Two Views Of The CIA’s ‘Enhanced’ Interrogations

This is a WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I’m Rachel Martin. And this is For The Record, and a warning that some listeners might find descriptions in this story disturbing. It took five canada goose outlet parka years of investigating and more than 6,000 pages to lay it all out. The Senate Intelligence Committee released its report on the CIA’s detention and interrogation practices this past week. The chairman of canada goose outlet uk the committee, Dianne Feinstein, said the result was devastating.

SENATOR DIANNE FEINSTEIN: It shows that the CIA’s actions a decade canada goose factory outlet ago are a stain on our value and on our history.

MARTIN: https://www.georg-godorr.de uk canada goose There were the things goose outlet canada the American public already knew the secret prisons, the waterboarding detainees, the sleep deprivation. But the report detailed other abuse including something called rectal rehydration, and the revelation that one detainee in American custody died of hypothermia. Many Republicans say the report is a partisan attack, and they point out Senate Democrat’s who led the canada goose black friday sale investigation never interviewed any CIA employees. Former vice president Dick Cheney went on Fox News cheap Canada Goose to defend the CIA.

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: The notion that the committee is trying to peddle that somehow the agency was operating on a rogue basis, and we weren’t being told or the president wasn’t being told is just a flat out lie.

MARTIN: Then on Thursday, the current director of the CIA, John Brennan, responded to the Senate report in a rare press conference. Government was desperately trying to prevent another attack.

JOHN BRENNAN: There were no easy canada goose outlet store answers. And whatever your views are on EITs, our nation and, in particular, this agency did a lot of things right during this difficult time to keep this country strong and secure.

MARTIN: But in that same address Brennan said there was no buy canada goose jacket cheap way to know if the brutal interrogation practices actually generated useful intelligence.

BRENNAN: The cause and effect relationship between the use of EITs and useful information subsequently provided by the detainees is in my view unknowable.

MARTIN: For The Record today drawing a canada goose outlet online line in the torture debate. interrogation and detention program after 9/11. canadian goose jacket The first is from a military interrogator who was working in Iraq in 2003.

COLONEL STEVE KLEINMAN: I’m Colonel Steve Kleinman. I am a career intelligence officer.

MARTIN: And the second perspective.

GENERAL MIKE HAYDEN: I’m Mike Hayden, former director of the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency.

MARTIN: On September 11, 2001, then Lieutenant General Mike Hayden, was at the NSA.

HAYDEN: Of course we’re all shocked by the attack. Those of us in the intelligence community knew that everyone was dependent upon us in order to detect future attacks.

MARTIN: That meant getting as much intelligence as possible and getting it fast. Here’s Colonel Steve Kleinman.

KLEINMAN: The mood at the moment the fear, the anger, the desire for revenge that existed. And nobody canada goose coats on sale can deny that. And every American citizen many citizens in the West had the right to feel that way. canada goose factory sale The people who didn’t have the right to feel that way were the professionals that those taxpayers paid to defend them to collect the information necessary to keep them safe.

MARTIN: General Hayden admits that right after 9/11, the CIA was in over its head and, quote, making it up as they went along.

HAYDEN: We had not done interrogation for more than a generation of officers. We were ill prepared for that task, and we made a lot of mistakes. I mean, we had two desks.

MARTIN: Steve Kleinman was a military interrogator in those early years. canada goose black friday sale In 2003 he was canada goose outlet nyc sent to Iraq to help oversee the interrogation and detention program. When he got there he was shocked at the techniques being used.

KLEINMAN: It was walling, meaning throwing somebody, literally, up against a wall, slapping across the chin, punching into the stomach. Then also it cheap canada goose forced nudity, a certain amount of sleep deprivation. who told him, yes, that’s the protocol now. And Kleinman was to keep the abusive tactics going. He didn’t.

KLEINMAN: No, I would not do it. I stopped those interrogations I observed that were employing what I thought were abusive methods. It became very controversial. And I found myself in the center of canada goose outlet sale a really ugly vortex.

MARTIN: The most controversial interrogation and detention practices happened official canada goose outlet when George Tenet was the director of the CIA and Porter Goss after him. When General Hayden took the job in 2006, the most egregious tactics had stopped. But he had full awareness of how the CIA was treating detainees before his tenure.

MARTIN: Did any of what you saw disturb you?

HAYDEN: All of what I saw disturbed me. I mean, these were human beings. cheap canada goose And, Rachel, your listeners need to understand we didn’t do any of this out of enthusiasm. This was done out of duty. I mean, it’s hard to suppress your humanity.

MARTIN: Even so he is convinced that the harsh interrogation tactics worked.

MARTIN: In your 2007 testimony to the Senate committee you called the EIT program enhanced interrogation techniques you called it the most successful program being conducted by American intelligence today. Do you still believe that?

HAYDEN: Yeah, I do. I mean, it created this home depot style warehouse of information about al Qaeda information that we canada Canada Goose Coats On Sale goose outlet canada did not otherwise have.

MARTIN: But just this past week, the current director of the CIA, John Brennan, said there was no way to know if the so called enhanced interrogation practices produced reliable intelligence. I asked General Hayden if he agrees with Brennan.