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At This Hour

Report Says Bush Not Told of CIA Torture Methods; Do Enhanced Interrogation Methods Work?; Could CIA Officers, Others Be Prosecuted Overseas?

Aired December 10, 2014 - 11:30   ET

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


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GEORGE W. BUSH, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We're fortunate to have men and women who work hard at the CIA serving on our behalf. These are patriots. And whatever the report says, if it diminishes their contributions to our country it is way off base.

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MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Former President Bush there speaking out on the Senate CIA torture report. It describes mock executions, sleep deprivation, slapping, punching, freezing showers. Detainees shackled for hours to a concrete floor.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Now, the report suggests the CIA used these interrogation methods but that President Bush was not told about it for years.

Let's bring in CNN political analyst, Josh Rogin.

Josh, you've written about this. Help us understand what the report says here. What was it that the president was not told and for how long?

JOSH ROGIN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Thanks, great to see you.

According to the report the Senate said that the CIA didn't brief the president on the details of the techniques until September, 2006, more than four years after the program started. What the CIA's response is that they tried briefing the president but senior White House officials presented them from speaking President Bush because they didn't want President Bush to have that information and finally when President Bush learned of the techniques he was uncomfortable with them. Especially ones that included stress positions, forcing detainees to soil themselves and lots of other gruesome things that the president didn't know about until way after the fact. There's also reporting that Vice President Dick Cheney; national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice, they did know the details but they just kept the president out of the loop. They also kept Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense, and Secretary of State Colin Powell out of the loop for over a year because they said, according to internal CIA e- mails that Powell would "blow his stack" if he knew about what was going on.

PEREIRA: That is an interesting, very interesting point. Here's the thing, once the president was made aware, as you mentioned, he was uncomfortable. But did he do anything to actively change course? To make changes, to tell people know, this is not how we in America do things?

ROGIN: In fact, quite the opposite. We know in September, 2006, after the president got a full briefing he did reveal some of the details of the program to the public in a speech but he defended the program and in as late as 2007 when the techniques ended he was still saying that America didn't torture people. There's interesting e-mails in the report from the CIA where CIA officials went to the White House and said to the White House "hey, are you sure you want to say this? Do you know what we're doing? We want to make sure you know what you're doing so if you say we don't torture people you're saying what we think you're saying." And the White House said no problem, go ahead, we know what you're doing. So even though President Bush privately expressed discomfort and was privately kept out of the loop, publicly he's maintained support for the program and continues to do so for this day.

BERMAN: Josh, in his book "Decision Points," doesn't the president say he did approve waterboarding? Which, if it's true, he had some knowledge of what was going on before 2006?

ROGIN: Right, this is interesting, actually. There's a dispute. Bush's memoir said they received some information about the program and approved the information he knew. In John Rizzo's book -- he was the former acting general counsel of the CIA -- he said he wasn't sure Bush knew what he was talking about so it's not clear what Bush knew when and where but the bottom line here is that the White House kept Bush away from the sensitive details, some of the techniques, and this is part of the committee's overall point, was that the CIA got approval from the Justice Department and the White House, but they didn't tell them the worst stuff so that was not based on the real information.

PEREIRA: Interesting developments.

Josh Rogin, thank you very much.

ROGIN: Thank you.

BERMAN: I don't expect you will hear from Bush whether he knew or didn't. It's clear where he is on this and he will continue to support the CIA for what he did. We may never know the real answer.

PEREIRA: Here's the question. Where do we go from here? We'll talk about that next.

You can tweet us your thoughts in the meantime. We'll be right back.

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BERMAN: For the first time since the Senate report on torture came out, we are hearing from the White House press secretary.

PEREIRA: Our Jim Acosta asked whether the intelligence led to the killing of Osama bin Laden.

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JOSH EARNEST, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Well, I think I agree with everything you said until the very end, because the president's views on this are that even if this information did yield important national security 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.

The other thing that is true is it is impossible to know the counterfactual. It's impossible to know whether or not this information could have been obtained using tactics that are consistent with the Army Field Manual law enforcement techniques and that eventually enhanced interrogations techniques were not necessary to obtain that information. That is something that is unknowable.

JIM ACOSTA, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: That's not short of what Senator Feinstein's report concludes.

