WASHINGTON, March 13 (Reuters) - The U.S. Defense Department is reviewing the practice of videotaping interrogations with the aim of developing a uniform policy on recording those sessions, the Pentagon said on Thursday.

The U.S. military does not regularly videotape interrogations and so far its review has found fewer than 50 tapes, according to Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell.

The recordings are typically destroyed after 90 days, once interrogators and other military officials determine the videotapes no longer serve any intelligence or training purpose, the Pentagon said.

"Once the tape has outlived its usefulness, it is certainly within the rights, in fact I think it's within the orders of some divisions, to destroy those tapes," Morrell said.

The Pentagon's top intelligence official, Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence James Clapper, in late January ordered military commands to report their videotaping practices.

That came after the Central Intelligence Agency acknowledged it destroyed videotapes of harsh interrogations conducted by CIA officers. The destruction of those tapes is the subject of criminal and congressional investigations.

"We want to know to what extent that they are using videotaping, when they choose to preserve it, when they choose to destroy it, what are the criteria they use for making those decisions," Morrell said.

"The effort here is to try to ... ensure that we have a uniform use, policy with regards to videotaping."

The videotapes would be kept if there was any evidence of abuse during the interrogations, Morrell said.

The Pentagon would not discuss the content of the tapes.

The New York Times, which first reported the review of videotaping practices, said one of the tapes showed what a military spokesman described as the forcible gagging of a terrorism suspect.

In that case, interrogators used force to put duct tape over the mouth of a detainee, the newspaper said.

Morrell would not say whether that practice was abusive.

"I'm not going to go into what's abuse or not abuse. I would talk to people who are experts on interrogation. I doubt that they would characterize what you're describing as abuse," he said.

Many of the tapes documented interrogations of Jose Padilla, the newspaper said. Padilla is a Chicago gang member once accused of plotting a radioactive bomb attack, but sentenced in January to more than 17 years in prison for supporting terrorism.

The U.S. military organizes itself into geographic and functional commands, four of which were ordered to report on their videotaping practices.

That included U.S. Southern Command, responsible for the military prison holding al Qaeda and Taliban suspects at the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and Central Command, responsible for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

All except Central Command have completed the review. (Reporting by Kristin Roberts, Editing by David Wiessler)

AlertNet news is provided by