Meanwhile, a former CIA agent who was part of the interrogation team told ABC News in an interview broadcast last Tuesday that the destroyed videos included recordings of Zubaydah being subjected to waterboarding -- and that the tactic was approved at the highest levels of the U.S. government.
Waterboarding is a technique that simulates drowning in a controlled environment. It consists of immobilizing an individual on his or her back, with the head inclined downward, and pouring water over the face to force the inhalation of water into the lungs. The practice is considered a war crime under the Geneva Conventions.
According to John Kiriakou, leader of the CIA team that captured Zubaydah, the waterboarding got Zubaydah to talk "in less than 35 seconds." His information "probably disrupted dozens of planned al-Qaida attacks," Kiriakou told the network.
"This isn't something done willy-nilly. This isn't something where an agency officer just wakes up in the morning and decides he's going to carry out an enhanced technique on a prisoner," Kiriakou told ABC News. "This was a policy made at the White House, with concurrence from the National Security Council and Justice Department."
For decades before President Bush took office in 2001, the U.S. regarded waterboarding as a war crime under the Geneva Conventions that govern the treatment of prisoners of war, and America's own Uniform Code of Military Justice -- and had even prosecuted individuals for employing the technique.
Bush's Veto Threat Kills Bill to Ban CIA Torture
Bush further intensified suspicions of a "Torturegate" cover-up on Friday by threatening to veto a bill passed on the same day by the House that would bar the CIA from using waterboarding and other interrogation tactics branded torturous by critics.
The president's veto threat led Senate Republicans to throw up a procedural roadblock against the bill in the upper chamber, effectively killing the measure.
The House bill, approved by a largely party-line vote of 222 to 199, would require the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies to follow Army rules adopted last year that explicitly forbid waterboarding. It also would require interrogators to adhere to a strict interpretation of the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war.
The Army rules, imposed by Congress on all Defense Department personnel, also ban sexual humiliation, "mock" executions and the use of attack dogs, as well as withholding food and medical care -- tactics that were employed by U.S. military personnel against detainees at Iraq's now-infamous Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad after the fall of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003.
The White House argued that restricting CIA interrogation techniques to those authorized by the Army Field Manual "would prevent the United States from conducting lawful interrogations of senior al-Qaida terrorists to obtain intelligence needed to protect Americans from attack."
"Hogwash," say administration critics.
Jennifer Daskal, senior counterterrorism counsel for Human Rights Watch, told The Washington Post that the CIA's admission that it had destroyed videotapes of its interrogations of al-Qaida suspects is one reason that the legislation is needed.
"It's unlikely the tapes would have been destroyed unless the CIA believed that they showed something that they needed to hide: interrogators engaging in practices that most of the world would consider torture," Daskal said.
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