The New York Times has revealed at least four top White House lawyers took part in talks about whether to destroy videotapes showing the interrogation of two prisoners held in secret jails. The CIA says it destroyed the tapes to protect the interrogators, but questions remain over whether it was part of a cover-up to mask evidence of torture. The White House has claimed it advised against the CIA’s move. But a former intelligence official says top White House officials expressed “vigorous sentiment” in favor of destroying the tapes. The tapes were destroyed in November 2005 — over a year into the abuse scandal at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The officials taking part included then-White House counsel and later Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; David Addington, then counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney and now his chief of staff; John Bellinger, then a senior lawyer at the National Security Council; and Harriet Miers, then President Bush’s deputy chief of staff and later White House counsel.