret location overseas—after failing to elicit clear instructions from the White House or other senior officials on what to do with them, according to one of the former intelligence officials with direct knowledge of the events in question. An extensive paper—or e-mail—trail exists documenting the contacts between Clandestine Service officials and top agency managers and between the CIA and the White House regarding what to do about the tapes, according to two former intelligence officials.

Included in the paper trail is an opinion from a CIA lawyer assigned to the Clandestine Service that advises that there is no explicit legal reason why the Clandestine Service had to preserve the tapes, according to both former and current officials. The document does not, however, directly authorize the tapes' destruction or offer advice on the wisdom or folly of such a course of action, according to a source familiar with its contents, who declined to be identified discussing the controversial topic.

According to one of the former officials, one reason the CIA executives originally decided the interrogations of Al Qaeda captives Abu Zubaidah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri should be videotaped was in order to protect the officers conducting the interrogations by demonstrating that everything done during the interrogations complied with guidelines set down by the White House and Justice Department. Another reason the tapes were made was because at the time Abu Zubaidah was captured he had suffered severe gunshot wounds and CIA officials wanted to document the fact that he received adequate medical treatment.

Only small portions of what former and current officials described as "low hundreds" of hours of the destroyed tapes depicted the use of "enhanced" interrogation techniques, like waterboarding; many hours of tapes, said one of the sources, consisted simply of pictures of Zubaidah in his cell in a secret CIA detention facility overseas.

A detailed written transcript of the tapes' contents—apparently including references to interrogation techniques—was subsequently made by the CIA. But the tapes themselves were never brought onto U.S. territory; they were kept, and later destroyed, at a secret location overseas. At one point portions of the tapes were electronically transmitted to CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., so a small number of officials there could review them. A counterterrorism source, who also asked for anonymity when discussing this subject, said that there was no reason to believe that any recordings of such an electronic feed still exist.