No purpose. I think its a terrible piece of work. Seems its deeply flawed. We did things violeting who we are. My name is eleanor, for the last 25 years i was Bernie Madoffs secretary. People look at White Collar Crime. 20 of people buying ivory dont realise its come from elephants. We begin with an Intelligence Committee report on the c. I. A. The report released 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 says the c. I. A. Misled the public about the enhanced interrogation techniques, which were more brutal than previously believed. One detainee who was chained in a frigid cell died of hypothermia. Some were starved of food. Others kept away for seven days at a time. The report argues that the methods did not lead to lifesaving intelligence. New information shows the 9 11 mastermind was waterboarded 183 times, and he and top leader nearly drowned to death. Zubaydah lost his left eye whilst in custody. The report says the c. I. A. Repeatedly provided false information to congress and the president. Integrators in the field that tried to stop the brutal investigations were overruled. The c. I. A. Issued a statement rebutting some of the report saying the interrogation methods were legal, and they did lead to important intelligence. Meanwhile the fbi and the department of Homeland Security issued a bulletin urge Law Enforcement to stay on alert. John mccain acknowledged the release of the information, saying its worth it. It is used by our enemies in attempts to hurt us. But the American People are entitled to it. Nonetheless. You must know when the values that define our nation are 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, a former director of the c. I. A. Counterterrorism center and Mission Manager for the agency from 2002 to 2004. Just jip is a national justine is a National Security and human rights editor was a whistleblower in the John Walker Lyndon interrogation and has been an advocate for other whistleblowers including edward snowden, and an ethics advisor to the u. S. Justice department. Robert, you were at the c. I. A. For part of the time that the whole time that this report looks at in different capacities. You were offered the change to read the report before it was published. You declined to do that. The report needed to come out regardless of the risk. What is your response to him. First of all, to correct the record i was briefly invited to read the report and before and i was not interested because i had seep enough and the cost to seeing it would be that i could not comment on it publicly. It was not a good bargain as far as i was concerned. Within 24 hours or so of the invitation to view the report it was rescinded by senator Dianne Fienstein, she did not want me to see or be prepared for that report. What do you say to john mccain, and the fact that he said it could have come out. You wrote in hoept that you huffington post, that it overwrote. Absolutely. Reasons to protect information, providing that you take appropriate steps to redact and otherwise protect the information that needs to be protected absolutely. The information should come out. My problem is that it should be accurate. Thats not what you find in this report. How do you respond to robert and to a lot of other critics who stay that this 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 only have the 500 page executive summary, it is very heavily footnoted and very well documented what happened. I mean i dont know what the inaccuracies are. I dont think the report is making up the fact that enemas were used as a form of torture, and that torture was understated to the public, and that the c. I. A. Misled the white house at times, but also congress the Justice Department, and deliberately mislead the media by releasing classified information that amounted to propaganda. As all this was happening. As all this happened my answer so each of those charges is false, false, false and false. Lets back up on that just a little bit. Go ahead. Okay. Well forgive me i havent seen all the details in this report. I saw a reference to enemas. Good god, someone needs to explain to me what that was all about. Was it a medical treatment. It wasnt one of the techniques used in interrogation. But 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 were employs in certain of these interrogations. There was some 119 in the programme. A minority of those. A significant number. A minority were subjected to any enhanced interrogation techniques. The majority once they found themselves in c. I. A. Hands decided the best course open was to cooperate, and they did so freely. That said for those individuals subject to harsh interrogations i can assure you it was no picnic. Im not going to sugar coat it. There are differences of opinion as to whether water boarding constitutes torture. There were three individuals water boarded, the worst of the worst. The report argues more than just the three were. They cite circumstantial evidence and one case suggests that it may have been done an additional time. Im not aware of that. I know what the facts were. There were three people who were water boarded. Only three people authorised to be water boarded. The larger issue is that people legitimately can disagree about whether certain techniques constitute torture. In the case of waterboarding many hundreds of u. S. Pilots were water boarded as part of training. Being water boarded as part of seal training is it different to being waterboarded under interrogation circumstances. You know that. There were more than three