Washington - US former vice-president Dick Cheney ordered the CIA to withhold information about a secret counterterrorism programme from Congress for eight years, The New York Times reported on its website on Saturday.

Central Intelligence Agency chief Leon Panetta, who ended the programme when he first learned of its existence on June 23, revealed Cheney's role in a closed briefing a day later to the Senate and House intelligence committees, the Times said, citing two people with direct knowledge of the matter.

"Because this programme never went fully operational and hadn't been briefed as Panetta thought it should have been, his decision to kill it was neither difficult nor controversial," an intelligence official told the newspaper, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The allegations about the programme, which was not identified, came as lawmakers from both President Barack Obama's Democratic Party and opposition Republicans fight a bitter dispute over whether the CIA informed Congress adequately and comprehensively about sensitive programmes.

Waterboarded 83 times

In May, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi charged that the US spy agency misled lawmakers in 2002 about interrogation techniques widely seen as torture, including "waterboarding," a simulated drowning method used on terror suspects.

The briefing, on whose content Pelosi and the CIA have disagreed, came after accused al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times.

The disclosure about Cheney's involvement came a day after a US government probe highlighted his key role in restricting the number of officials with knowledge of a secret wiretap programme launched after the September 11 2001 terror attacks in the United States.

The report, compiled by the inspectors general of five government agencies, including the CIA and the departments of Defence and Justice, found that the high level of secrecy of the National Security Agency's covert wiretapping had hurt the programme's effectiveness to monitor terror plots and activities.

By AFP