EARNEST: I know there are people who have strongly held views on both sides. I stipulated that earlier. There is one thing that the president has concluded. There are things we can't know but there's one thing the president knows. The president knows that continuing to employ these techniques described in that report would only undermine one of the most powerful weapons in our arsenal to protect American national security and that is the moral authority around the globe of the United States of America.

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PEREIRA: Let's bring in our military analyst, retired Lieutenant General Mike Hertling; and former CIA officer, Peter Brookes. Peter is also a national security expert with the Heritage Foundation.

BERMAN: Peter, if I can start with you, as a CIA veteran, there seemed to be two real issues here. You just heard josh earnest talking about it. Do these enhanced interrogation techniques, do they work, and is it worth it? Two separate questions. What do you think?

PETER BROOKES, NATIONAL SECURITY EXPERT, HERITAGE FOUNDATION & FORMER CIA OFFICER: That's a tough question to answer. What you're talking about here is putting this in context of the need for timely information. There is plenty of information about how these techniques will not work. John McCain talked about that yesterday on the floor of the Senate but the other problem, John, is the ticking bomb scenario. If you need this information that is possibly held by this individual right now you may have to go beyond developing a relationship with them over six months or a year to get that information. So that's the tough thing and we have to put this report in the context, push ourselves back to 9/11 and those dark days and the need to get intelligence to prevent future attacks. So it's a very tough call and there's no easy answer to your question. PEREIRA: General, I'm curious, you know all too well, having served

in those very dark days Peter was mentioning, I'm curious what your reaction is to all of this if you're concerned about our men and women serving overseas, if this is going to put them in danger. What are your thoughts?

LT. GEN. MIKE HERTLING, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: I am, Michaela. It's not only an issue of danger but an element of trust. I agree with the fact that this is contrary to what our national values are and whether or not it cured whether or not it was useful or benefitted in terms of intelligence gathering, these are not things we should be doing. However it happened a very long time ago and we are picking at a scab right now while we here in active combat, active military operations around different parts of the world so I'm very concerned having -- I was in Baghdad in n 2004 when the Abu Ghraib photos came out. We were in combat there and it certainly affected the situation there. I'm concerned now as we're seeing perhaps a little bit of the culmination of the ISIL forces in Iraq and Syria and successes in operations, what they that might do to that effort in the future.

BERMAN: Of course, there is a question as whether the tactics themselves were the problem or whether the knowledge of them was creating the situation.

Peter, I want to ask you another question. One argument I've been hearing is this is essentially changing the rules of the game after the game for people who were in the CIA one argument you hear is what if four years from now during another administration everyone decides that use of drones is something that should not be done or amounts to actions that should be condemned. Is that a sentiment you get from other CIA officials?

BROOKES: I think people are concerned about this and I can only imagine that the morale at Langley is pretty low right now and they're very concerned. These were people asked to do things on behalf of the United States' national security. They thought they were doing the right thing. They had legal approval for these sort of things. They were trying to general electric information. The CIA was committed to not letting another 9/11 happen again you bring up another question and there are many critics, including the left of President Obama and his use of drones to take out terrorists as opposed to capturing them and trying them. So these are tough times, these are extraordinary times and the general makes a good point. We can't forget that we're at war. We have tens of thousands of troops in Afghanistan. We're fighting in Iraq and Syria and these are difficult and troubling times and we have to keep that in mind.

PEREIRA: General, a quick final thought. The fact is what he mentions, war is awful, people get killed innocent civilians get killed in the theater of war. Is this to be expected, some will ask?

HERTLING: Well, certainly laws of war attempt to prevent atrocities and violations of human values so that's all part of the consideration of training young soldiers and that's why what we do in our interrogation you mentioned the interrogation manual 34-52. It's a great manual to show how to question people. Again, if there were some rogue actions as the report indicates, notwithstanding whether or not it was a politicalization of a report, if there were rogue actions then you deal with those and fix them. I'm not sure a public debate in these issues is the best recipe for moving to the future.

PEREIRA: It interesting. Very thoughtful conversation with the two of you.

Thank you so much. Peter Brookes, Lieutenant General Mark Hertling, pleasure to have you today.

BERMAN: It's interesting. The Justice Department says it will not charge CIA operatives for using the techniques mentioned in the report. But officials with the United Nations and other groups say they want to see justice. So could CIA officers, even Bush administration officials be sued or prosecuted overseas? Stay with us.

