The Justice Department and the Central Intelligence Agency have launched a joint probe into the CIA’s destruction of at least two videotapes documenting prisoner interrogations at a secret CIA prison. One of the tapes may have shown CIA agents waterboarding the al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah. CIA director Michael Hayden said the videos were made in 2002 but destroyed in 2005 because they posed a security risk. Jennifer Daskal of Human Rights Watch questioned the CIA’s motives.

Jennifer Daskal: “We know that these were tapes taken during a time where the CIA was using techniques like waterboarding, a technique that several Republican senators, among many others, have now declared illegal. It seems as if the CIA was engaged in destruction of evidence of a crime scene, and that’s very concerning.”

CBS Evening News is reporting that a “well-informed source” informed the network that the CIA destroyed the interrogation videos to “avoid criminal prosecution.”