Osama bin Laden

CIA saved lives; Senate’s partisan enhanced interrogations report endangers Americans

It was infuriating watching outgoing Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein on the Senate floor Tuesday vividly describe, “the sound of bodies striking canopies at ground level as innocents jumped to the ground below from the World Trade Center,” and within seconds state, “In 1990, the United States Senate ratified the Conventions Against Torture.”

There was no mention by Senator Feinstein that CIA Directors under Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama are all on the record stating enhanced interrogations worked.

During all her years on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Feinstein never introduced legislation to ban enhanced interrogation techniques. Her report made no recommendations which is the main oversight function of the Intelligence Committee.

Successive DOJ investigations by the Bush and Obama administrations brought no charges related to the use of OLC-approved EITs. Does any rational person truly believe Attorney General Eric Holder would not have prosecuted CIA officers and contractors had he found evidence of torture?

We are still at war; Americans are getting their heads cut off by terrorists driven by the same ideology that drove 19 hijackers to slaughter 3,000 men, women, and children on 9/11.

As The Washington Free Beacon illustrates, the Islamic State immediately began using Senator Feinstein’s 5 1/2-year, American taxpayers funded handiwork to incite further atrocities and recruit to their bloody and vile jihad:

This tweet from Abu Bakr #Caliph (undoubtedly a reference to IS leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi) urges outraged Muslims to curb-stomp their offenders: “From now on when someone accuses your Muslim brother of terrrorism, stick the #torture_report on the heel of your shoe and shove it in his mouth.”

The Twitter user Mus’ab al-Iraqi justified torture of Americans: “The #torture_report says that torture was necessary to prevent possible attacks, I hope for reciprocity and we say that torture was necessary to prevent American attacks.”

If you only read the opening letter in rebuttal to the Senate “study” by the current Director of Central Intelligence John Brennan, you will begin to know the CIA’s detention and interrogation program worked. And make no mistake about Mr. Brennan’s politics; he served as President Obama’s chief counterterrorism advisor from day one of this administration before being appointed as the DCI:

“Notwithstanding the above areas of agreement, there are several areas of disagreement as well. In particular, the Agency disagrees with the Study’s unqualified assertions that the overall detention and interrogation program did not produce unique intelligence that led terrorist plots to be disrupted, terrorists to be captured, or lives to be saved. The Study’s claims on this score are inconsistent with the factual record, and we provide detailed comments in TAB C on where and why the Study’s assertions and representations are wrong.”

In part, DCI Brennan added: “I have carefully reviewed and concur with the Agency’s comments…”

The CIA’s TAB C rebuttal ‘Information on the Courier that Led to the UBL Operation‘ and all 20 of it’s detailed debunkings are stark evidence that Senator Feinstein’s “study” is a $40 million dollar pack of deliberate distortions.

9/11 Families for a Safe and Strong America stands with those who did what was necessary to prevent further attacks. We know that the CIA saved lives.

We are saddened by the political partisanship that divides, and fear for our homeland and those that serve it abroad in harm’s way. More bitter days may lie ahead; America can and must rise together as a Nation once again.

Post updated at 11:16 a.m. December 11, 2014. The spelling of Dianne Feinstein’s first name was corrected.

Did enhanced interrogations of high-value detainees work, lead to bin Laden, and were they ethical?

Today at the American Enterprise Institute, panelists Elisa Massimino of Human Rights First, former Attorney General Judge Michael Mukasey, former Acting General Counsel of the CIA John Rizzo, AEI fellow Marc Thiessen, and Brookings Institute fellow Benjamin Wittes discussed whether the enhanced interrogations of high-value detainees worked, lead to Osama bin Laden, and if they were ethical. One interesting point made by John Rizzo was while he served at the CIA until October 2009, the current administration asked the CIA to recommend a list of interrogation techniques above those in the Army Field Manual:

I hope to someday hear a robust debate on the ethics of not aggressively interrogating high-value detainees. One way you protect civilians during war is to deny Geneva Convention protections to unlawful combatants — a right to remain silent — to not allow them to only give their name, rank, date of birth, and serial number.