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BERMAN: More fallout from the Senate report on CIA IET. John Brennan was called on to resign. Quote, "Director Brennan and the CIA are continuing to willfully provide inaccurate information and misrepresent the efficacy of torture." In other words, says Senator Udall, the CIA is lying.

PEREIRA: Let us turn now to this, as we continue on. President Obama defends the release of the scathing report on CIA torture. He admits the U.S. did things that, quote, "violated who we are as a people."

BERMAN: So the question is, what now? One question is, could CIA agents, and U.S. officials and administration officials, face new legal exposure based on details that before now were state secrets?

Joining us now, David Tafuri, a former official at the U.N. and the State Department. And he is an international lawyer. Also joining us, our colleague, justice reporter, Evan Perez.

Gentlemen, thanks for joining us.

David, why don't we start with you?

I want to read to you what the U.N.'s appointee on human rights and counterterrorism said about this report. Quote, "The U.S. attorney general is under a legal duty to bring criminal charges. The individuals responsible for the criminal conspiracy revealed in today's report must be brought to justice and must face criminal penalties commensurate with the gravity of their crimes."

David, what other avenues are there for prosecution if the Justice Department is not going to press charges?

DAVID TAFURI, FORMER STATE DEPARTMENT & U.N. OFFICIAL: One of the impediments to bringing charges is too little was known about these enhanced interrogation techniques until the report was issued. We're over that threshold issue. There's a summary report that details some of the techniques. However, the Department of Justice has said very clearly it's not going to prosecute CIA officials. And even if it were to reverse that decision, there could be immunity for those officials and for administration officials. There is the possibility of bringing civil litigation although immunity could apply in civil litigation in the U.S. as well. There's also the possibility of prosecution or civil litigation in countries abroad, for instance in Europe. There are cases pending in Germany and in Spain. But in order to bring those individuals to justice, they would actually have to travel to those countries. And they're not going to do that anytime soon.

BERMAN: Wasn't the Chilean dictator in the same situation arrested for war crimes?

Evan, I know you've been talking to people in the U.S. government. People who are in the CIA and who are involved in this, they say they know this possibility is out there.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Oh, yeah, they definitely do. The Chilean dictator example is why a lot of them are crossing some of these Spain, Italy, Belgium, France off their vacation list. John Rizzo, the former top lawyer at the CIA, addressed this very question with us yesterday. Here's what he had to say.

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JOHN RIZZO, FORMER GENERAL COUNSEL TO THE CIA: Some of these governments, not North Korea, but governments like Spain and Italy and France, very independent magistrates, so anything is possible.

PEREZ: You're saying stay here in Washington, D.C.?

RIZZO: I'm going to visit Yosemite National Park.

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PEREZ: Yosemite is nice. But the question is, you never know what some of these countries might do because you might have a magistrate or a judge, one of these prosecutors who will do something. Even if the charges don't stick, you still have to go through that.

PEREIRA: David, I want to talk about the report out of Poland that the former president of Poland acknowledged that his nation allowed U.S. intelligence to use a facility on polish soil to interrogate and try to otherwise obtain information from sources, said they didn't know what was going on inside that facility. But then also said that this report makes the U.S. a weaker ally because other nations are not going to trust it. I'm curious about why Poland or this former leader would make this statement now. What is there to gain?

TAFURI: Well, each of the countries that cooperated with the U.S. Have to figure out how to deal with this. That's how the polar government is approaching it. As I understand it, they were not fully aware of exactly what happened. So they're investigating what happened on their soil. And they need to come to terms with that and how to deal with the U.S. in the future. It is a very strong ally of the U.S. I don't think it will significantly impact that alliance. But it will probably impact how they deal with situations like this. And with respect to the potential for bringing legal action, Poland is another place where legal action certainly would be possible, especially given that some of these tactics and activities took place on Polish soil.

BERMAN: Evan, we have time for about a 10-second answer to this question. You have great sources in the Justice Department. Any sign at all that they will change what's been their posture that they will not seek prosecution involved with this report?

PEREZ: No, I really don't think so. They looked at it now a couple of times and the fact that they've done this thorough investigation means if you try to do it again, that comes into play. You can only look at things a couple of different times before you've exhausted all of it.

BERMAN: Evan Perez, David Tafuri, thank you both so much for being with us. PEREIRA: That's it for us @THISHOUR. I'm Michaela Pereira. Thanks

for joining us.

BERMAN: I'm John Berman.

"LEGAL VIEW" with Ashleigh Banfield starts after this quick break.

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