Return to Transcripts main page

Wolf

CIA Interrogation Program; U.S. Condemned Over CIA Tactics; White House Reacts to Report Findings; CIA Calls Senate Report Flawed; Did Torture Help Find bin Laden; Spending Bill Deal

Aired December 10, 2014 - 13:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, I'm Wolf Blitzer. It's 1:00 p.m. here in Washington, 6:00 p.m. in London, 7:00 p.m. in Warsaw, 10:30 p.m. in Kabul. Wherever you're watching from around the world, thanks very much for joining us.

We start with the fallout from the Senate Intelligence Committee release of its report on CIA interrogations. Already several foreign governments around the world, they're condemning details in the report. And here is some of what we've heard today right here in Washington, D.C., starting with the White House press secretary, Josh Earnest.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOSH EARNEST, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: The conclusion that the president has reached, again, it's two principal things here. The conclusion that the president reached is a principle that people on both sides of this debate can agree to which is that the moral authority of the United States of America is one of the most powerful tools in our arsenal to protect and advance U.S. interests around the globe. And it's the view of the president that the use of these techniques, regardless of whether or not they elicit national intelligence information, undermine our ability to use this very powerful tool.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Back on the floor of the United States Senate where the report was released just a day earlier, the Colorado senator, Mark Udall, also a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, a Democrat, he said the White House obstructed the report's release for six years.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. MARK UDALL (D), SENATE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: So, while the study clearly shows that the CIA's detention interrogation program itself was deeply flawed, the deeper more endemic problem lies in a CIA assisted by a White House that continues to try to cover up the truth.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BLITZER: Very strong words from Senator Udall who, by the way, lost his bid for reelection last month. He called, actually, for the resignation of the CIA director, John Brennan. It's not the first time he's made that statement, by the way.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, the Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, released the report on the floor of the Senate yesterday. I spoke with her about the report and the possibility of retribution against Americans around the world. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(on camera): Was it worth it to release this report today if, in fact, American lives where the diplomats, military personnel, civilians are going to be in danger?

SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN (D), CHAIRMAN, SENATE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: Look, there is no perfect time to release this report. This began 12 years ago. We have worked for five and a half years to document records as to what happened.

BLITZER: If Americans are killed as a result of this report and they tell you that, I assume you would feel guilty about that.

FEINSTEIN: I would feel very badly, of course. I mean, what do you think, Wolf Blitzer? But we lose control. At the end of this year, the Republicans take control. And there's some evidence that this report would never see the light of day. We believe it should see the light of day. And let me say this, this is a 400-plus-page summary. It is not the 4,600-page documentary of all of the detail of what happened. That can be declassified and released one day at an appropriate time. But in the meantime, to get out what the executive summary said, that these EITs did not work, that the program was not well-administered, that it was not well-managed, I think is extraordinarily important. That, yes, there were black sites where people were not qualified to do the interrogation did interrogation. These are things that come out in the report.

Now, you can -- and you've -- I mean, CNN is doing this these days. You are really hyping it to a point. Obviously, they're going to take 96 hours before the report came out to secure all our facilities.

BLITZER: But let me interrupt for just a second.

FEINSTEIN: But this is a Democratic nation.

BLITZER: Senator, you and I are friends. We've known each other for a long time. When the Department of Defense issues a warning saying thousands of marines are now being put on a higher state of alert around the world in advance of the release of this report, when the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI issue a joint statement going out to all law enforcement authorities across the United States, be on a higher state of alert, CNN is not releasing those statements. We're just reporting what the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI are telling law enforcement and military personnel around the world. That's their words, not ours. (END VIDEOTAPE)

(live): So, that was a testy interview with the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Dianne Feinstein. We're going to have more of the interview coming up. I want our viewers here in the United States and around the world to see it. She said the CIA interrogation program over those years was flawed and that it completely failed.

Let's get a different perspective, in the meantime. Joining us now is Bill Harlow, he's a former CIA director of Public Affairs. He's also the man behind this new Web site, CIASavedLives.com. Bill, thanks very much for joining us. I should point out, you're a retired U.S. Navy captain who served for the Pentagon when I was the CNN correspondent there. We've known each other for a long time as well, just as I've known senator Feinstein for a long time.

