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At This Hour

Senate to Release Democrat Report on CIA Tactics During Bush Administration; Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein to Present Report

Aired December 09, 2014 - 11:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, I'm John Berman. Michaela Pereira is off today. We'd like to welcome our viewers to the United States and around the world.

Breaking news @THISHOUR, a highly anticipated and extremely controversial report due out any minute details just what CIA interrogators did to terror detainees after September 11th and if it worked.

Any minute now, Senator Dianne Feinstein, who chairs the Senate intelligence committee, will present this report. You're looking at live pictures right now of the Senate well.

The senator will detail tactics and policies used during the Bush administration against al Qaeda suspects -- waterboarding, sleep deprivation, revelations about secret overseas prisons, the so-called "black sites"' -- all that expected to be included

What is in the report is controversial. Releasing it at all is controversial. Heightened security around the world because of fears the report could spark anti-American violence.

We've all angles covered this morning. Our justice reporter Evan Perez with a preview of what's in the report. Also with us, chief congressional correspondent Dana Bash, who just spoke with Senator Dianne Feinstein, senior White House correspondent Jim Acosta with us, Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr, and with us from Cairo, where there are security concerns is our Ian Lee.

First, we want to go to Evan Perez with a look at what this report will say. Good morning, Evan.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE REPORTER: Good morning, John.

There's no doubt this is going to be a really ugly day for the CIA. This report has been fought over for years now. For the last few months the CIA has been working with the White House and with the Senate to try to decide what to release in this report.

The findings are going to be really ugly in the sense that we're going to learn a lot more about what went on in this program. We know for a fact that there's going to be more information about the detainees, what they were subjected to. We also know that the report will portray the CIA as going beyond what the methods that were authorized by memos that were done by the Justice Department and that it misled, according to the Democrats who did this report -- that it misled the Justice Department, misled the White House, and misled Congress about what it was doing with the detainees.

We expect we'll get details about detainee deaths that occurred while in this program, and overall it's going to portray the CIA as mismanaging this program and didn't produce much intelligence according to the Democrats and, in fact, the big question is did this program help find Osama bin Laden.

As you know he was killed in a U.S. raid. That's going to be still in dispute when the day is done. We expect that the CIA will produce its own report, John, that will say that it did, indeed, provide intelligence that led to the capture or to the finding of bin Laden.

The Senate Democrats are going to say that it did not. So that's what we're going to have at the end of the day. Probably much in dispute about this program.

BERMAN: Indeed. Divisive to say the least. As one senator put it this morning, this report will say the CIA did use torture, and it didn't work, and now, Evan, you are reporting that this report will also say the CIA was misleading to federal officials as well. We'll check back with you as you get more details of what's inside the report.

I want to go to Dana Bash, our chief congressional correspondent. At the center of this whole something senator Dianne Feinstein. She will be speaking on the senate floor any minute. It's really senator Feinstein who has decided and pushed for the release of the report today. You just spoke with her.

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right. As you know we've been reporting all morning about the fact that military personnel, embassy personnel and other U.S. Personnel around the world are on high alert because of the fear of repercussions from the release of this report.

So I just caught up with the senator, the chairwoman of the intelligence committee as she was going from her office to the senate floor where she'll give her speech, and I asked her about that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: How do you respond to those who worry that releasing this will put American lives at risk?

SENATOR DIANNE FEINSTEIN (D-CA), SENATE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE, CHAIRWOMAN: Well, I'll respond to that in my remarks. . There really is no good time and I think the greatness of this country is that we can examine mistakes and remedy them. And that is the hallmark of a great and just society so anything can happen at any time without a report. There's no question about that. And there will be a very good chance that because of the change in the senate, the report will not do anything.

BASH: So you're doing this because you're going to lose the chairmanship?

FEINSTEIN: Not necessarily.

BASH: Or because Democrats are going to lose control?

