George Tenet’s book, “At the Center of the Storm,” will be published soon, and the former CIA director (and Medal of Freedom winner) is kicking off the publicity campaign with an interview on 60 Minutes, on Sunday, April 29, 2007.
— George Tenet
In an article about the CBS website, it appears that Tenet wrote the book more to clear his name than to settle scores, as many us hoped. At the top of his list is correcting the record about the story he advised the president that invading Iraq would be a “slam dunk.” He says the Bushies have misrepresented what happened in order to make him a fall guy for the WMD fiasco.
Much more interesting is what he has to say about accusations that the CIA tortured its terror suspects. He denies it (at least three times), insisting instead that “enhanced interrogation techniques” were used — and that they saved lives:
The nation’s former top spy denies that any torture took place, but tells [60 Minutes reporter Scott] Pelley that the program saved lives and allowed the government to foil terror plots.
The High Value Detainee program uses “enhanced” techniques said to include sleep deprivation, exposure to extreme temperatures, and water boarding, in which suspects reportedly are restrained as a steady stream of water is poured over their faces, causing a severe gag reflex and a terrifying fear of drowning…
“Here’s what I would say to you, to the Congress, to the American people, to the president of the United States: I know that this program has saved lives. I know we’ve disrupted plots,” he tells Pelley. “I know this program alone is worth more than the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency put together, have been able to tell us.”
…”We don’t torture people,” he says. “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.”
When 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was captured in a raid in Pakistan, the “enhanced interrogations” apparently were a surprise to him. According to Tenet, the captured terrorist told CIA interrogators, “I’ll talk to you guys when you take me to New York and I can see my lawyer.” Instead, he reportedly was flown around the world, kept in secret prisons and water-boarded. Tenet repeated his denial again and again: “Let me say that again to you. We don’t torture people. OK?”
But when asked by Pelley why the “enhanced interrogation” techniques were necessary, Tenet says, “Because these are people who will never, ever, ever tell you a thing. These are people who know who’s responsible for the next terrorist attack … [who] wouldn’t blink an eyelash about killing you, your family, me and my family and everybody in this town.”
When Pelley presses, asking whether he lost sleep over the interrogations, Tenet says, “Of course you lose sleep over it. You’re on new territory.”
That’s why Bush gave him a Medal of Freedom.