So, when you retired from the Navy during the Clinton administration, you went to work for Public Affairs at CIA. You stayed through those early years of the Bush administration. So, you were there when these enhanced interrogation tactics, techniques, whatever they were called, torture some suggest, were in effect. Did you personally know what was going on?

BILL HARLOW, FORMER SPOKESMAN, CIA: I had some level of knowledge of it. I wasn't intimately involved in it but I was aware of it, given my position at the time, yes.

BLITZER: So, you go through this lengthy report and it's, you know, hundreds and hundreds of pages. Knowing what you know now, are you personally comfortable what CIA officials, CIA contractors did to these detainees?

HARLOW: I am absolutely comfortable with what CIA authorizes people to do, and I wouldn't just go through that lengthy report that everyone seems to be pointing to. I'd go through the report that was put out by the Republican minority, a shorter report, which is much -- as I understand it and I haven't gone all the way through that one either -- but it's much easier to read. It takes -- starts from the things that are in this report and points out how much is wrong in there.

I'd also look at the CIA rebuttal which was put out yesterday which has gotten far too little notice. And I would go to our Web site, CIASavedLived.com where we put up lots of documents never before seen by the public. Some of them only recently declassified, formerly top secret documents, which show that the program was authorized, it was legal and it was effective.

BLITZER: But if you go through this report and you read some of the disgusting details of what were done to these human beings -- they may have been Al Qaeda detainees, suspects or whatever, it is pretty brutal. I mean, it certainly sounds like torture.

HARLOW: It may well sound -- and there were some mistakes made. Nobody at the CIA is saying the program was run perfectly. There were a number of cases when people overstepped their bounds and did bad things. But what's not coming clear from that is that when that happened, CIA officers on the scene reported that up the chain of command, reported it to the inspector general. When appropriate, it was reported to the Department of Justice.

What it doesn't tell you in there, it doesn't stress in there is that this entire program was examined carefully by one of the most dogged prosecutors in the U.S. government, John Durham, who looked at all the same information and he found nothing prosecutable. Not only that, he took the time to sit down and talk to people, to interview people who were involved. Five and a half years, Senator Feinstein's committee never bothered to do that.

BLITZER: And when she said that the Justice Department told her and the committee, you can't interview officials from the CIA, the contractors, because potentially they could be indicted, criminally investigated and just rely on the documents that are being made available to you. You can't --

HARLOW: Right.

BLITZER: -- actually to -- yesterday I spoke to John Rizzo who is the chief counsel for the CIA. He said, I wanted to talk to these people. They never called me.

HARLOW: Right. What the senator said to you, in all due respect, is nonsense. What happened was, Leon Panetta, then the director of the CIA, said I can't make current employees talk to them if they don't want to. But there was only a small number of people who were ever under investigation. Every investigation was completed by 2012, almost two and a half years ago. And a lot of the people you would want to talk to were never under investigation. The directors of the CIA, the deputy directors, John Rizzo was never under investigation. They could have talked to those people. They didn't bother to. Why didn't they bother to? They couldn't handle the truth. They wanted to go through 6 million pages of documents --

BLITZER: So, what you're saying is that Senator Feinstein couldn't handle the truth? Because she's been the chair of this committee for a long time and I want you to think about this as I play another clip of what she said to me yesterday, because she had strong words against the CIA right now. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FEINSTEIN: The CIA spent $40 million to prevent us from issuing this report. That is fact. We did not spend the money. We used our staff to do this report. They went into our computers illegally to take out information, not once, not twice, but three times, which I believe is a separation of powers violation. This, to me, shows that the CIA has pulled out the stops to prevent this from coming out. Additionally, there have been statements made by individuals, articles written that simply don't meet the test of truth.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BLITZER: All right. So, those are strong words from her. Let's get to some of the specifics. Did the CIA spend $40 million to prevent the American public from learning the truth?

