CIA Denies Withholding Tapes From 9/11 Commission

Washington, D.C. (AHN) -- The CIA on Saturday responded to a memo by the former head of the commission that investigated the September 11 terrorist attacks, suggesting it had withheld videotapes documenting the interrogations of two top terror suspects.

"The notion that the CIA wasn't cooperative or forthcoming with the 9/11 commission is just plain wrong. It is utterly without foundation," agency spokesman Mark Mansfield said. "The CIA's cooperation and assistance is what enabled the 9/11 commission to reconstruct the plot in their very comprehensive report."

A seven-page memorandum written by Philip D. Zelikow, the commission's former executive director, was issued on December 13 after CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden announced the agency had destroyed the tapes in 2005 because they posed a "serious security risk."

"None of the government officials in any of these 2004 meetings alluded to the existence of recordings of interrogations or any further information in the government's possession that was relevant to the commission's requests," Zelikow wrote in his memo, referring to meetings between the commission and intelligence agency officials.

The CIA issued its statement after the New York Times published an article on Zelikow's memo on Saturday. Hayden's announcement about the tapes were similarly made after the Times informed him that they were planning to publish a story about the agency's destruction of the videotapes.

The CIA has agreed to let lawmakers access to records last week, after Congress threatened to subpoena agency documents. Lawmakers are investigating who ordered the tapes destroyed, if White House and Justice Department officials were aware of the destruction, and why Congress was not informed.

The White House has continued with its no-comment policy about the matter, with President George Bush merely repeating earlier statements that his first recollection of being informed about the tapes and their being destroyed was when Hayden told him this month.

The agency, together with the Justice Department, has said that congressional and court hearings about the videotapes would jeopardize its own investigations. It also contended that the tapes documented interrogations of Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, two suspected terrorists not detained in Guantanamo but secret U.S prisons overseas.

Hayden's admission has raised questions about the possibility that the CIA also withheld information from a federal court hearing the case of Zacarias Moussaoui. In a letter made public on Nov.13, prosecutors in the Moussaoui case admitted to U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, the federal judge who oversaw the case, that the CIA had wrongly assured her no evidence of interrogations of suspected terrorists existed, when in fact there were videotapes of some detainees.