people waterboarded. Not true. According to this well documented report. And three is too many. No. What water boarding an a legitimate technique, the president of the United States called water boarding torture, has has attorney general eric holder called water boarding torture. Most of the planet agrees that water board something a form of torture, and when we did it to the japanese we considered it torture. You are a lawyer you know it was authorised by the Justice Department and c. I. A. Lawyers. It was authorised years after it happened. The techniques were deployed in 2002. Authorisation memos were not written in 2004, serving as retro active. False. My colleague john yu wrote them. I knew about them as an ethics attorney at the department of justice. Listen, we had clear authorisation from the department. The office of Legal Counsel before any techniques were used. That is simply incorrect. One of the big criticisms of the report is the enhanced interrogation techniques did not provide intelligence. There has been a lot of push back from the lead republican on the senate Intelligence Committee. You were there. Did you get serious information from enhanced interrogations that led to Osama Bin Laden or to you know disrupt serious terrorist plots. The short answer to that is yes. Absolutely. And you point out the fact that there is another report we were talking about the report. This is not a senate Intelligence Committee report. This is a report that was done exclusively by the democrats and staffers on the committee. Theres a competing report released of over 100 pages length, which is a very serious rebuttal of the democrats report, and i encourage people to read both reports along with the c. I. A. Rebuttal. With regard to the issue of was this effective or not. Frankly, as i read the findings in the democratic report i was literally laughing out loud. Frankly, their conception. Way this works is almost cartoonish. They think that c. I. A. Interrogations are like what you see in the movies you integrate someone, finally they say yes, they are planted. You rush to the place, and you managed to diffuse it before the thing goes off in a few hours. This is not the way it would. It assumes that you would be able to know in advance what is in these peoples heads. We couldnt be sure what was in the head of Khalid Sheikh mohammed. He was responsible for 9 11 he had the blood of many on his hands. We feared at the time that there may have been greater plots in train at the time. What we found was, in fact al qaeda is a very desorganised and practices good compartmentalizition of information. Many did not know about plots that they could give us 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 the these cases what was critical to learn about was the individuals in al qaeda, charged with organising the plots, and so those bits of information concerning individuals gave us the leads that we were able to follow up on ug all man on using all man are of other intelligence. You were confronted with a jigsaw puzzle. You put the whole thing together and point out what we regard as a key piece of information coming from sheikh mohammed. And among those were bits of information that led to abu akmed alcue wady leading to Osama Bin Laden. They are saying, well look this was not actionable information. No, but the information we got was critical to ultimately finding the individuals and blocking them. A final quick word from you on the dangers of getting i know you believe the report needed to come out, as i know senator mccain and Dianne Fienstein believed it should. Now we have warnings to domestic Law Enforcement, across the world to american facilities are you not concerned about the risk . Im not. They should have thought about National Security and the harm in the middle east back to when they architected and carried out, justified and destroyed evidence of and defended these programs, number one. Number two the report has been out and we have seen no disruptive plots in the middle east, and all the fearmongering that went on preceding the release of the report. Finally i urge mr grenier to read the report and the footnotes, which meticulously documented contraried pretty much everything he said on the programme about torture creating accessible intelligence. The opposite. It created a lot of false intelligence, for example, by curve ball and others who gave us information that was uphelpful, and torturing people helped to recruit more terrorists by engendering the antipathy of people. Seems to be strong positions on both sides of the issue. Appreciate you both being with us. Thank you turning to the angry response from three former c. I. A. Directors to the senate Intelligence Committees report. In an op ed piece in the wall street journal, the three called the report poorly done and partisan attack on the agency. Former directors insisted while the c. I. A. Did things in the Interrogation Programme that should not have happened they argued the Programme Led to the capture of center al qaeda operatives, disrupted terror plots, prevents mass casualty attacks, and played an Important Role in the hunt for Osama Bin Laden. All points rejected in the Committee Report but supported by current c. I. A. Director john brennan. At the white house. Josh ernst suggested that the issue whether the programme produce actionable intelligence was besides the point. If this information did yield important National Security are information, the damage that it did to our moral authority in the mind of this