Brennan's reversal: Enhanced interrogation saved lives
Nearly two years ago, John Brennan faced a confirmation hearing in the friendly, Democrat-controlled Senate, but not one entirely ready to rubber-stamp his nomination to become CIA Director after David Petraeus' abrupt departure. The Senate Intelligence Committee pressed Brennan for his views on Bush-era enhanced interrogation techniques during his tenure as deputy CIA Director, to which he had previously given mild support. Brennan dutifully retreated from his previous position, claiming that a read of the panel's draft report had given him pause. "I don't know what the truth is," Brennan told the panel and said that he now questioned his previous briefings on the matter.
That should have given Brennan a wide opening to embrace the report from the panel's Democratic majority yesterday. Instead, Brennan reversed himself — again — and defended his agency, insisting that the information gathered from EITs stopped terrorist attacks and saved lives:
Now that he leads the CIA, Brennan has returned to his original conclusion: the truth is on his agency's side. In a statement responding to the public release of the report's official summary Tuesday, Brennan defended his agency — and the fruits of severe interrogation practices.
Enhanced interrogation techniques "did produce intelligence that helped thwart attack plans, capture terrorists, and save lives," Brennan said, citing an unreleased internal CIA review.
"The intelligence gained from the program," he added, "was critical to our understanding of al Qaeda and continues to inform our counterterrorism efforts to this day."That steps on the message that Democrats wanted to send yesterday — that the Bush era had nothing to do with them, and that any intelligence wins on Barack Obama's watch were his alone. That's the entire point of this exercise, after all. Dianne Feinstein and her panel pushed the report out before the Republican majority that voters just elected could stop them from releasing their cherry-picked conclusions.
That's not just my opinion on the matter. It's also the opinion of Bob Kerrey, former Democratic Senator from Nebraska, a one-time presidential contender, and most importantly a member of the Senate Intelligence panel during the years in question. Kerrey took to the pages of USA Today to scold his former colleagues for their partisan and political attack on the CIA...Also read:
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