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CIA Head Defends Harsh Interrogations
January 16, 2009
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - CIA Director Michael Hayden strenuously defended the effectiveness of the CIA's harsh interrogation techniques Thursday, only moments after Attorney General-designate Eric Holder said the use of waterboarding was torture.
Though U.S. officials say interrogators have not engaged in waterboarding in the past five years, Hayden said the coercive techniques and other harsh tactics were useful in the war on terror.
"These techniques worked," said Hayden, who is due to replaced by Leon Panetta as President-elect Obama's CIA director.
According to Hayden, the CIA held and interrogated fewer than 100 detainees at secret detention sites. Of those, a third were subjected to harsh techniques. Three of them, he acknowledged, were waterboarded.
"I am convinced that the program got the maximum amount of information, particularly out of that first generation of detainees. The Abu Zubaydahs, the Khalid Sheik Muhammeds," Hayden said referring to top al-Qaida operatives who were detained and questioned with harsh techniques. "I just can't conceive of any other way, given their character, given their commitment to what it is they do."
Whether waterboarding is torture is "an uninteresting question for the CIA," Hayden told reporters at CIA headquarters Thursday. "We don't do that. We haven't done it since March 2003, and we have no intent to do it."
Hayden banned waterboarding from CIA interrogations in 2006. He has acknowledged that the agency used the technique, a form of simulated drowning, on three prisoners in 2002 and 2003.
It was just one of the CIA's so-called enhanced interrogation techniques approved by the White House and Justice Department after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks for questioning alleged terrorists who the administration feared were plotting a follow-up attack.
"The agency did none of this out of enthusiasm," Hayden said. "It did it out of duty and it did it with the best legal advice it had."
Holder's opinion that waterboarding is torture complicates an already complex legal environment for U.S. prosecutions of alleged terrorists.
The top official overseeing the military commissions set up by the Bush administration to prosecute them told The Washington Post this week that she decided not to send to trial the case of a detainee being held at the U.S. naval prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, because she believed he was tortured by a combination of harsh, albeit approved, techniques by his U.S. military captors.
Aides to President-elect Barack Obama say he intends to close Guantanamo and to rein in CIA interrogations and detainee operations.
Hayden said he was "very heartened" by Obama's statements that he is "looking forward" rather than backward when it comes to the CIA's more controversial programs, interpreting that to mean there won't be an effort in the new administration to find and punish CIA officers who carried out those programs.
Hayden said Thursday that everything the CIA did was legal and approved by the Justice Department.
He warned that any effort to hold agency employees accountable, retroactively, for President George W. Bush's legally sanctioned intelligence programs could severely damage future intelligence gathering.
Bush: 'Had Best Interests of US in Mind'
January 16, 2009
Chicago Tribune
WASHINGTON - President Bush, delivering a televised farewell to the nation Thursday night, attempted to summon a collective sense of "gratitude" for years of safety following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that shaped his presidency.
In a measure of the impact the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon had on his administration, Bush touted one signal success during his time in office: No further attacks occurred.
The president acknowledged that his anti-terror policies had prompted "legitimate debate." But, he said, "there can be little debate about the results. America has gone more than seven years without another terrorist attack on our soil."
He also acknowledged "setbacks" in office that he did not detail. "There are things I would do differently if given the chance," he said. "Yet, I have always acted with the best interests of our country in mind ... You may not agree with some tough decisions I have made. But I hope you can agree that I was willing to make the tough decisions."
Speaking from the East Room of the White House, Bush noted that he had first addressed the nation from the White House on Sept. 11, 2001. "As the years passed, most Americans were able to return to life much as it had been before 9/11," Bush said. "But I never did. Every morning, I received a briefing on the threats to our nation. And I vowed to do everything in my power to keep us safe."
The president's prime-time address, broadcast by television networks, marked his final planned public appearance before traveling to the Capitol on Tuesday for the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama. He spoke not only to a television audience, but also to an invited audience that included his wife, Laura Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and relatives of Sept. 11 victims, including the mother of a police officer whose badge he said he still keeps.
It was one of several self-assessments that Bush has offered in recent days in interviews and in a news conference, efforts to shape perceptions of his controversial administration and its legacy.
Earlier this week, with his 47th and final planned news conference at the White House, Bush delivered a more critical assessment of his own record, acknowledging several "mistakes" and "disappointments."
