Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Cheney asks Obama to declassify proof CIA interrogations worked

President Obama declassified interrogation techniques authorized for use by the CIA and the legal opinions surrounding them. He did this against the advice of the current CIA Director and several former Directors. They are concerned this will cause institutional timidity and fear of recrimination similar to what weakened intelligence gathering in the past. The justification for release was that the methods don't work anyway, and that those who are subjected to them will simply make up information in order to end their ordeal. Former Vice-President Dick Cheney is calling Obama's hand on that claim. He claims to have seen classified documents that prove the methods were effective and gained valuable intelligence. He is publicly calling for those documents to be released.

From the Sean Hannity show.

From the video:

DICK CHENEY: “One of the things that I find a little bit disturbing about this recent disclosure is they put out the legal memos, the memos that the CIA got from the Office of Legal Counsel, but they didn't put out the memos that showed the success of the effort. And there are reports that show specifically what we gained as a result of this activity. They have not been declassified.”

“I formally asked that they be declassified now. I haven't announced this up until now, I haven't talked about it, but I know specifically of reports that I read, that I saw that lay out what we learned through the interrogation process and what the consequences were for the country.”

“And I've now formally asked the CIA to take steps to declassify those memos so we can lay them out there and the American people have a chance to see what we obtained and what we learned and how good the intelligence was, as well as to see this debate over the legal opinions.”

1 comment:

Steel Phoenix said...

Interesting. Well he certainly has done a 180 on national security now that hiding things makes him look bad rather than good.