Ex-CIA chief denies US interrogators used torture
Posted: 30 April 2007 1706 hrs

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WASHINGTON: Former CIA director George Tenet on Sunday heatedly denied allegations that US interrogators have used torture to extract information from prisoners in the so-called US "war on terror."

"The image that's been portrayed is, we sat around the campfire and said, 'Oh, boy, now we go get to torture people.' Well, we don't torture people. Let me say that again to you. We don't torture people. Okay?" Tenet told the CBS news show "60 Minutes."

"Come on, George," replied interviewer Scott Pelley, who questioned Tenet repeatedly during a tense exchange about accusations of torture, many from terror suspects held at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

"We don't torture people," Tenet answered.

"Waterboarding?" Pelley asked, referring to a process whereby water is continually poured over a detainee's face and mouth, causing a sharp gag reflex.

"We do not -- I don't talk about techniques," Tenet replied.

"It's torture," Pelley said.

"And we don't torture people," Tenet insisted. "I want you to listen to me. The context is it's post-9/11. I've got reports of nuclear weapons in New York City, apartment buildings that are gonna be blown up, planes that are gonna fly into airports all over again.

"Plot lines that I don't know -- I don't know what's going on inside the United States. And I'm struggling to find out where the next disaster is going to occur.

"Everybody forgets one central context of what we lived through. The palpable fear that we felt on the basis of the fact that there was so much we did not know," he said.

Tenet, who led the Central Intelligence Agency in the run-up to and after the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, is releasing a book Monday, "At the Centre of the Storm," in which he says here was no real debate in the White House about the imminent threat posed by Saddam Hussein's regime.

"You call it in the book, 'enhanced interrogation,'" Pelley said.

"I'm not having a semantic debate with you. I'm telling you what I believe," Tenet answered.

Asked if anyone ever died in the interrogation program, Tenet said: "No."

Asked why enhanced interrogation techniques were necessary, Tenet replied: "'Cause these are people that will never, ever, ever tell you a thing. These are people who know who's responsible for the next terrorist attack. These are hardened people that would kill you and me 30 seconds after they got out of wherever they were being held and wouldn't blink an eyelash."

He said the interrogations, which he admitted never having attended, had uncovered networks and broken up plots in the United States.

Asked in an interview to be published in Monday's Time magazine why the United States has been unable to "find and kill (Osama) bin Laden," Tenet said intelligence operatives were working on finding planners, operators and financiers.

"You have to keep systematically eroding their ability to hurt you. And out of that, sooner or later, you're going to get a lead."

Tenet wrote in his book that "there was never a serious debate that I know of within the (President George W. Bush) administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat.

"Nor was there ever a significant discussion about enhanced containment or the costs and benefits of such an approach versus full-out planning for overt and covert regime change."

In it, Tenet alleges, without using her name, that then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice did not submit ideas from then-defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney to the same level of scrutiny as she did the CIA and State Department.

"The true tragedy of Iraq is that it didn't have to be this way," he wrote. "We were dismissive about the capacity of Iraqis to control their own future. We have struggled ever since."

Tenet resigned from office in July 2004 under a cloud of controversy about a series of US intelligence setbacks.

Earlier Sunday, Secretary of State Rice said Bush had tried a range of options to counter the perceived threat posed by Saddam Hussein, from "smart sanctions" to tougher no-fly zones and challenging the Iraqi leader before the UN Security Council.

"This was a period of more than a year and a half of trying to find other ways to deal with the threat of Saddam Hussein," she said.

"The idea that the president had made up his mind when he came to office that he was going to go to war against Iraq is just flat wrong," she said.

- AFP/ir