leaked?

If the CIA was afraid the tapes "would be leaked" and that's why they were destroyed, then something about those tapes begged for leaking, I'd say. As James Rubin said on the BBC, "after all, the CIA is very good at protecting classified information." He also pointed out that if the issue was merely protecting the identities of the agents, their faces could have been obscured.

It seems pretty clear that the CIA found itself in possession of tapes showing its agents committing crimes and engaging in torture - by normal standards - and that given the waning ability of this administration to cavalierly dispense with those normal standards, its decision was to simply destroy the tapes to protect, not individual agents, but rather the entire agency.

It's one thing to sit in a Congressional hearing and debate "waterboarding" - the breezy name of which is in itself an attempt to disguise reality. It's an entirely different thing to watch tapes of torture. (And (speculating here) this would be especially true if the agents' conduct was like that of the Abu Ghraib guards, betraying enjoyment...)

The CIA was definitely obstructing justice here. My fear is that it's covering up an even worse rot.