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The US justice department and the CIA are launching a joint inquiry
into the destruction of CIA of two videotapes of interrogations of
al-Qaeda suspectsCIA chief General Mike Hayden said the agency would co-operate fully with the preliminary inquiry, to decide whether a full investigation is necessary.
Democrats have accused the CIA of a cover-up to hide evidence of possible torture and abuse of detainees.
The CIA says it destroyed the tapes to protect the identity of its agents.
Justice Department officials, lawyers from the office of CIA general counsel and the CIA inspector general are expected to begin their inquiry early this week.
In a statement, Gen Hayden welcomed the move, describing it as an opportunity to address questions that have arisen over the destruction back in 2005 of videotapes.
The White House had no immediate comment on the decision.
In an earlier internal memo to CIA employees, Gen Hayden said the CIA had begun taping interrogations as an internal check in 2002 and decided to delete the videos because they no longer had intelligence value and posed a security risk.
US President Bush has said he has no recollection of the existence tapes and was not aware of the plan to destroy them.
The inquiry follows angry calls by leading Democrats for a criminal investigation into the actions of CIA.
Senator Dick Durbin, the second most powerful Democrat in the Senate, called on the US attorney general to investigate whether CIA officials had violated the law.
Others accused the CIA of a cover-up and described the explanation of CIA as a pathetic excuse.
The past six years, the Bush administration has run roughshod over our ideals and the rule of law, said veteran Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy.
Now, when the new Democratic Congress is demanding answers, the administration is feverishly covering up its tracks, he said.
The House and Senate Intelligence Committee are beginning their own inquiries.
The CIA revelation has also drawn criticism from civil liberties and human rights groups.
The Human Rights Watch said the wiping of the tapes was destruction of evidence, and described the reasons given by the CIA as disingenuous.
The American Civil Liberties Union accused the agency of showing an utter disregard for the law.
Correspondents say the news is likely to trigger more questions about the interrogation techniques used by the CIA and whether they amount to torture.
The techniques are alleged to have included water-boarding, a method in which a suspect is made to feel he is drowning.
Human rights groups say that water-boarding and other techniques allegedly used by the CIA can be defined as torture under various international treaties to which the US is a signatory.
The Bush administration has always maintained that it does not allow the use of torture.
The tapes are thought to have shown the interrogation in 2002 of a number of terror suspects, including Abu Zubaydah, who had been a chief recruiter for the al-Qaeda network.
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