Former CIA Leaders Release Book Defending Brutal Tactics

[Purveyor]

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Former senior CIA officials instrumental in extracting information from al-Qaida prisoners through what most Americans consider to have been torture have published a book defending their conduct.

The book, titled "Rebuttal," takes aim at the Senate intelligence committee report released last year that revealed gruesome details of the once-secret CIA program while portraying it as ineffective, incompetently run, and rife with misrepresentations.

Published by the U.S. Naval Institute, the volume features essays from three former CIA directors and other retired senior officials. They argue that the Senate report, written by Democratic staff and opposed by Republicans, significantly distorted reality.

The staff of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the intelligence committee, says the book has numerous inaccuracies. The result is a thick stew of charges and counter charges that have been characteristic of the torture debate.

The dispute has current implications, however.

Congress is considering legislation that would ban coercive interrogations. President Barack Obama imposed a ban by executive order, but that could be undone by his successor. The measure has been attached to a defense bill, and has the support of Democrats and Sen. John McCain, the Republican chairman of the Armed Services Committee and once a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

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http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_CIA_TORTURE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-09-09-12-21-05

[Human101948]

1. Stop using euphemisms--it's torture! And it is a war crime.

Weasel words from weasels.

[stevenleser]

2. The report only named three former CIA officials. I doubt most of the rest of the CIA agrees.

The FBI does not agree, nor do most experienced interrogation professionals.

Besides being reprehensible and a war crime, it does not work, and 99.9% of trained interrogation professionals agree with that.