WASHINGTON — Days after a report on George W. Bush-era interrogation techniques concluded that intelligence agencies employed tactics widely regarded as torture, top officials from the Bush White House took to the Sunday morning talk shows to bash the report as partisan and defend the actions of the CIA and other intelligence agencies at the time.
“We needed to do something different, and this was something different, and it worked very well,” said Jose Rodriguez, who was a top CIA official during the Bush administration, in an interview with “Fox News Sunday.” He added, “All of these techniques were approved by the lawyers.”
Current and former intelligence officials have been defensive of CIA tactics in the years after the Sept. 11 terrorism attacks, and have insisted that declassifying a report that details counterterrorism tactics puts intelligence agents and troops participating in ongoing efforts at risk.
“This report throws the CIA under the bus. It throws under the bus all of those people who worked so hard to prevent another attack,” said Rodriguez, who was one of several Bush administration officials who suggested that the release of the report could embolden enemies abroad. “This is a serious problem for us and for the intelligence community, and we’re going to pay the price for this.”
During an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” former Vice President Dick Cheney invoked the memory of the Sept. 11 attacks when discussing interrogation techniques.
“I’d do it again in a minute,” Cheney said, backing the CIA’s interrogation program and insisting that some techniques described in the newly released report, specifically “rectal feeding” of some detainees, were done for medical reasons.
Democrats who were on the congressional intelligence committees at the time have insisted that they were not given full briefings on the techniques being used.
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., went further, saying on “Meet the Press” that CIA Director John Brennan’s responses to the report’s conclusions lead him to question whether the agency needs new leadership.
“John Brennan … really opened the door to torture being used again,” Wyden said.
