CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield confirmed to Newsweek that the CIA intends to cooperate with the House committee's investigation. "As Director Hayden has made clear, CIA will cooperate fully with the preliminary inquiry being conducted by the Justice Department and CIA Inspector General as well as with Congress. We are in touch with the [House] committee on these matters and we're looking forward to it being worked out." Mansfield added that Rizzo "will certainly cooperate" with the House committee inquiry.

However, Rodriguez--the agency official who appears to be most directly involved in the decision to destroy the tapes--may be another story. He is now represented by Washington criminal defense lawyer Robert Bennett, who said, "When and if we get the subpoena, we'll deal with it. That's all I'm prepared to say."

As the investigation proceeds, another issue likely to attract further attention is the role of the office of CIA Inspector General John Helgerson--and the personal involvement of Helgerson himself--in the agency's original handling of the tapes.

According to three former and current government officials, Helgerson, a veteran CIA employee who has been the agency's IG since 2002, had long been known among officials of the Clandestine Service to be dismayed over the agency's involvement in detaining and aggressively interrogating Al-Qaeda suspects. Helgerson was personally opposed to the use of "enhanced" interrogation techniques, one former official said, and "made that known throughout the [CIA headquarters] building."

Prior to 9/11, the CIA had no program, facilities or personnel allocated for detaining and questioning suspects. The agency set up such a program, involving secret prisons overseas and a set of interrogation techniques, after receiving explicit instructions to do so by the White House and Justice Department, the current and former intelligence officials say. The Justice Department also issued detailed written guidelines as to how the agency was to conduct "enhanced" interrogations of high-level Al-Qaeda captives.

Under Helgerson's leadership, the IG's office at the CIA conducted a series of reviews and investigations of the program, culminating in the production, in 2004, of at least one in-depth report. This document remains highly classified. But it was provided some time ago to congressional oversight committees, according to two government officials, who, like others cited in this story, asked for anonymity when discussing sensitive matters.