president means that those interrogation techniques should not have been implemented in the first place. For more on the senate Intelligence Committee report im joined by former g. I. A director wallsie, serving from 1993 to 1995. Ambassador, a pleasure to have you. Your colleagues three former c. I. A. Directives say a balanced study was important, but the Committee Report was everything but. It was a partisan attack. Do you agree with them . Basically, yes. What is indicative here is that they interview viewed and dealt with no one, such as the three directors of central intelligence, who had been responsible for making decisions about the programme, and correcting early mistakes that were made. They didnt talk to a soul. They took thousands of pages of text and edited it in whatever way they wand. And you can make it say most anything with those kinds of numbers. Then they call that a report. This is just about a distorted a job as i have seen come out of capitol hill capitol hill capitol hill in 35 to 40 years isle been looking at reports. You have been complimentary of Dianne Fienstein, and the Top Republican on the Intelligence Committee who was critical of the report and its release. If you had been the director, would you have authorised these measures. I would have gone to the Justice Department and had a decision made for a recommendation to the wt. I dont know that the methods would be the same. Thousands of americans had been lost to a terror attack. We knew that others were planned. A major win. We knew that the terrorists talked about Nuclear Weapons s they were frighten and understandably so. As it is defined in american war. Some of these enhanced interrogation techniques strike me as reasonable. Putting aside brutal things that the report mentions. Things like waterboarding and sleep depravation, you dont see it as torture, something appropriate in the days after 9 11. Water boarding is torture. If you compare it to pulling someones unless out. Water boarding is used as a training device for special forces and the navy seals and the rest. Few are waterboarded. They also the other thing that happens is journalists and authors in the United States after this first came to light volunteered to be waterboarded. View volunteer to have their thinker nails pulled out. True. At the same time if you are waterboarded as part of training, when compared to being at a black site prisoner. If you are a prisoner who has information about a subsequent attack on the United States that might have involved the deaths of thousands of americans, i would think that the differences are ones that one can deal with. A lot of the backlash has been to say that the report is wrong and the enhanced interrogation techniques do work. Im assuming you agree with that. I dont have a separate measure but this is not a Committee Report its democratic members, and its partisanship. I have never seen anything like this. I was general counsel of the senate armed committee. Ive been involved at the congress. Ive never seen a congressional report as by as as this. On the issues of effectiveness, critics say it could be argued that enhanced interrogation techniques are effective because its the only way to justify extreme methods, do they have a point. The point is to get information, through mind games and trickery and interrogation. There are different approaches. I think if you want to call waterboarding torture, which some do, and some do not theres no direct law. If you want to call waterboarding torture, you have to admit its a different kind to what most people think of as torture involving physical damage. The former directors wrote about how in the months after 9 11 is something you talked about. They feared another attack would be eminent. It felt like a ticking time bomb. General haden had more to say about that lets listen. We thought we were doing the nation well. Having lived in the period and looking bag on it now, we thought it was about the nations will and in all these activities the president authorised them. The congress was briefed and we carried them out. The programme ran until december 2007. I was one of the people that had to be tested for anthrax exposure. Should the programme have been stopped once the panic was over and we learnt a lot about al qaeda, and made progress in the fight against them. You have to take the issues one at a time. One of the socalled interrogation thords is that an individual was pushed. The door was designed so it would break. He was thrown against the door. It is designed to break. How is that something that under no circumstances on moral grounds could be considered. It does not strike me as anything other than a trick. I think so many people have latched on to the whole idea of torture, and used the word without having it have any content. Thinking that that wins the argument for them. It is complicated. I do not thing over the long run the country should be engaged in waterboarding. I think it was understandable at the time and in the circumstances. I frankly have been inclined to think it was all right to continue it. Im influenced in my fews by john mccain, who has been a friend and underwent torture. And is sort of my authority on torture, in a sense. I think its a close call a difficult call. But to portray it as if it were Something Like pulling peoples fingernails out is extraordinarily deceptive. Final question one of the big parts of the report was accusing the c. I. A. Of Misleading Congress and civilians. The c. I. A. By nature is clandestine. It need