FEINSTEIN: No, but there's obviously a factor. There are a lot of factors that you weigh. This hasn't been an easy decision to move ahead and I'll make that clear.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Just to button that, we should remind our viewers that as of likely this Thursday when the lame-duck session is over, Democrats will effectively not have control. Republicans don't formally take control until January, but there won't be any business done so that was what the senator was referring to is that this is her chance, her last chance as chairwoman of the committee.

She referred, John, to the fact that this hasn't been easy. Boy is that an understatement? This has been years in the making. The senator and the intelligence committee, mostly on the Democratic side, have been very much pushing for information.

There has been a lot of controversy, tension about it. There have been accusations from Senator Feinstein herself about the CIA hacking into Senate commuters.

It's, again, not been easy, and she is no dove. She is very hawkish, but she feels this is important to do, as others have said, because we're not North Korea, we're not Russia, we are a transparent society, and this is why it's important.

BERMAN: Dana, there's been out and out acrimony between the committee and CIA which is something you almost never see.

Dana Bash, thanks so much again.

We are waiting to hear from Senator Dianne Feinstein the chair of the senate select committee on intelligence. She will be revealing new details about what is in this highly anticipated controversial report, called the CIA torture report, what went on after September 11 to get information from terror detainees.

I want to go to the White House. Jim Acosta is there. Jim, President Obama, then Senator Obama ran largely on releasing the details of what went on. He was adamantly opposed to it as a candidate. Now that he's been president for a number of years it is much more complicated.

JIM ACOSTA, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: It is much more complicated, and it would be interesting to do a then and now because I think they see more grays at the White House.

Make no mistakes, when President Obama came into office in 2009, one of his first executive orders was to ban these so-called enhanced interrogation techniques, which included waterboarding, which, by the way, Arizona Senator John McCain, President Obama's Republican rival in 2008, he has referred to waterboarding as torture. The president in recent years has said we tortured some folks. So there's no dispute as to where the president stands on this.

However, we should point out and Dana was talking about that somewhat. In the last several days you have noticed a hesitation on the part of this administration and that they knew this would be problematic in terms of releasing these results.

We should point out that just yesterday the intelligence community after vetting and reviewing the intelligence committee's report returned that back to Congress, returned that back to Feinstein so she could release this redacted version, and according to an administration official I talked to last night, John, this is 93 percent unredacted.

So there are some redactions in this 600-page executive summary of this 6,000-page report but according to the official nothing will be lost in the narrative. So there is going to be some detail here that perhaps the American people haven't seen before.

But the chief complaint, the chief, I guess, technique in all of this that is really objected to by a lot of Democrats is this use of waterboarding. It was used extensively on a number of detainees during the Bush administration. President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney when they were in office they maintained over and over again that this was not torture.

President Obama came into office, and that's what happens when presidents change parties. When a president comes into office, he can do what he wants to do when it comes to conducting war and peace, and the president decided he was going to ban these techniques.

Make no mistake, I think this is a very difficult decision for White House to release this information, mot only because of the unforeseen consequences that you might see around the world, violence, attacks and so forth, but keep in mind this president won't be in office much longer. He'll be gone in two years.

The next president can come along from a different party and go back and decide and review what happened during this administration, drone attacks and so forth, so it does set a precedent, and I think makes this administration a little uneasy, John.

BERMAN: Jim Acosta, stick around. We will want the White House reaction when Senator Dianne Feinstein, the chair of the senate intelligence committee, is due to speak in any minute. She will reveal new details of what's in the report.

You heard Jim mention it -- waterboarding, the enhanced interrogation techniques that were used to get information from terror detainees after September 11 during the Bush administration.

Again, the details of what is in that report will be released any minute. But even before those details are released, the report is controversial and all around the world U.S. Marines have been asked to be on a heightened state of alert to respond if there are any protests or violence directed at Americans because of this report.

I want to bring in our Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr to give us details about this heightened security.

Barbara?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: John, good morning.

The Pentagon may make the case that much of this has been out there in the press in recent years, that the world knows an awful lot about this.

