Tenet denies torture on 60 Minutes

29 April 2007 |permalink | email article

The former CIA director settles many scores but downplays the post-9/11 issue of torture in his sometimes interesting memoir, “At the Center of the Storm.” The 549-page book, for which he was paid a $4 million in advance after years of pouting, confirms much already written by reporters.

Print ledes focus on two words: “slam dunk” – in which Tenet told the other George that intelligence about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq “was a “slam dunk case!”

He assails Dick Cheney for repeatedly saying that the administration made the decision to go to war based on the “slam dunk” intelligence provided by the CIA.

Tenet says the “slam dunk” scene was taken out of context by someone in the White House anxious to shift blame to the CIA for what turned out to be a failed rationale for going to attack – in short, making him and the agency “the fall guys.”

Despite sweeping indictments of the White House inner circle, including the lack of debate on the decision to invade Iraq, Bush awarded Tenet the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2004. But the former top spy, often perceived as too eager to please W., curiously portrays the president in a mostly positive light.

In the book, Tenet offers a thin rationale for accepting the award, saying he only accepted it when the citation “was all about the CIA’s work against terrorism, not Iraq.” It’s hard to believe.

On CBS’ “60 Minutes” tonight, Tenet says the intelligence extracted from the CIA’s “High Value Detainee” program, which includes so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques,” was more valuable that all the intelligence gathered by the FBI, the National Security Agency and the CIA.

In the contentious broadcast, Scott Pelley challenges Tenet on “enhanced interrogations,” dealing with sleep deprivation, exposure to higher temperatures and water boarding, which gets little attention in his book.

“We don’t torture people,” Tenet says. “The context is it’s post-9/ll.”

Pelley asked why the “enhanced interrogation techniques” were necessary, Tenet says, “Because these are people who will never, ever, ever tell you a thing.” Pressed further about whether he lost sleep over the interrogations, Tenet replies, “Of course you lose sleep over it. You’re on new territory.”

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