Senate

9/11, al Qaeda, Barack Obama, CIA, Feinstein, Osama bin Laden, Senate

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

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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.

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

9/11, al Qaeda, CIA, detainee, EIT, Obama, Senate

Obama and Senate Intel Cmte tortured the truth about CIA’s enhanced interrogation program

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President Barack Obama said on Friday, “In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, we did some things that were wrong. We did a whole lot of things that were right. But we tortured some folks. We did some things that were contrary to our values.” Yet the Department of Justice has twice closed investigations of alleged torture by the CIA without filing charges against anyone. Obama’s remarks were not only politically self-serving and contrary to the findings of fact, they went viral in the Muslim world and provided Islamist radicals with ready-made propaganda with which they will recruit many to the jihad.

In February 2013, I did what the Senate Intelligence Committee did not do while it spent years and $50 million dollars “investigating” whether EITs provided credible intelligence; I interviewed a top official directly involved with the program, Jose Rodriguez who headed the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center. He directed the enhanced interrogations of high-value detainees, and led worldwide intelligence collection programs and covert action operations. Here is the complete audio of my Freedom Radio interview of him:

If you listened, you heard Mr. Rodriguez tell of how the enhanced interrogation program was developed and that it was briefed to leaders in Congress in August and September of 2002, including those on the House and Senate intelligence committees.

A detainee — after he became compliant through the use of EITs — was the first to tell the CIA that Ahmed al-Kuwaiti was bin Laden’s courier; interrogating and observing Khalid Sheikh Mohammed confirmed that it was credible information. Subsequently, the CIA got the courier’s real name through human intelligence and traditional trade craft, they spotted him in Pakistan, and he led them to Osama bin Laden:

“No doubt about it; the information that was obtained from al Qaeda terrorists in our custody at our black sites using enhanced interrogation techniques led to the demise of bin Laden.”

It is important to understand the scope of the intelligence gained. Mr. Rodriguez described it:

“The intervening ten years we were up against all kinds of threats, a second wave of attacks. We also knew they had a nuclear program, they had a biological weapons program, they had operatives that were coming after us, and the enhanced interrogation program gave us the intelligence that allowed us to capture all of them or kill them. We were actually able to decimate al Qaeda because of this program.

“This program was the key to doing that. And to say otherwise is to try to rewrite history, and it based on ideology and politics which really is of great concern to me. We need an honest assessment of the value of these techniques, and if we can’t be honest with ourselves, I think we are in big trouble.”

What we did right after 9/11 included not rewarding unlawful enemy combatants with the Geneva Conventions protection to not answer questions. Overwhelming, Americans believe those protections should only be provided to lawful enemy combatants who follow the Rules of War.

My family and I thank those who did what was necessary to defend our Nation. The Senate Intelligence Committee’s 6,000-page deception about the effectiveness of EITs and President Obama falsely claiming that detainees were tortured will not diminish our appreciation.