CIA’s top spy: No (intel) losses from waterboarding ban

[sabra]

Source: WP

Michael Sulick, head of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, told a student audience last week that the spy agency has seen no fall-off in intelligence since waterboarding was banned by the Obama administration.

"I don’t think we’ve suffered at all from an intelligence standpoint," Sulick told students and some faculty members at Fordham University, his alma mater, on March 25. "But I don’t want to talk about (it from) a legal, moral or ethical standpoint."

According to the university’s news service, Sulick said it was tough for any U.S. agencies dealing with terrorism to balance security and civil liberties.

"If you're a civil servant in any agency dealing with national security issues, you have to grapple with these conflicts," said Sulick, who earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Fordham in Russian studies and a Ph.D. from the City University of New York. He joined the CIA in 1980.

"It’s not easy,” Sulick said. “You’re faced with defending the public trust and are often faced with difficult decisions that affect the public good. Sometimes there are merits on both sides."

Read more: http://blog.washingtonpost.com/spy-talk/2010/04/cias_top_spy_no_losses_from_wa.html

[Robb]

1. That's good to hear, I suppose.

Although it's altogether disconcerting to hear Sulick talk about it. It's like he's talking about his office switching voicemail software or something.

[EFerrari]

2. And one wonders where he was a few years ago

when innocent people were being tortured and federal cases being built on their under-torture testimony?

[Solly Mack]

4. Yep

[zalinda]

3. Okay, I'll give credit to Obama for stopping

waterboarding. Now if he would only stop the fucking wars.

zalinda

[Solly Mack]

5. No...I imagine he wouldn't.

"But I don’t want to talk about (it from) a legal, moral or ethical standpoint."

[Uncle Joe]

10. That was probably necessary

for his message of "non-intelligence" value to the reach the people; needing to hear it the most.

Any opinion on those other standpoints would have weakened his credibility with them as they would have cited political or ideological motivations.

[Igel]

6. This is a strange claim.

"The spy agency has seen no fall-off in intelligence since waterboarding was banned by the Obama administration" is a pointless statement.

Waterboarding simply wasn't done for years before the ban. It was widely discussed as not being something that would pass unnoticed. So banning a practice that wasn't performed and was kept in reserve much like the US refuses to renounce a nuclear first-strike is significant? We'd expect a drop off if the unperformed waterboarding was actually effective?

[jmowreader]

7. Go at it from another angle

We know Shrub's CIA waterboarded. Remember that Fearless Leader and The Dick always claimed we had to waterboard these evil alkaheeda terra suspects or we wouldn't learn their deepest, darkest secrets. Worse, by not waterboarding them we'd put America in danger from follow-on terrorist attacks.

Now we've got Obama's CIA. They're not allowed to waterboard, and they're putting out as much product as they did in the waterboarding era.

Essentially, this is a HUGE Bush slam. We're going to see that quite a bit from the CIA because of what Bush did to them. In the pre-Bush days, when the leadership listened to the intel community, the intelligence system of this country was kind of a triangle. At the top of it was the CIA, and all the other agencies were below it. In pre-Bush days, the Director of Central Intelligence was the top spymaster in the United States. The CIA didn't tell Bush what he wanted to hear one time too often, so Bush played with the org chart: he put the CIA down on the base of the triangle and created a new agency, the Directorate of National Intelligence--which does EXACTLY what the Directorate of Intelligence at the CIA used to!

[toopers]

13. I wonder what they replaced the water boarding technique with . . .

eom

[Supersedeas]

9. the focus appears to be on appearances

[24601]

12. I believe I follow your reasoning - suppose I'l allowed to drill oil

on the national mall, but shut down the mall oil well 50 years ago. Then last week, an EO bans oil drilling on the mall and, wow, as a result of the ban, oil production did not decrease.

So, if something not currently happening is prohibited, logically the ban affects nothing. The only affect realized was when the acivity ceased, not when it was, after the fact, prohibited.

True that....

[Toots]

8. “You’re faced with defending the public trust and are often faced with difficult decisions that affe

The "Public trust" and the "Public good"..torture fits right in there like a well worn pair of shoes I guess.

[fan of the arts]

11. The person being tortured may be innocent but the torturer is always guilty of torture

Mankind has known this for centuries, it's too bad the U.S. thinks people who commit these types of atrocities can just be let go and not held accountable.

[Gin]

14. Law & Order had a show on last night regarding torture and

the lawyer who wrote the code showing how to get around the law...very good show....issued subpoenas for rummy & shooter...show ended when verdict was reached and just when the judge was going to read it...the feds come in and the case was over...