Former CIA Interrogator: We Carried Out Torture Because The White House Told Us To

[ProSense]

Former CIA Interrogator: We Carried Out Torture Because The White House Told Us To

In an interview last night with ABC News, John Kiriakou — the CIA official who headed the team that interrogated al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah — said that Zubaydah was waterboarded, but defended those actions as having prevented “maybe dozens” of planned attacks and “probably saved lives.”

But despite his vigorous defense of his past conduct, Kiriakou says he now views what he did as torture and says that he would not recommend those tactics going forward. “We don’t need enhanced techniques to get that nugget of information,” he said in an interview with Matt Lauer this morning on The Today Show.

Lauer asked Kiriakou where the permission was given to carry out torture. “Was the White House involved in that decision?” Lauer asked. “Absolutely,” Kiriakou said, adding:

This isn’t something done willy nilly. It’s not something that an agency officer just wakes up in the morning and decides he’s going to carry out an enhanced technique on a prisoner. This was a policy made at the White House, with concurrence from the National Security Council and Justice Department.

Lauer then referenced an earlier interview he did with President Bush, in which Bush said he was assured by the Justice Department “we were not torturing.” “I disagree,” Kiriakou said. Watch it:

As evidence increasingly builds for the argument that CIA interrogators carried out illegal acts of torture, the New York Sun reports that President Bush may soon decide to issue pardons:

more

Edited to add:

CIA Agent: Waterboarding Was OK'd

Ex-CIA agent: Waterboarding had top-level OK


Pardons for what Mr. Decider?

[spanone]

1. right to the fucking top

[EnviroBat]

2. I see a fan, and over the fan a turd, hanging precariously,

waiting to drop into the spinning blades.

[TalkingDog]

25. In your metaphor...

Bush is the Turd, right?

If not, I'd suggest he's a turd anyway. And if he got shredded into gooey chunks and flung about the room it wouldn't hurt my feelings one damned bit.



My Favorite Master Artist: Karen Parker GhostWoman Studios

[EnviroBat]

27. I do agree, bush is a stuttering turd.

But I see him more on the receiving end of the fecal splattering in my mind. One bright day, I see him strapped to a chair while one-by-one every citizen of this country walks up to him, turns, and farts in his face. After which, he is sent off to the Hague.

[Solly Mack]

3. possibly pardoning war criminals

and America wants to call itself a beacon of hope.

I can hear the hopes now

I hope the Americans don't torture me or my family.
I hope the Americans don't kill me or my family.
I hope the Americans don't illegally detain me or my family.
I hope the Americans don't invade my country.

Let your little search light shine, America.

[kentuck]

4. Ok Congress...

Here's your guy! Let's see you call him forward to tell his story. The torture was approved by the White House. The torture was approved by the White House. The torture was approved by the White House. The torture was approved by the White House. The torture was approved by the White House. The torture was approved by the White House. The torture was approved by the White House.

[SpiralHawk]

5. "Smirk, smirk, smirk." - Commander AWOL Bush

[sabra]

6. he also said he refused to torture the detainees...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2445906

[The Backlash Cometh]

7. Amazing. You KNOW the CIA will have hard proof.

This will not be, he said, she said.

[KoKo]

8. But it's okay because the gang of four excepting Harmon approved of it, too.

Inluding Speaker Pelosi. So everyone was really on the same page if one is to believe the WaPo...except for Harmon who wrote letter protesting.

[ProSense]

10. No it isn't alright.

Is Pelosi above the law? Are you defending the Bush administration? Give it a rest. The WaPo story is not only BS, it's completely irrelevant!

[karynnj]

16. and utterly consistent with what the WP has done since 2002

Whenever Bush is in trouble they take something to show that the Democrats were equally complicit. It makes me sick that Pelosi, Graham and Rockefeller all kept quiet - but do you remember hearing that Harmon objected in a letter? Even if all 4 objected in letters - it was after all highly classified - we would still not have known and it would have gone on as planned. There are likely other things like this - after all why did only 10 Senators sign Kerry's letter on Phase 2.

However, there is a big difference from observing and not having the guts to take to the Senate (or House) floor and say what they saw. Any who did it who have been skewered in the RW press, but they couldn't be charged. That though would have been an act of extraordinary courage - far beyond writing a letter that wouldn't be see. The other thing was that it was already in the media that there were videos - this is really not new. Also, ALL the Congressmen were allowed to see all the photos - and many condemned the actions. (Possibly including these 3)

In fact, the media and the Democrats DID make this an issue. I found this googling to find something said by any of the 3. Here is a right wing source that from a different perspective :) blasts the Democrats (and Kerry, in particular, because they hate him) on unfairly blaming people over Abu Ghraib. Note that they site that the NYT covered it every day for weeks. In context, I hope this is an appropriate use of a RW source. http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/jason-aslinger/2007/08/29/only-military-officer-charged-abu-ghraib-acquitted-no-vindication-ru

As to Rockefeller, here is a not helpful May 2004 quote, that is sickening given this 2003 information.
"he top Democrat on the intelligence panel, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-West Virginia, also stressed that the probe is still open.

"Both the Department of Defense and the CIA have not completed their respective investigations ... into whether Army military police and contractor personnel at Abu Ghraib were acting at the direction of their superiors or acting on their own volition in carrying out these abuses," he said.