In that appearance, the mistakes he cited included the "Mission Accomplished" banner strung across an aircraft carrier where he declared that major combat operations in Iraq had been completed shortly after the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. Bush also allowed that some of his "rhetoric was a mistake" - an allusion to tough talk about hunting down al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." Bin Laden remains at large, and severe and ongoing violence erupted in Iraq following his address on the aircraft carrier.
The abuse of American-held prisoners at the Abu Ghraib military prison in Iraq remained one of his disappointments, he said at the news conference, as did the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the then-stated premise for the ouster of Iraq's Saddam Hussein.
In the televised address, by contrast, the president offered little sense of a confessional accounting to a public that largely has lost confidence in him. Bush's public approval ratings have hovered below 30 percent in his closing months in office.
Two-thirds of the public voices optimism that Obama will perform well as president, according to a Gallup Poll, and a new Pew Research Center poll has found that the Democrat holds a favorable rating among 79 percent of Americans surveyed.
Acknowledging Obama's popularity, the retiring president offered his own encouragement for Obama, who will be the first African-American to take the oath of office as president.
"Standing on the steps of the Capitol will be a man whose story reflects the enduring promise of our land," Bush said. "This is a moment of hope and pride for our whole nation. And I join all Americans in offering best wishes to President-elect Obama, his wife, Michelle, and their two beautiful girls."
As for himself, Bush said: "It has been the privilege of a lifetime to serve as your president. There have been good days and tough days. But every day I have been inspired by the greatness of our country and uplifted by the goodness of our people."
Bush will travel Friday to Camp David for his final weekend at the mountain retreat.
i guss, this is the "WAR OF INTERSTS" & FRENCH soilders , are justifyied to think about thier own intersts! by the way they live in EU, a free & democratic continent! so i am sure they wernt going to be court marshalled, any..way!
i dont understand, why people keep , calling the wars in IRAQ & AFGHANISTAN are justifiyed just because, a super power had been suffered with its own medicine!
what this super-power & its allies were doing to" STOP THE GENOCIDE OF THE MUSLIMS, IN GAZA & IN KASHMIR"?
it has been , said & learnt again & again, that all that ,militancy & fundamentellism is just happening because, of decads of injustices done by the west+US , in the problums faced by the muslim nations!
in the backdrop of these problums, its not a big thing that some muslims living in the west , dont own the state policy , which thier govrtments were pursuing , on the week muslim nations to achive thier hidden intersts?
January 16, 2009
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - CIA Director Michael Hayden strenuously defended the effectiveness of the CIA's harsh interrogation techniques Thursday, only moments after Attorney General-designate Eric Holder said the use of waterboarding was torture.
Though U.S. officials say interrogators have not engaged in waterboarding in the past five years, Hayden said the coercive techniques and other harsh tactics were useful in the war on terror.
"These techniques worked," said Hayden, who is due to replaced by Leon Panetta as President-elect Obama's CIA director.
According to Hayden, the CIA held and interrogated fewer than 100 detainees at secret detention sites. Of those, a third were subjected to harsh techniques. Three of them, he acknowledged, were waterboarded.
"I am convinced that the program got the maximum amount of information, particularly out of that first generation of detainees. The Abu Zubaydahs, the Khalid Sheik Muhammeds," Hayden said referring to top al-Qaida operatives who were detained and questioned with harsh techniques. "I just can't conceive of any other way, given their character, given their commitment to what it is they do."
Whether waterboarding is torture is "an uninteresting question for the CIA," Hayden told reporters at CIA headquarters Thursday. "We don't do that. We haven't done it since March 2003, and we have no intent to do it."
Hayden banned waterboarding from CIA interrogations in 2006. He has acknowledged that the agency used the technique, a form of simulated drowning, on three prisoners in 2002 and 2003.
It was just one of the CIA's so-called enhanced interrogation techniques approved by the White House and Justice Department after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks for questioning alleged terrorists who the administration feared were plotting a follow-up attack.
"The agency did none of this out of enthusiasm," Hayden said. "It did it out of duty and it did it with the best legal advice it had."
Holder's opinion that waterboarding is torture complicates an already complex legal environment for U.S. prosecutions of alleged terrorists.
The top official overseeing the military commissions set up by the Bush administration to prosecute them told The Washington Post this week that she decided not to send to trial the case of a detainee being held at the U.S. naval prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, because she believed he was tortured by a combination of harsh, albeit approved, techniques by his U.S. military captors.
Aides to President-elect Barack Obama say he intends to close Guantanamo and to rein in CIA interrogations and detainee operations.