But not really, because starting last week an order came from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, the chairman, out to the worldwide combatant commanders to be ready when the report is released.

The concern is that a lot of material may appear online now. It will be read around the world. Whether it is accurate, in context, or propaganda put out there about the CIA by ISIS, it doesn't really matter. The concern is that there may be -- may be -- violent repercussions in key areas.

The concern is of course U.S. embassies, U.S. military bases around the world, U.S. troops in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in the Middle East.

So what has happened since last week is U.S. Marines, which basically run the emergency-response forces in Africa and in the Middle East have been put on this heightened state of alert. They are now ready to go faster than ever before if a violent situation was to break out.

Look, let's be clear. The Pentagon, the White House, Congress, everybody hopes it does not happen, but it has happened in the past. U.S. Embassies have come under attack and, of course, ever recalls the situation with the U.S. government compound in Benghazi, Libya.

That is what they are trying to avoid, a violent backlash that the military could not be ready to respond to, so these Marines now on alert, ready to move if something were to happen.

John?

BERMAN: On alert and ready to move. And one place you can bet the United States has its eye on right now -- thanks, Barbara Starr.

One place the United States no doubt has its eye on right now is Cairo. Cairo, of course, it was site of violent demonstrations after that video that many people saw as anti-Islam. The U.S. Embassy in Cairo came under attack there

I want to check in with Ian Lee right now, who is in Cairo, to give us a sense of what precautions are being taken and if there is concern, visible concern that you can see there today. Ian?

IAN LEE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: John, I had a conversation with the U.S. embassy earlier this morning, and they were telling me that they're not going to comment on security procedures.

You may remember and as you mentioned, in 2012 there was a breaching of the perimeter by anti-American demonstrators, the breaching of the U.S. embassy perimeter, but since then, security has been stepped up. There's more barriers, there's a larger police presence, and the military is close by if needed.

But when we talk about the street and the general action, there's mild interest, not very much what we're hearing that people are saying. Where the real damning reaction could come from is from the governments in this region.

If they are mentioned in this report, for Egypt, for example, was one of the CIA's rendition program. If they are mentioned in this, this could be very embarrassing for the government and as well for their intelligence community.

We haven't heard any reaction from the Egyptian governments yet, but we're also waiting to see what are in the details. If something is very explosive in this report, then that could -- we could see the effect of that in the street.

John?

BERMAN: Ian Lee in Cairo.

Yes, the details so important, what is in this report? And any minute now, we will hear from Dianne Feinstein, senator, the chairperson of the Senate select committee on intelligence. It's that committee that is releasing this report that talks about what they call CIA terror techniques that were used to get information from terror suspects after the attacks on September 11.

What will the details be, what will the reaction be, and what will the accusations be about how they were presented or misrepresented to the U.S. government?

Stay with us. That speech, very controversial, just ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: Welcome back to our viewers here in the United States and around the world. Any minute now, Senator Dianne Feinstein, the Chair of the Senate Select Committee On Intelligence, will give a speech on the Senate floor outlining her committee's report on what is being called "CIA torture techniques." How they questioned terror suspects after September 11 during the Bush administration, what these techniques were, whether they were effective, and now we have just learned also how they were represented to the administration and the government at the time.

Again, that speech any second, but the report just posted online. We have the details of what it says.

I'm going to go to our Justice Correspondent Evan Perez. And Evan, it says the techniques were not effective, and not only that, it says what they were doing, the CIA, was misrepresented to the government at the time.

PEREZ: That's right, John. As I mentioned, this is going to be pretty dark for the CIA because all along they've said that this program produced valuable intelligence. This report that's been done by the Senate Democrats, which looked at six million pages of documents in the CIA, is concluding otherwise. It concludes -- fist of all, there's a bunch of new headlines.

