Consider this, those stories and more ahead. Coercive interrogation techniques did not produce vital intelligence. Not only is torture wrong, it doesnt work. The numerous interrogations resulted in 766 disseminated reports. Disgraced advisor Jonathan Gruber offering an apology. I made uninformed and glib promises. I made mean and insulting comments uncalled for. One in five women are assaulted in college. Its a staggering statistic. Shes moving forward with a serious of changes. 70 of Chinese People do not realise that ivory is coming from poached elephants. They think its teeth that had fallen out. A man walked into a synagogue stabbing a student in the head. The suspect yelled i want to kill the jew. We begin with an explosive Senate Intelligence report on the c. I. A. The report released today examines the c. I. A. s secret overseas detention of at least 119 individuals, and the use of coercive interrogation techniques. In some cases amounting to torture. The report cess the c. I. A. Misled the public about the enhanced interrogation techniques that were more brutal than believed. One detainee chained in a freezing sell died of hypothermia. Some deprived of food, sorts kept awake. Those methods did not leave to lifesaving intelligence. New information on high profile leaders shoes Khalid Sheikh mohammed, the 9 11 mastermind, was water boarded 183 times, and he and top al qaeda leader abu alzab ada nearly drowned to death. Zab ada also lost a left high wills in custody. Integrators in the field that tried to stop the brutal interrogations were overruled. The c. I. A. Issued an extensive statement rebutting some of the Senate Report saying the interrogation methods were legal and led to important intelligence. The fbi and the department of Homeland Security issued a bulletin after the reports release, urging Law Enforcement to stay on alert. Republican senator john mccain acknowledged the risk of releasing the information, saying it was worth it. It was sometimes used by our enemies in attempts to hurt us. The American People are entitled to it nonetheless. They must know when the values that define our nation are intentionally disregarded by our security policies, even those policies that are conducted in secret, whether they served a greater good or whether, as i believe, they stained our National Honour. Lets bring in Al Jazeera English contributor, robert grenier, a former director of the Counterterrorism Center and was iraq Mission Manager from 2002 to 2004. Justin raddick is a security and human rights director for the human rights project and was a whistleblower in the John Walker Lynch investigation, and has been an important advocate for other whistleblowers, including edward snowden. It is good to have you both on the show. Robert, you were at the c. I. A. For part of the time the whole time that the report looks at in different capacities, and you were offered the chance to read the report before it was published you declined to do that. Jonathan gainsaid the report needed to come out. What is your response to them and those that say it was important. To correct the record, i was briefly invited to read the report and before. I was not interested and the cost of agreeing to see the report in advance would have been that i could not have commented on it until after todays release. That was not a good bargain so far as i was concerned. In any case, within 24 hours of the invitation to view the report, it was rescinded by senator Dianne Fienstein. She did not want me to see the report or be prepared for what is happening today. What do you say to john mccain. And the fact that the report should have come out. I know you wrote in the most about how you think the report overstates its criticism of the c. I. A. No question about that. With regard to whether the American People have the right to be informed with what has been done in their name, absolutely. Reasons to protect the information, provided you take appropriate steps to adapt and protect the information which needs to be protected, absolutely. I think the information should come out. My only problem is it should be accurate information, and that is not what you find in this report. How do you respond to robert and others who say that the report has gone too far, in saying that the c. I. A. Lied, and misled not only the American People, but the government. This report is 6700 pages long, and although we have the 500 page executive summary, it is heavily footnoted and well documented what happened. I mean, i dont know what the inaccuracies are. I dont think the report is making up the fact that enemmas were used as a form of torture, and that torture was vastly under stated to the public, and the c. I. A. Deliberately misled not only the white house at times, but also congress, the Justice Department and deliberately misled the media by releasing classified information that amounted to propaganda. As all this was happening, you must have known. As all this was happening, my answer to each of the charges is false, false, false, false and false. Lets maybe back up on that just a little bit. Go ahead. Okay, well, forgive me, i have not seen all the details in the report. I saw a reference to enemmas. Good god. Someone needs to explain to me what that was all about. Was it a medical treatment. It wasnt a technique used in the interrogation. There is a long list of very extreme techniques. Most people who would look at it would say, you know, this is torture, and, you know, how much of it were you aware of when you were there. Listen. If you are talking about the authorised techniques that we are employs in certain interrogations. Mind you, there was 119 apparently in the programme. A minority. A significant number, but a minority were subjected to any of the socalled enhanced interrogation techniques. The majority decided the best course open was to cooperate and did so freely. That said, for those individuals subject to harsh ci interrogation, it was