For The Umpteenth Time: Enhanced Interrogation Worked
12 CommentsNational Security: Michael Morell purportedly exudes credibility on the Benghazi talking points. Well, the ex-CIA acting director also says roughing up terrorist prisoners helped catch Osama bin Laden.
Liberals say career intelligence officer Michael Morell is the man we can trust on whether the Benghazi talking points were politically laundered to help President Obama's re-election.
Whether that's true, anyone holding Morell's testimony in esteem on Benghazi should value his views highly on other intelligence matters too.
On PBS last week, dodging Charlie Rose's infamous interruptions, Morell enthusiastically endorsed the Bush administration's enhanced interrogation of terrorist detainees.
Morell noted that in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, "the threat reporting about another possible attack was sky high" — including the possible use of nuclear weapons in New York City.
Senior al-Qaida leaders in U.S. custody "were proving very, very difficult to interrogate because they were so ideologically committed, and they had counterinterrogation training," Morell emphasized. "So we weren't getting anything out of them, and we knew that they would know about these attacks" that might be coming.
"I believe that the program was effective," Morell told Rose. "When we questioned Khalid Sheik Muhammad about Abu Ahmed, the courier who eventually took us to bin Laden, he denied knowing Abu Ahmed. When he went back to his cell, we were monitoring him, and we heard him tell other detainees, 'Don't say anything about the courier.'"
Morell concluded: "I've really studied this, and I believe the techniques were effective." He told PBS, "the information they provided prior to the techniques was limited, vague, not specific. After the techniques: volumes of information, specific, actionable."
His most salient point: The Bush administration's enhanced interrogation practices "led to the capture of other senior al-Qaida officials and saved lives, yes."
Morell also made it clear that high-ranking congressional Democrats who condemn enhanced interrogation today were "briefed on it previously and did not oppose it" during the Bush administration.
Abu Zubaydah, for instance, al-Qaida's travel agent, was waterboarded and provided information that foiled a plot to use "commercial airliners in suicide attacks on Heathrow Airport and other structures in London," former Vice President Dick Cheney noted in his memoir.
"Courting Disaster" author Marc Thiessen says the tough questioning of Zubaydah did no less than give "the CIA the secret code for breaking al-Qaida detainees ... the secret to the success of the entire program."
The methods were "safe, legal and effective" and helped "prevent any further mass casualty attacks" against the U.S., Cheney wrote. If Democrats won't listen to him, maybe they'll listen to their latest darling.
Read More At Investor's Business Daily: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/040814-696391-will-democrats-finally-realize-enhanced-interrogation-was-success-.htm#ixzz2yOuy21qU
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