The Senate found that there were 199, at least 119, prisoners who went through the CIA program. That's a bigger number than we have ever known. The CIA has previously only said about 100. We know that about a third of them were subjected to what the CIA has called "enhanced interrogation tactics," EITs, this is what a lot of people call torture. This is waterboarding, slapping, sleep deprivation, you know, other things, cold temperature. We know that some prisoners died as a result of all these tactics.

Let me just read to you the main finding from the Senate, that the enhanced interrogations did not produce otherwise unavailable information necessary to save lives. Now, that's going to be something that the CIA's going to push back very hard on because they believe that -- people in the Bush administration and the CIA - believe that this program did save lives. They say it's a program they disavowed. That they would never do this again and that it was wrong, but they can't -- they say you cannot say that it did not produce valuable intelligence, and also that it's unknowable whether it could have been gotten otherwise.

As you mentioned, the findings are that the program was ineffective, that the CIA misled the White House, that it misled Congress, it misled the Justice Department about exactly what it was doing, that the program was far more brutal in the tactics that were being used against some of these detainees. We know that one detainee at one location died after he was held naked for days chained to a wall and that, you know, he died of hypothermia, for example.

So that's another finding in this report. We also are told from the report that the program produced inaccurate information. It led to the FBI and the CIA having to chase down leads that turned out to be nothing, because people misread information, because, for example, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, while he was being waterboarded, admitted to things that the CIA wanted him to admit to, which turned out to be false and not true.

So, again, these are some very ugly findings that we expect. We have a bunch of people here at CNN poring over the details of this report. We'll expect to have some more.

BERMAN: And Evan, stick around. We do want to welcome our viewers here in the United States and around the world. We are just now getting the details of what is inside the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA techniques to get information from terror suspects during the Bush administration.

Evan Perez, our Justice Correspondent, just outlined what some of the techniques were. Harsher than the administration was told at the time. Misrepresented, Evan just reported, to the administration at the time. And Evan, also inside this report, there is an open question about what the CIA was telling the president. Whether the president, in fact, knew what the CIA was doing at some of these black sites.

PEREZ: That's right, John. That's something I think we're going to end the day here without really knowing the full answer. We know that President Bush, in his own biography, says that he knew full well what was going on. He was in control and he authorized this program. We know that The Justice Department authorized this program. However, the CIA documents don't indicate that he was ever briefed until 2006. So while a lot of the abuses that are described in this report are going on, 2002, 2003, 2004, the president was not being briefed.

We know that at some point the CIA was preparing to brief some of the top officials in the Bush administration, but then they decided not to, in part, because according to some of the documents, they were afraid that it was going to leak, and in particular, that Colin Powell would blow his lid, is what I think is one description of this the way how this was described in reaction to what was being done.

BERMAN: To be clear, President George W. Bush in an interview Candy Crowley over the weekend made very clear he stands behind what the CIA did and what happened during his administration, Vice President Dick Cheney, very publicly, as well.

Evan, stick around here for a moment. I want to go to our Chief Congressional Correspondent Dana Bash. And Dana, I'm looking at my Twitter feed right now, already I can see Republicans lashing out at this report. And some Republicans where you are flat out calling it fiction.

BASH: That's right. And what's going on off the Senate floor, you just saw that Senators were voting. Our team is talking to senators while they're coming off of the Senate floor, one of whom is Senator Richard Burr. He is going to be the next Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, the next Dianne Feinstein, if you will. Republican. He called it fiction. He told our Ted Barrett that he does not believe that this is an accurate portrayal of what really went on, because he says that the committee and its staff didn't interview everybody involved, the operatives in particular. He said that they got their facts wrong and it went on from there. No, it's no secret that most of the Republicans on the Intelligence Committee did not like this, did not cooperate and they're going to have their own kind of rebuttal report, if you will.

So that is exactly the kind of thing that we are hearing. Not just concern about the fact that this information is being released and what it could mean for the security of Americans, but questioning the actual content of this report, in general.

BERMAN: Dana Bash, thanks so much. I want to go to the White House. They, of course, are watching very closely what is happening on Capitol Hill and we are awaiting a speech any minute now from Senator Dianne Feinstein, the Chair of the Senate Select Committee On Intelligence.

