Michael Hayden, the new chief of the Central Intelligence Agency, is trying to explain to Congress why the agency under his predecessors destroyed videotapes it had made of the interrogation of terrorist suspects. Congress wants to know. But why?

According to testimony Tuesday, the questioning in 2002 produced immediate results in the capture of the 9/11 mastermind. Suppose those tapes showed waterboarding or any other normally indefensible way of interrogating suspects? It would not do the country any good to have them lying around, to be leaked and played on YouTube worldwide.

Whoever destroyed the tapes saved the country a lot of additional and needless grief. (hh)