A group of former CIA bosses published an op-ed Wednesday rebutting the newly released U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee's torture report, and explained exactly how the agency's efforts led to the killing of Osama bin Laden and saved thousands of lives.
Written by former CIA directors George Tenet, Porter Goss and Michael Hayden together with three ex-deputy directors, and published in The Wall Street Journal, the letter claims that the committee's report on the CIA's interrogation and detention tactics is a "poorly done partisan attack" prepared only by the Democratic majority staff who "cherry picked" information and never interviewed the CIA directors or officers who oversaw the program.
The committee's 500-page executive summary report, published Tuesday, concluded that the CIA failed to disrupt any terrorist plots despite torturing captives and that Osama bin Laden's takedown was not facilitated by information gathered by the CIA through its interrogation tactics. But the former CIA directors say such claims are patently false.
"The interrogation program formed an essential part of the foundation from which the CIA and the U.S. military mounted the bin Laden operation," the letter reads.
"There is no doubt that information provided by the totality of detainees in CIA custody, those who were subjected to interrogation and those who were not, was essential to bringing bin Laden to justice. The CIA never would have focused on the individual who turned out to be bin Laden's personal courier without the detention and interrogation program. Specifically, information developed in the interrogation program piqued the CIA's interest in the courier, placing him at the top of the list of leads to bin Laden."
The letter goes on to say that the second erroneous conclusion in the report is its claim that the CIA routinely used interrogation techniques not approved by the Justice Department. It cites a 2009 "professional and exhaustive" investigation into whether any unauthorized interrogation techniques were used, which concluded that no prosecutable offenses were committed.
The former CIA officials also said the committee report was "flat-out wrong" to allege that the CIA misled the White House, Justice Department, Congress and the public about its techniques, as the agency "went to the attorney general for legal rulings four times-and the agency stopped the program twice to ensure that the Justice Department still saw it as consistent with U.S. policy, law and our treaty obligations. The CIA sought guidance and reaffirmation of the program from senior administration policy makers at least four times," the letter said.
"In no way would we claim that we did everything perfectly, especially in the emergency and often-chaotic circumstances we confronted in the immediate aftermath of 9/11," the officials wrote. "As in all wars, there were undoubtedly things in our program that should not have happened. When we learned of them, we reported such instances to the CIA inspector general or the Justice Department and sought to take corrective action."
