WASHINGTON, Nov. 10 (Xinhuanet) -- The US House intelligence committee will investigate a story published by The Washington Post last week about a secret global prison system run by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

    The committee would look into several possible leaks of classified information, including the existence of the CIA's secret prisons overseas and the classified annual budget of 44 billion US dollars for the intelligence community.

    "The depth of the leaks that we have seen in the intelligence community over the last 12 to 18 months have done irreparable harm to our ability to effectively conduct the war on terror," Representative Peter Hoekstra, chairman of the committee, said on Thursday.

    The committee took the action at the request of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and House Speaker Dennis Hastert.

    The Washington Post report said the CIA was operating covert detention centers in eight foreign countries, including some in Eastern Europe, for holding terror suspects.

    The existence and locations of these prisons -- referred to as "black sites" in classified governmental documents -- are known to only a handful of officials in the United States, according to the newspaper.

    Also on Thursday, the Senate, by a vote of 82-9, demanded that National Intelligence Director John Negroponte provide the Congress with a classified "full accounting" on any clandestine prison or detention facility run by the US government where terror suspects were being held.

    The Senate also moved to deny detainees, held at the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the right to challenge their detentions with habeas corpus petitions in US federal courts.

    About 500 people, most of whom were captured in the US-led war in Afghanistan, are being detained at Guantanamo. Fifteen of them have been designated for military commission trials, and nine havebeen formally charged. Enditem