ABC News' Luis Martinez reports: CIA Director Michael Hayden offered a spirited defense of the agency's controversial detention and interrogation techniques, such as waterboarding, which Attorney General nominee Eric Holder characterized today as "torture." Hayden said the techniques provided extremely useful information about al Qaeda and have led to repeated successes against the terror network.
"You can't say it didn't work. It worked," Hayden said in a wide-ranging farewell interview with reporters at the CIA's headquarters in Langley, Va.
Hayden said the legality of waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques is an "uninteresting question to the CIA" right now because the agency has not engaged in the practices since March 2003. "We don't do that. We haven't done in it since March 2003. We have no intent to do it," said Hayden. He added that given the new legal climate since the passage of the Military Commission Act and the Detainee Treatment Act, "I wouldn't know what kind of answer I'd get from the Justice Department, were I to ask. But we haven't asked."
Hayden was not CIA Director at the time that the enhanced techniques were legally authorized for use at secret CIA prisons, but he offered a strong defense nonetheless. "I am convinced that the program got the maximum amount of information. Particularly out of that first generation of detainees."
Referring to 9-11plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and al Qaeda financier Abu Zubaydah, Hayden said he couldn't conceive of another way for them to have provided useful intelligence, "given their character and given their commitment to what it is they do."
Hayden was dismissive of congressional efforts to impose the Army's field manual on the agency's interrogation efforts, labeling it a "real shot in the dark" that the manual "would suit the needs of the Republic in all circumstances," particularly when it comes to interrogating al Qaeda leaders.
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http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2009/01/cia-directors-s.html