Stay updated with breaking news from Precooked report. Get real-time updates on events, politics, business, and more. Visit us for reliable news and exclusive interviews.
has also increased due to a campaign of mistaken statements and press articles launched against the report before anyone has had the chance to read it. as a matter of fact, the report is just now, as i speak, being released. this is what it looks like. i -- senator chambliss asked me if we could have the minority report bound with the majority report for this draft that is not possible, but in the final draft it will be bound together. but this is what the summary of the 6,000 pages look like. my words give me no pleasure. i'm releasing this report because i know there are thousands of employees at the cia who do not condone what i will spook about this morning -- speak about this morning and who workday and night, long hours within the law for america's
2001 to january of 2009. the report does not include considerable detail on the cia's interactions with the white house. excuse me, it does include considerable detail on the cia's interactions with the white house, the departments of justice, state, defense and the senate intelligence committee. the review is based on contemporaneous records and documents during the time the program was in place and active. now, these documents are important because they aren't based on recollection. they aren't based on revision, and they aren't a rationalization a decade later. it's these documents referenced repeatedly in thousands of footnotes that provide the factual basis for the study's conclusions.
report produced by congress in the time i've worked in national security. this was a precooked report, and the reason they didn't talk to people like hayden and jose rodriguez and other former cia officials is because they did not want this precooked report to be spoiled by inconvenient facts. jon: well, you know, talking about the facts, i have not read the report yet, i am just reading some of what's coming out about it because it's only just now being released since we have taken air with this program. but, for instance, one of the conclusions of the report is that there were a number of other suspects that were subjected to waterboarding, more than the cia had earlier reported. why, why would that, why would that information just be coming out now? why was the cia -- why would the cia not admitted to that earlier? >> this report was based entirely on a document search. we had to talk to officials who were responsible for these documents. there could be errors in the
the white house now seems okay with the disclosure. what do you make of it? >> well, there are two things. one is, okay, one thing to actually investigate and do the report. there's another issue is why make the report public? why make the report prick now? -- public now? there should be one major rule in foreign policy like in medicine, first do no harm. by releasing this report now three thicks are going to happen -- things are going to happen. one, it gives excuse for a revenge attack on americans. secondly, foreign intelligence agencies look at this and say we can't trust america to keep secrets, we're not going to cooperate with america. we're not going to share our intelligence. and then finally, what it does is tells everybody who works in the american intelligence community, watch out. you may do something that you think is justified and legal, but ten years later you could be investigated for this, you could be called out, you could be put in danger. so i look at all of that and say one thing to write the report, another thing to do harm by releasing the report publicly. shannon: all right. we have in the past been told
bin laden, they have all said they got a lot of intelligence from this. so it was legal, it was effective, why go after it now? unless the motivation's completely political. congress is changing hands, the senate is going from democrat to republican hands, and are the democrats in the senate just -- they've been evicted from the house, are they just trashing the place before they leave? shannon: well, they're certainly getting the information out there over plenty of objections. kt, thank you for your expertise. >> thanks, shannon. jon: so that is the report coming out led by democratic senator dianne feinstein of california. again, that report includes -- concludes that the former directors of the cia, george tenet, porter goss, michael hayden repeatedly inflated the value of the enhanced interrogation techniques that the cia used to get information from terror suspects in the wake of the worst terror attack ever on nation, the 9/11 attacks of 2001.
instruct its employees to participate in interviews. notwithstanding this, i am really confident of the factual accuracy and comprehensive nature of this report for three reasons. first, it's the 6.3 million pages of documents reviewed, ask they reveal records of actions as those actions took place, not through recollections more than a decade later. second, the cia and cia senior officers have taken the opportunity to explain their views on cia detention and interrogation of operations. they have done this in on-the-record statements in classified committee hearings, written testimony and answer to questions and through the formal response to the committee in june 2013 after reading the study.
tried to stop it. so this characterization that it is a rogue operation is completely false. it is a false narrative. and, frankly, we can't afford this kind of thing. jon: can't afford what, the release of the report? what do you think ability the idea now that these many years later the senate intel committee is going to put these documents out there? >> well, look, first of all, we have the hit that we're going to take in terms of morale, motivation in the agency. you want people to be aggressive, to push the envelope to save lives, and simultaneously they're going to have to worry about whether they're going to be criminally prosecuted or subjected to civil suit. then we have the hit we're going to take overseas. the next time we go to some foreign nation or foreign intel service in the dead of night and ask them to help us on something and assure them that it will be kept secret, they're going to point to this report and these disclosures and likely refuse to cooperate. and people are going to die as a consequence. jon: a sobering thought from
documentation. but second, there's no doubt in my mind that mistakes were made in this program. there may have been some abuses, and that's why republicans wanted an honest evaluation of this program. it was conducted immediately in the aftermath of 9/11 when, basically, the white house was given carte blanche to do whatever it takes to defend our country against terrorism. of course some mistakes were made, and it's a shame we didn't have an honest, bipartisan assessment of this program to find out what those mistakes were. jon: well, how would you have made it more honest? i mean, you say we needed an honest, bipartisan assessment. how would you have achieved that? >> we should have had republican and democratic staffers working cooperatively to determine the facts of this case. there would have been a bipartisan body of the report, and then republicans and democrats would submit additional views and where they didn't agree on the bipartisan body of the report. the bipartisan body of this report is entirely democratic.
this colorly is a period -- clearly is a period of turmoil and instability in many parts of the world. unfortunately, that's going to continue for the foreseeable future whether this report is released or not. there are those who will seize upon the report and say see what the americans did? and they will try to use it to justify evil actions or incite more violence. we can't prevent that. but history will judge us by our commitment to a just society governed by law and the willingness to face an ugly truth and say never again. there may never be the right time to release this report. the instability we see today will not be resolved in months or years, but this report is too important to shelve indefinitely. my determination to release it
reason, we do not document and learn from our experience. each generation of officers is left to improvise anew with problematic results for our officers as individuals and for our agency. i believe that to be true. i agree with mr. helgerson. his comments are true today, but this must change. on march 11, 2009, the committee voted 14-1 to begin a review of the cia's detention and interrogation program. over the past five years, a small team of committee investigators pored over the more than 6.3 million pages of cia records the leader spoke about to complete this report or what we call "the study." it shows that the cia's actions