Jim Acosta at the White House. The link to the report is posted. The CIA has had days to look at it already. What is their official response now that it's been posted?

ACOSTA: Well, there is a response from the president to this report that's being released by the Senate Intelligence Committee, John, and it is pretty scathing, I have to tell you. At the beginning of this statement, the president says that he understands that the previous administration, the Bush administration, had agonizing choices to make, but that some of the choices they made were, quote, "contrary to our values."

And then the president goes on to say about this enhanced interrogation technique program and about the report, it says, quote, "the report documents a troubling program involving enhanced interrogation techniques on terrorism suspects in secret facilities outside the United States and it reinforces my long-held view that these harsh methods were not only inconsistent with our values as a nation, they did not serve our broader counterterrorism efforts or our national security interests. Moreover, these techniques did," quote, and I'm still quoting here, "significant damage to America's standing in the world and made it harder to pursue our interests with allies and partners."

And John, we should mention that the CIA has also released its own response to this Senate Intelligence Committee report and it also, in a statement from the CIA director John Brennan, says that they did not always live up to their values at the agency in carrying out this program. So it is a -- as Evan said -- a dark day for the CIA. And at the same time, the White House will be doing a lot of explaining today to talk about the president's view on all of this. Obviously, the president ended this program. He says as much in his statement reinforcing that he did this as soon as he came into office. But at the same time, because of this process, it took many, many years for this information to come to light. A lot of questions being asked about how this White House handled this reports over those years, John.

BERMAN: And it is a scathing report being released during one presidential administration about the previous administration. Jim, what is the White House response about whether President Obama has spoken to former President George W. Bush about this?

ACOSTA: You know, they have had dealings over the years. We don't know whether or not President Obama and President Bush have ever talked about this. My sense of it is is that they have not. But, you know, this is an interesting question for this president, because as we were saying earlier, John, you know, President Obama came into office seeing things in sort of a black-and-white fashion when it came to this program, and over the years as he's had to wage war and the War On Terrorism, and as he tried to wind it down and now he's ratcheting it back up again in the War On ISIS, he is finding that he also has to do things that perhaps might make people crazy up on Capitol Hill.

He has a lot of people who are very concerned about what the NSA has been doing with respect to snooping on Americans, and what is going on in terms of the surveillance that is going on in this country and around the world. So those are tactics and programs and things that this president has done and authorized that make civil libertarians tear their hair out and might have made a former Senator Obama tear his hair out when he was running for president back in 2008. So it's interesting to see, as this administration is winding down, how they've really tried to get this information out there. But at the same time, knowing full well that there could be some serious ramifications once this information really makes its way around the world, John?

BERMAN: Jim Acosta at the White House, stand by. I want to bring back our Evan Perez who has been going through this report which has just been released.

Evan, in addition to outlining the details of what techniques were used and how frequently they were used, and where, in broad terms, they were used, one of the most scathing claims is that the CIA misrepresented what they were doing to policymakers and the American public. Can you give any specifics about exactly what they said and didn't say and the extent of these misrepresentations?

PEREZ: If you look at this program, it was authorized by this president. It's a presidential --

BERMAN: Evan, I'm sorry, I just asked you a question, I need to cut you off. Senator Dianne Feinstein, the Chair of the Senate Select Committee presenting the report right now.

FEINSTEIN: The Senate Intelligence Committee's five and a half year review of the CIA's detention and interrogation program, which was conducted between 2002 and 2009, is being released publicly. The executive summary, which is going out today, is backed by a 6,700 page classified and unredacted report with 38,000 footnotes which can be released, if necessary, at a later time.

The report released today examines the CIA's secret overseas detention of at least 119 individuals and the use of coercive interrogation techniques, in some cases amounting to torture. Over the past couple of weeks, I've gone through a great deal of introspection about whether to delay the release of this report to a later time. This 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. --