Wednesday, May 4, 2011

CIA Director Leon Panetta Says Intel from Waterboarding Led to Bin Laden Raid

At the 3:40 minute mark of video:

BRIAN WILLIAMS: Can you confirm that it was as a result of water boarding that we learned what we needed to learn to go after Bin Laden?
LEON PANETTA: Brian, in the intelligence business you work from a lot of sources of information and that was true here... It's a little difficult to say it was due just to one source of information that we got... I think some of the detainees clearly were, you know, they used these enhanced interrogation techniques against some of these detainees. But I'm also saying that, you know, the debate about whether we would have gotten the same information through other approaches I think is always going to be an open question.
BRIAN WILLIAMS: So finer point, one final time, enhanced interrogation techniques -- which has always been kind of a handy euphemism in these post-9/11 years -- that includes water boarding?
LEON PANETTA: That's correct

Here is our current Vice-President on the value of waterboarding:


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4 comments:

Closer To Home said...

I found this article online from an anonymous source re: a schism inside the WH on the OBL mission. I have no knowledge of the author or his credentials. But he describes an interesting set of facts on how Obama was basically out of the loop on this mission, how Panetta/Clinton/Gates/Daley had to isolate the president from Jarrett to get the go ahead, and how Obama had to be dragged off the golf course to come watch the final scenes of an operation that had been kept secret from him at least to its final execution.

I'm interested in people's thoughts.

http://socyberty.com/issues/white-house-insider-obama-hesitated-panetta-issued-order-to-kill-osama-bin-laden/

Dave said...

CTH,
I wonder if this Petreus/Panetta alliance had anything to do with Panetta stepping down and Petreus moving to the CIA?

If true, this would be big and would put a huge blemish on Obama's ability to make decisions and tough choices when necessary.

Dave said...

CTH,

You should write this up as a separate post.

Revolution 2012 said...

Great article Ric.

It the sources are correct in the this, Obama was more a a hindrance than a force in this operation.

Maybe it was Petreus threat of doing it anyway that sealed the deal? Obama knew then, he wouldn't get any credit at all if that had happened.