WASHINGTON — The Obama administration’s chief intelligence officer has told the White House that harsh interrogations of al-Qaida officials produced “valuable” information, but he added that it was impossible to tell whether the same intelligence leads might have been obtained using less controversial methods.
In any case, the damage to the country’s image caused by the use of waterboarding and similar techniques exceeded any benefit that might have been gained, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair said.
“The information gained from these techniques was valuable in some instances,” Blair said in a statement Tuesday, “but there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means.”
Blair, Obama’s appointee to oversee the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, summarized in the statement an assessment he gave his staff in a memo last week, according to U.S. officials familiar with the document. Blair is a participant in a White House-ordered review of CIA interrogation methods used on high-value terrorist suspects between 2002 and 2006 — methods that several administration officials have described as tantamount to torture. The specific techniques included extreme sleep depriviation, denial of solid foods, forced nudity and physical violence, and were judged to violate an international ban on torture, according to a 2007 report by the International Committee of the Red Cross.
“The bottom line is these techniques have hurt our image around the world,” Blair said in the statement. “The damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security.”
Blair said he supported Obama’s decision to ban so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques,” and he rejected assertions by former vice president Dick Cheney and others that the methods were crucial to protecting the country. He added that he had supported Obama’s decision last week to order the release of Justice Department memos that authorized the use of harsh interrogation.
“I made clear,” he said, “that the CIA should not be punished for carrying out legal orders.”
Obama’s intelligence advisers have been scrutinizing the Bush-era interrogation policy since shortly after the election. The overarching conclusion is that the benefits are not clear-cut — information was gained, but it is impossible to prove whether coercive measures were decisive, say senior administration officials who have participated in the review.
For example, interrogations of Abu Zubaida, the CIA’s first high-value detainee, helped its officials understand links between terrorist groups, but did not lead directly to the disruption of al-Qaida plots, according to former intelligence officials with access to intelligence reports. Many of the leads provided by Zubaida were obtained before harsh methods were applied, the officials said.