no picnic. Im not going to sugar coat it. There are differences of opinion as to whether, for instance, waterboarding constitutes torture. There are only three individuals who water boarded. They were the worst of the worse. The report argues more than three were. They sight circumstantial evidence and one case suggested it may have been done an additional time. Im not aware of that. I know what the facts are, there were three people water boarded. The only three people that authorised is to be water boarded. The larger issue is people can disagree whether certain techniques constitution torture. In the case of waterboarding, there are many hundreds of u. S. Pilots who were water boarded by the u. S. Air force as part of their training. Being waterboarded as part of seal training is different being water boarded under interrogation circumstances. And you know that. There were more than three people waurd boarded according to this well documented. Not true. And even three is way too many. Whether water boarding is considered a legitimate technique, both the president of the United States called waterboarding torture, as has attorney general eric holder called waterboarding torture. Most of the planet agrees that water boarding is a form of torture, and certain when we did it to the japanese we considered it torture. You are a lawyer and know it was authorised by the Justice Department and c. I. A. It was authorised years after it happened. They were employed in 2002. The authorisation memos were not written until 2004 to serve as retroactive. False. My colleague, john, you, wrote them. I knew about them as an ethics attorney at the department of justice. Listen, we had clear authorisation from the Justice Department. The office of Legal Counsel before any of these were used, and they were employed in august 2002. That is simply incorrect. One of big critics. Maybe you need to read the report. One of the issues in the report is that the techniques did not provide intelligence. I know theres a lot of push back, the lead republican on the Senate Intelligence committee. You were there. Did you get serious investigations from enhanced interrogations leading to Osama Bin Laden or to disrupt serious terrorist plots . The short answer to that is yes, absolutely. You point out that there is another report. We are talking about the report. This is not a Senate Intelligence committee report. This is a report done by the democrats and the staffers on the committee. There was a competing report released of over 100 pages, which is a very serious rebuttal of the democrats report. I encourage people to read the reports along with the c. I. A. Rebuttal. With regard to the issue of was this effective or not frankly, as i head the findings in the democratic report, i was literally laughing ot loud. Frankly, the conception of the way this works is almost cart onish. They think that c. I. A. Entergackss are like what you see in the movies. You integrate someone and commigly you say yes, the bomb is planted, you rush to the place, and you diffuse it before it goes off in two hours. Thats not the way that it works. This report seems to assume that you would know in advance what is in these peoples heads. We couldnt be sure what was in the head of mohammed. This man had the blood of more than 3,000 americans on his hands, and we thought there may have been other plots in trains, and he would have details in his head. We found over time that al qaeda is very disciplined and practices compartmentation of information. Many of these people did not know about whole plots that they could give us all the details on. What they did know, however, was their colleagues who would be charged with planning and carrying out the plots. In most of these cases what was critical to learn about was the individuals in al qaeda who were charged with organising the plots. So those bits of information concerning individuals gave us the leads that we could follow up on, using all manner of other intelligence. At the end of the day what you are confronted with is like a jigsaw puzzle. A mosaic. You put the whole thing together and point out what we would regard as a key piece of information from mohammed or others, and among those are bits of information leading to others and Osama Bin Laden. You know, they are saying look, this wasnt actionable information. No, but the information we got was critical to ultimately finding the individuals and blocking those bloplots. I know you believe the report needed to come out, as i know senator mccain and Dianne Fienstein believed it should. We have warnings to domestic Law Enforcements, and across the world to american facilities, are you not concerned about the risk . No, im not. They should have thought about National Security and the harm that could have erupted in the middle east, back when they arc tected and engineered and carried out and retroactively justified and destroyed evidence and defended the programs. The report has been out for a fuel day. There has been no interruptive plaques in the middle east. And all the fearmongering that goes on. Finally i urge mr grenier to read the reports and the footnotes that document contrary pretty much to everything said on the programme about torture creating actionable intelligence. It created a lot of false intelligence by curve ball and other people who gave us information that was unhelp. And torturing people helped to recruit more terrorists by engendering the antipathy of the middle east. Seems to be strong positions on both sides. Appreciate you both being with us. Thank you. Turning to political implications of the report, im joined by bill schneider, a resident scholar at think tank, and joining us from los angeles is Political Correspondent michael shure. Good to she you. We saw the passionate reaction from both sides to the report. We saw it play out on capitol hill. Most republicans are upset the report was released. How much of this is politics, the demonstrates