Washington Memo

By Adam Zagorin

Late last year, CIA Director Michael Hayden acknowledged that in 2005 agency officials ordered the destruction of videotapes depicting the harsh interrogation of prisoners in the agency's secret overseas prisons. At the time, Hayden said that only a few prisoners were ever subjected to so-called special-interrogation techniques, none of which were recorded on video after 2002.

But that claim is now coming under additional scrutiny, in part because of a classified briefing that will soon be delivered to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Sources tell TIME that lawyers for one detainee currently being held at Guantanamo plan to present evidence that he was tortured and videotaped in secret CIA prisons--after his arrest in 2003.

Majid Khan, 27, a former suburban-Baltimore high school student, was seized by authorities in Pakistan. He then spent over three years in a secret overseas CIA "black site" before being transferred to Guantanamo. Also transferred was reputed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who allegedly ordered Khan to research attacks on American reservoirs and gas stations.

Khan's lawyers, armed with more than 500 pages of top-secret notes taken during recent sessions with their client at Guantanamo, will describe his interrogation to the intelligence committee. Though details of Khan's detainment are classified, his lawyers claim that he and others were tortured and videotaped, charges that Hayden and CIA special-interrogation officials deny. Hayden, however, admitted on Feb. 5 that the CIA had used waterboarding against Mohammed and two others.

The allegations come at a time when Congress is considering passage of a new intelligence bill that would effectively outlaw other CIA methods. During his testimony before Congress on Feb. 5, Hayden made clear his opposition to that part of the bill, but he may soon find that there's more than one way to uncover secrets.