Rockefeller also said that in addition to looking at the mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, the committee would take a larger look at "how detention and interrogation is handled -- not just at that particular prison but at all prisons where our enemy's people may be detained and are in the process of being interrogated."


http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/05/05/congress.abuse/index.html

I guess this is like the Phase 2 investigation still being open.

In contrast, here is what Senator Kennedy wrote a year after the abuses were known. Reading it, it is clear that the descriptions alone, not even counting the photos sufficed - no one needed a video.
http://tedkennedy.com/journal/59/abu-ghraib---one-year-later

There should be some pushback here - the Democrats spoke out against torture and this is an attempt to smear the differences.

[EFerrari]

20. There's something funny here about Rockefeller. He's

being inconsistent as hell and he doesn't want an independent prosecutor.

[karynnj]

23. I think so too

He also had a letter that he had put in a safe deposit box that dealt with the intelligence that only the same group of Congressmen got. I never knew much about him. I remember articles in the Chicago paper about him - his wife was the daughter of Il Senator Chuck Percy.

[yardwork]

24. That's ridiculous. Pelosi and the Democrats were not in power when this happened.

What were they supposed to do? March over to the White House, demand entrance, and block the president from ordering torture?

[TalkingDog]

26. Ummm... I'll take: "Tell the people" for 5000, Alex.

You are trolling with that comment, right? I mean, surely you are just TRYING to be outrageous.

Doesn't matter if they were in power or not. That's an almost ludicrious stance to take in the argument. ...Nope, retract that. It IS a ludicrious stance to take, no wiggle room.

By the rules of your assertion, if I am walking down the street and I pass an alley where I hear 2 cops planning to beat/torture/murder a person they suspect of being a criminal, I should just, what.... clasp my hands behind my back, roll my eyes and walk past, whistling like I heard nothing because they have much more power than I do?

Secrecy only works if both parties AGREE to keep the secret. If the secret is illegal or unethical and you don't speak out, you are complicit in the crimes.

No wiggle room.


My Favorite Master Artist: Karen Parker GhostWoman Studios

[in_cog_ni_to]

9. Well, well, well....there we have it, straight from the horses mouth..."This was a policy made at

the White House." I guess that means Impeachment will start today, eh? War crimes are still impeachable, right?:eyes:

[KansDem]

11. This makes me sick...

In an interview last night with ABC News, John Kiriakou — the CIA official who headed the team that interrogated al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah — said that Zubaydah was waterboarded, but defended those actions as having prevented “maybe dozens” of planned attacks and “probably saved lives.”

But despite his vigorous defense of his past conduct, Kiriakou says he now views what he did as torture and says that he would not recommend those tactics going forward. “We don’t need enhanced techniques to get that nugget of information,” he said in an interview with Matt Lauer this morning on The Today Show.

I'll bet the Khmer Rouge felt the same way...

But personally, there are too many "maybes" and "probablys" to justify this. And even if there weren't, it is still a crime against humanity and should be treated as such...

[springhill]

15. I'd like to know about the dozens of planned attacks.............

that this illegal and inhumane torturing prevented. I think it's all made up to make it look better.

[watrwefitinfor]

12. "President Bush may soon decide to issue pardons:"

And just who is going to pardon the Great Pardoner?

Wat

[blm]

14. What happened the LAST TIME BushInc was exposed for their illegal operations?

http://consortiumnews.com/2006/111106.html

It ALWAYS takes ambitious Dems willing to forsake the historic record in order to protect the secrecy and privilege of BushInc.

[Peace Patriot]

17. Bush pardons Pelosi. Cheney resigns. Pelosi is appointed VP. Bush resigns.

Pelosi pardons Bush--and everyone who works for, or ever worked for, or ever had a contract signed by, the Bush Junta, and a number of Senators and Congress people (whoever needs it). We "put all this behind us," as the pardoned ones try to figure out how to take the ten trillion dollar deficit out of the hides of the poor and the lower middle class.

Simple. The Corporate Rulers win. Always.

[lurky]

13. "Just following orders."

I'm glad this guy has come forward, but if the CIA guys are planning to rely on the Nurenburg defense, I think they are in trouble.

[L. Coyote]

18. My question today: "Were Bush and/or Cheney directly involved in torture via video feed?"

And, who else was? Was there a real-time feed and is that why video was employed?

[Hydra]

19. And the CIA attempts to clean their hands of their usual policy

The rats are jumping ship, or offering more sacrificial lambs to us.

Headlines later this week:

Pelosi claims no knowledge of "enhanced techniques"
White House claims no orders were submitted to the CIA regarding this
CIA claims that no torture occured

[Supersedeas]

21. War Crimes!!

[paulk]

22. it's interesting the spin going on

I watched that interview and I thought the “maybe dozens” of planned attacks and “probably saved lives” quotes were interesting - especially since both James Risen in "State of War" and Ron Suskind in "The One Percent Solution" contradict the CIA's assertion that Abu Zubaydah was anything like the person the CIA says he was. Both these books claim that he wasn't a high ranking official, he was in fact little more than a gopher who was mentally retarded to boot - and that the information gained through his torture sent our intelligence agencies off on numerous (and costly) wild goose chases.

Mr. Tenet has, of course, vehemently denied this - but now that the tapes are gone, I guess we'll never know who's telling the truth. One thing we do know is that the official excuse is laughable - that it was done to protect the identities of the questioning agents - this from an administration that outed Valerie Plame?

It's not a great leap to conclude that the tapes may have been destroyed not just because of the torture but because of what that torture revealed.