putting out the report before the g. O. P. Takes control of the senate. Yes, and most specifically you have to look at the politics. You have to know that richard burr the republican from North Carolina will take over the chairmanship. A lot of timing of this has to do with that, with the change over. There would be a great reluctance and avoidance of releasing the report come to january and republican control. It is politics. This was a report submissioned. A lot of money was spent on the report. People on both sides think its important not share the results of the report, in light of the fact that money and time was spent. Republicans have counter reports which was substantial on its own. At first, secretary of state john kerry expressed concern about the release, and then president obama c. I. A. Director criticized a significant amount of findings. Is there a split within the administration on this . There appears to be. Those responsible for intelligence services, including the secretary of state expressed caution about what the implications might be, and the repercussions. American troops overseas are standing on alert. This is partisan. Welcome to washington. Everything is partisan. The one thing going for the democrats is they have an ally. That is senator john mccain, subject to the torture during the vietnam war. He defended the report, and said the details need to be brought to light. Lets move on. The torture report was not the only thing happening on capitol hill. Multiple times it was said that the administration purply misled purposely mislead americans to get obama care passed, especially when it came to taxes, and they took advantage of the voter. He testified today and got a grilling by darren issa. Im a tax payer, people are not paying less, people are paying more because taxes are a cost thats paid. Total cost did not go down. Cost shifting occurred in your model, isnt that true . The amount that individuals have to pay for health care in my model fell. It didnt fall in reality. Gruber was conciliatory, apologised for his arrow gaps, but how much has the episode hurt what was already an unpopular law . Its popularity we could debate at another time. Its popular in some places, less in others. Not in chairman issas office. His now portrait is there. Groousher was looking at the new chairman and his portrait, intimidating. Here is what happened. You talked about partisanship being everywhere in washington. You know, it is really front and the center with obama care. Jonathan gruber apologised. He equifo kated a little equifo kated. Issas committee wanted to know more about why things happened and why they werent shared. Gruber was talking about transparency. It was not about transparency, it was about the money. Gruber for an m. I. T. Professor struggled to answer questions about the economist of the bill. In the past. The administration knew that some people wouldnt be able to keep the plans, and said if all the states didnt set up exchanges, obama care would fail, and dozens of states havent. Very little of that was addressed, as you said. A lot of it was focussed on all torts of money. This all led democratic strategists to write that republicans blew the hearings by overly focussing not just on the economics, but on how much money gruber got paid and not on the bigger issues that might have been important in the obama care debate. Republicans treated that as kingsleys definition of a gav. A gav is when a poll fish in washington accidently speaks the truth. Thats what republicans say gruber did. He spoke the truth without them intending to. In the video tapes, its like a nerd addressing the convention of nerds and talking about how cruel and potent he is for putting something over the American People. Republicans will never let that go. And it credits obama care as some kind of float. Will republicans move forward, trying to bring the law down . Yes. As Mitch Mcconnell said, hell try to bring it down root and branch. I dont think hell do it root and branch, theyll have to do it root by root, and that they are going to take little pieces of it and take it apart. Some people are wondering about what it does to people, you know, the number of upinsured has been way down. They dont want the onus of taking that away from people, but they want to take away some of those mandates and the taxation out of it. That will happen, theyll bring it up, fix it and tweak it. As the president arrived for. He said over and over, bring me a plan that is better. The republicans have both houses of congress and maybe theyll come up with a plan. The other big story on capitol hill, they need to pass a spending bill by midnight thursday night. If not therell be another government shutdown. It seems hows Speaker John Boehner managed to upset conservatives because they say the republicans are not extracting a big enough price on the president s inaction on immigration. Do you think the bill will pass and will democrats need something to do so. The open is yes, and yes. It will pass. Democrats will do it. It will be embarrassing for everyone. This is a coming attraction. This is a coming attraction for what will happen in the next two years, with republican control of congress, democratic president. Well see it played out again and again. Republicans are upset because john boehner was trying to push through the spending bill without giving anyone time to look at it. Republicans accused nancy pelosi of doing the same thing when she said republicans had to pass obama care to find out what was in it. Its almost at the point where its not ironic or funny, its almost routine. It happens with every bill and the close of congress, one side plays the other. They know about the date and this is a forecast of what would happen, funding the government through september. Youll visit it again at the end of next summer. The same wrangling will happen. Good to see you as always. Back to the lead story, the senate story on c. I. A