WASHINGTON - The director of the CIA was questioned for a second time by lawmakers Wednesday, amid anger that the spy agency destroyed videos allegedly depicting the torture of terror suspects.
"We'll lay out the facts and will be very happy to let the facts take us where they will," CIA chief Michael Hayden said ahead of Wednesday's closed-door hearing.
"I'm comfortable with what we had laid out to the workforce, and very comfortable, very happy to be here because essentially what we're doing is putting a lot of the facts underneath the statement to the workforce," he added, declining to take questions.
But the controversy is set to grow, with the White House insisting the United States does not practice torture, even as a former CIA interrogator has broken ranks to reveal that detainees were subjected to "waterboarding."
Hayden, who was not the head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) at the time the tapes were destroyed, was appearing before the House Intelligence Committee, after being questioned Tuesday by the Senate Intelligence Committee.
The scandal was triggered when Hayden revealed last week in a letter to CIA staff that the tapes made in 2002 were destroyed in 2005, just as Congress was investigating allegations of US abuse of "war on terror" detainees.
Hayden has denied the use of torture and said the tapes, intended as an internal check on how interrogations were carried out, were destroyed to prevent any leak that could identify and endanger CIA agents.
But the tapes reportedly showed harsh interrogation methods, including "waterboarding," denounced as torture by human rights groups, lawmakers and a former CIA employee.
The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, John Rockefeller, called Tuesday's hearing "useful and not yet complete," and said he planned to call other CIA senior staff to testify.
New witnesses could include Jose Rodriguez, the ex-chief of the CIA's clandestine service who reportedly made the decision to dispose of the tapes.
The White House has remained on the offensive over its methods in the "war on terror" launched in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, repeatedly stressing the United States does not use torture.
"I can say that any interrogations have been legal and that they have been fully briefed to the United States Congress," spokeswoman Dana Perino said Tuesday.
"I am saying that the United States does not torture," she added.
However, retired CIA agent John Kiriakou, who led a team that captured and interrogated Al-Qaeda suspect Abu Zubaydah, has gone public saying intelligence services did use "waterboarding."
"I have no doubt that the information gleaned from Abu Zubaydah stopped terror attacks and saved lives," he told CNN news on Tuesday.
The technique involves covering a suspect's mouth with material and repeatedly pouring water over it, prompting a choking sensation that feels like drowning. Kiriakou said the method broke Zubaydah in about 30 seconds.
Kiriakou told NBC news Tuesday that the decision to use "waterboarding" "was made at the White House with concurrence from the National Security Council and Justice Department."
Meanwhile, in a separate case on Tuesday a federal appeals court ordered the US government to preserve evidence related to claims by Guantanamo inmate Majid Khan that he was tortured while in CIA detention.
The government was ordered to protect any evidence as it weighed assertions by Khan, a Pakistani and legal US resident of Baltimore, that he was held in secret and tortured for three years by the spy agency before he was moved to the US military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2006.
bur-jit/jkb/ksb
12/12/2007 17:20 GMT