The CIA withheld information about a secret counter-terrorism programme for eight years on the orders of former Vice President Dick Cheney, according to a report in The New York Times.

The agency's director Leon Panetta terminated the programme after learning about it last month, the newspaper reports The following day he called an emergency meeting with the House and Senate Intelligence committees to brief them.

Previous directors of the agency had not informed Congress of the programme because the intelligence-gathering effort had not developed to the point that they believed merited a congressional briefing, a former intelligence official and another government official told The New York Times.

Mr Cheney played a central role in overseeing the Bush administration's surveillance programme and was a key advocate of using controversial interrogation methods such as waterboarding on terrorism suspects.

The surveillance programme was the subject of an inspectors general report last week which noted that Mr Cheney's chief of staff, David Addington, personally decided who in former President George Bush's inner circle could know about the secret programme; a degree of secrecy that the report concluded had hurt the effectiveness of the counterterrorism surveillance effort.

An effort to reach Mr Cheney was unsuccessful.

Asked about the erport in the New York Times, CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano told Reuters said it was not the agency's practice to discuss classified briefings.

"When a CIA unit brought this matter to Director Panetta's attention, it was with the recommendation that it be shared appropriately with Congress. That was also his view, and he took swift, decisive action to put it into effect," Mr Gimigliano said, declining to comment further.

Mr Panetta has vowed not to allow coercive interrogation practices, secret prisons or the transfer of terrorist suspects to countries that may use torture, a pledge seen as a break with the agency's policies under tBush administration.

Critics of the agency, however, want it to be more forthcoming about its secret programmes.

Fears the CIA withheld key information from Congress were rekindled in May when House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, accused the agency of failing to reveal in 2002 that it was waterboarding a terrorism suspect.

Mr Panetta has rejectd the Democratic speaker's accusation.

Exactly what the secret programme was meant to do remains a mystery. A former intelligence official told The New York Times it was not related to the CIA's rendition, interrogation and detention program but was, rather, an embryonic intelligence gathering effort which was only sporadically active.

He said it was hoped to yield intelligence that would be used to conduct a secret mission or missions in another country — that is, a covert operation. But it never matured to that point.

The Cheney revelation comes as the House of Representatives prepares to debate a bill that would require the White House to expand the number of members who are told about covert operations. The White House has threatened a veto over concerns that wider congressional notifications could compromise the secrecy of the operations.

US law requires the president to make sure intelligence committees are kept fully informed of intelligence activities, including any significant anticipated intelligence activity.

But the government has some leeway in disclosing such information.

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