Hayden said he was "very heartened" by Obama's statements that he is "looking forward" rather than backward when it comes to the CIA's more controversial programs, interpreting that to mean there won't be an effort in the new administration to find and punish CIA officers who carried out those programs.
Hayden said Thursday that everything the CIA did was legal and approved by the Justice Department.
He warned that any effort to hold agency employees accountable, retroactively, for President George W. Bush's legally sanctioned intelligence programs could severely damage future intelligence gathering.
Bush: 'Had Best Interests of US in Mind'
January 16, 2009
Chicago Tribune
WASHINGTON - President Bush, delivering a televised farewell to the nation Thursday night, attempted to summon a collective sense of "gratitude" for years of safety following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that shaped his presidency.
In a measure of the impact the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon had on his administration, Bush touted one signal success during his time in office: No further attacks occurred.
The president acknowledged that his anti-terror policies had prompted "legitimate debate." But, he said, "there can be little debate about the results. America has gone more than seven years without another terrorist attack on our soil."
He also acknowledged "setbacks" in office that he did not detail. "There are things I would do differently if given the chance," he said. "Yet, I have always acted with the best interests of our country in mind ... You may not agree with some tough decisions I have made. But I hope you can agree that I was willing to make the tough decisions."
Speaking from the East Room of the White House, Bush noted that he had first addressed the nation from the White House on Sept. 11, 2001. "As the years passed, most Americans were able to return to life much as it had been before 9/11," Bush said. "But I never did. Every morning, I received a briefing on the threats to our nation. And I vowed to do everything in my power to keep us safe."
The president's prime-time address, broadcast by television networks, marked his final planned public appearance before traveling to the Capitol on Tuesday for the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama. He spoke not only to a television audience, but also to an invited audience that included his wife, Laura Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and relatives of Sept. 11 victims, including the mother of a police officer whose badge he said he still keeps.
It was one of several self-assessments that Bush has offered in recent days in interviews and in a news conference, efforts to shape perceptions of his controversial administration and its legacy.
Earlier this week, with his 47th and final planned news conference at the White House, Bush delivered a more critical assessment of his own record, acknowledging several "mistakes" and "disappointments."
In that appearance, the mistakes he cited included the "Mission Accomplished" banner strung across an aircraft carrier where he declared that major combat operations in Iraq had been completed shortly after the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. Bush also allowed that some of his "rhetoric was a mistake" - an allusion to tough talk about hunting down al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." Bin Laden remains at large, and severe and ongoing violence erupted in Iraq following his address on the aircraft carrier.
The abuse of American-held prisoners at the Abu Ghraib military prison in Iraq remained one of his disappointments, he said at the news conference, as did the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the then-stated premise for the ouster of Iraq's Saddam Hussein.
In the televised address, by contrast, the president offered little sense of a confessional accounting to a public that largely has lost confidence in him. Bush's public approval ratings have hovered below 30 percent in his closing months in office.
Two-thirds of the public voices optimism that Obama will perform well as president, according to a Gallup Poll, and a new Pew Research Center poll has found that the Democrat holds a favorable rating among 79 percent of Americans surveyed.
Acknowledging Obama's popularity, the retiring president offered his own encouragement for Obama, who will be the first African-American to take the oath of office as president.
"Standing on the steps of the Capitol will be a man whose story reflects the enduring promise of our land," Bush said. "This is a moment of hope and pride for our whole nation. And I join all Americans in offering best wishes to President-elect Obama, his wife, Michelle, and their two beautiful girls."
As for himself, Bush said: "It has been the privilege of a lifetime to serve as your president. There have been good days and tough days. But every day I have been inspired by the greatness of our country and uplifted by the goodness of our people."
Bush will travel Friday to Camp David for his final weekend at the mountain retreat.
i guss, this is the "WAR OF INTERSTS" & FRENCH soilders , are justifyied to think about thier own intersts! by the way they live in EU, a free & democratic continent! so i am sure they wernt going to be court marshalled, any..way!
i dont understand, why people keep , calling the wars in IRAQ & AFGHANISTAN are justifiyed just because, a super power had been suffered with its own medicine!
what this super-power & its allies were doing to" STOP THE GENOCIDE OF THE MUSLIMS, IN GAZA & IN KASHMIR"?
it has been , said & learnt again & again, that all that ,militancy & fundamentellism is just happening because, of decads of injustices done by the west+US , in the problums faced by the muslim nations!in the backdrop of these problums, its not a big thing that some muslims living in the west , dont own the state policy , which thier govrtments were pursuing , on the week muslim nations to achive thier hidden intersts?
