important i am trying to make the point that if you don t listen to the tape, and unless you speak arabic, you won t learn h anything. and you were a former adviser, and what do you say to the national security adviser not wanting to listen to that audio tape whether or not it is in arabic, and there is a lot that you can get from a tape of somebody being murder and dismembered. i have be asked if the president should listen to the raw intelligence, and there is not a real need for that. i don t believe that president obama did it and donald trump did it, but the drirector of th cia and gina haspel does not speak arabic either, but she listened to it with arabic translators at her side according to the press reports and so for john bolton to understand the horrific nature of that murder, this is the person that donald trump turns to find out exactly what went on, and between gina haspel and john bolton and giving him a sense of how awful this act was
zero. new this morning, in iran, thousands participated in a pro-government rally in response to a series of anti-protests on thursday that spread to multiple cities if iran. officials say at least 50 protesters have been arrested. the unrest is being monitored by many around the world, including president trump, who tweeted this last night. joining me now is a 28-year cia veteran john siempfrt and on th cia program 2000 to 2002. you tweeted you have been keeping an eye on iran and russia. can you speak of the significance of what is taking
as best i can tell from the people i talk with that worked with that we talk about jose rodriguez who ran the counterterrorism program, michael mckazuoey who was the attorney general, leon panetta all have said one way or another that the enhanced interrogation program played a role. that is to say that some of the early leads came out of that program. early leads. if cheney and bush had early leads they should have been able to figure out that bin laden was living in a million dollar home watching cable tv for the last five years. president obama was completely successful on this mission closing the book on osama bin laden and the operation but cheney wants to go back to torture. should the president reinstate enhanced interrogation including waterboarding? well, i certainly would advocate it. i d be a strong supporter of it. we went to a lot of trouble to
do more than one thing at a time. now just like her father liz cheney is questioning why president obama won t use waterboarding. when she was asked a question about so-called enhance the interrogation, she said this. these are not torture. these are techniques that we know work. that debate is over. it worked. it got the intelligence. it wasn t torture. it was legal. all false. let s bring in the president of the foundation for democracy, defense of democracy s cliff may and also former cia officer jack rice. gentlemen, good to have you with us tonight. jack, ms. cheney is obviously referring to waterboarding there. she says it worked. it wasn t torture. it was legal. what about that? well, ed, thanks for having me on the program. first of all, it was torture and guess what? the reason the bush administration determined that it was legal was it hand picked the lawyers who had said it was legal and asked them then if it was. it is not exactly shocking but if you ask whether it
i m quite confident like your prior guest matthew alexander that it made this much more difficult, it took much longer, and i think osama bin laden would have been found earlier but for the fact that torture was involved and what it did throughout the middle east. cliff, would you defend waterboarding on all the points liz cheney made? i m going to defend my own position if you don t mind, ed, and start with this. sure, sure. that is to say, look. in this particular instance we do know that the seed of intelligence that grew the vine that led us to find osama bin laden came about through coercive techniques of interrogation. in one instance waterboarding, the other two instances sleep deprivation and probably psychological humiliation. a second i think it s important to have a little context here and that is thousands of combatants have been taken into custody. about 100 have end eed up in th cia program. about 30 have suffered any coercive, enhanced interrogation techniques. o