WASHINGTON — The CIA videotaped its interrogations of two terror suspects in 2002 and destroyed the tapes three years later out of fear they would leak to the public and compromise the identities of American questioners, the director of the agency, Michael Hayden, told employees yesterday.

Mr. Hayden said House and Senate intelligence committee leaders were informed of the existence of the tapes and the CIA’s intention to destroy them. He also said the CIA’s internal watchdog watched the tapes in 2003 and verified that the interrogation practices were legal.

He said the CIA began taping the interrogations as an internal check on the program after President Bush authorized the use of harsh questioning methods. The methods included waterboarding, which simulates drowning, government officials said.

The CIA also decided to destroy the tapes in “the absence of any legal or internal reason to keep them,” Mr. Hayden wrote. “The tapes posed a serious security risk. Were they ever to leak, they would permit identification of your CIA colleagues who had served in the program, exposing them and their families to retaliation from Al Qaeda and its sympathizers,” the message stated.

The CIA only taped the interrogation of the first two terror suspects the agency held, one of whom was Abu Zubaydah. Zubaydah, under harsh questioning, told CIA interrogators about alleged September 11 accomplice Ramzi Binalshibh, Mr. Bush said in 2006.

Mr. Binalshibh was captured and interrogated and, with Mr. Zubaydah’s information, led to the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in 2003.