CIA chief challenges Senate torture report

CIA Director John Brennan threaded a rhetorical needle in an unprecedented televised news conference at CIA headquarters Thursday, acknowledging that agency officers did “abhorrent” things to detainees but defending the overall post-9/11 interrogation program for stopping attacks and saving lives.

At the heart of Brennan’s case is a finely tuned argument: that while today’s CIA takes no position on whether the brutal interrogation tactics themselves led detainees to cooperate, there is no doubt that detainees subjected to the treatment offered “useful and valuable” information afterward. …

Let’s try some more research provided by that awesome Vendome.

This from a terrific site “Sweetness & Light” in 2010

That’s right, from 2010.

between 2001 and 2007, the CIA briefed at least 68 members of Congress on the CIA interrogation program, including so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques.” The documents include the dates of all congressional briefings and, in some cases, the members of Congress in attendance and the specific subjects discussed. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who previously denied she was briefed by the CIA on the use of these techniques, is specifically referenced in a briefing that took place on April 24, 2002, regarding the “ongoing interrogations of Abu Zubaydah.” Zubaydah had been subjected to the enhanced interrogation techniques.

According to a June 1, 2005, CIA report entitled, Detainee Reporting Pivotal for the War Against Al-Qa’ida, “Detainee reporting accounts for more than half of all HUMINT reporting on al-Qa’ida since the program began…”

And more still

Moreover, according to an April 2009 CNN report, President Obama’s Intelligence Director, retired Admiral Dennis Blair, told colleagues in an April 16 memo on the subject of “enhanced interrogation techniques,” that “High value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qa’ida organization that was attacking this country.”

http://sweetness-light.com/archive/docs-pelosi-dems-briefed-on-waterboarding#.VIpf1XaIZdY

And here is the meat of research by Judicial Watch, February 2010

http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judicial-watch-obtains-documents-regarding-congressional-cia-torture-briefings/

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