HARLOW: No, that's nonsense. And what happened while this was under review understand was not when I was at the agency. But it started in 2009 when the committee --

BLITZER: And you left in 2006, is that right?

HARLOW: 2004 I left.

BLITZER: 2004.

HARLOW: But the committee said, in 2009, when they first inter -- announced that they were going to do this, they were going to have a thorough investigation, that they were going have invest -- that they were going to sit down and have interviews with people, talk to them and look at documents. And then, they scrapped the interview part after DOJ opened its first investigation which they shouldn't have done. The $40 million, as I understand it, was involved in creating a special facility to hold these documents securely so that they wouldn't fall into the wrong hands, endangering lives of Americans and others.

On the whole issue of people spying about each other, that's not my issue. I wasn't there. I don't know. I do know -- I remember hearing it, it was in the press, that there was supposedly a Senate sergeant at arms investigation into whether people from the committee actually inappropriately took highly classified documents out of that facility. I'd like to know how that investigation is coming along. I never hear about that one.

BLITZER: Well, she says the CIA was illegally trying to eavesdrop on what the Senate Intelligence Committee was doing.

HARLOW: And I have no information about that one way or the other. But I'd like to know what happened to the investigation about the CIA illegal -- I'm sorry, the staff from the committee illegally taking documents. I don't know the answer to that but I don't think anybody else in the public does either.

BLITZER: I have a lot more questions and I want you to stock around. We're going to get through a lot more stuff. But very quickly, when Senator Udall of Colorado, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, says, and he's a Democrat, not a Republican, that John Brennan, the CIA director, should be fired, you say?

HARLOW: I say that everyone has the right to their opinion. And Senator Udall, who's being sent back home by his constituents, has his right to it. I think the president is the one who has the vote on John Brennan's continued service. And as far as I know, the president remains happy with him. And I think, from what -- my point of view, I think John is doing a great job.

BLITZER: All right, stand by, Bill Harlow, former spokesman for the CIA. We're going to continue this conversation.

There is a heated debate here in the United States, including over this question, did the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques, or torture, whatever you want to call it, did those techniques help. Find the world's most wanted man, Osama bin Laden? Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Here in the United States, the reaction to the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on torture has been fast and furious. Let's bring back our panel. Joining us once again here in Washington, Bill Harlow, the CIA's former director of public affairs. He served at the CIA from 1997 to 2004. Also joining us, our senior national security analyst, Peter Bergen. And joining us from Telluride, Colorado, the national security analyst for CNN, Bob Baer, who also formerly served in the CIA.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, who steered the Senate investigation, pushed back on the CIA's claims that its enhanced interrogation techniques helped find Osama bin Laden. Here's what the senator told me last night.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN (D-CA), CHAIRWOMAN, SENATE INTELLIGENCE CMTE.: What helped find bin Laden was human intelligence, was signals intelligence, was information from certain people before they were interrogated with enhanced interrogation techniques. That is what we found.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: All right, let's get reaction first. Bill Harlow, what do you say to the senator who said the torture, if you will, had no role in helping the U.S. find bin Laden?

BILL HARLOW, FORMER CIA SPOKESMAN: Well, I - one, I wouldn't say torture, but I would say, read the minority report, read the Senate minority report, which explains that. Also read the CIA's rebuttal, which is online but nobody seems to be referring to. There's an op-ed in "The Washington Post" today by John McLaughlin, our former deputy, which also gets into this.

It's a very complex thing. There's not one thing that leads to a success like getting bin Laden. And she's right, there are a lot of threads that go into it, including human intelligence, including signals intelligence. But there was information that came from detainees, post-enhanced interrogation, which heightened our awareness, our understanding of the importance of this one courier --

BLITZER: Which detainee who was the recipient of this enhanced interrogation -

HARLOW: There were -- there was --

BLITZER: Provided the tip that this courier could lead the U.S. to bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan?

HARLOW: It's never that simple. It's -- there are people that we knew about, but we knew of them only as among the many people who were -- had contact with bin Laden. Other detainees would say, no, this guy brought me information directly from bin Laden, so he's more important. Other detainees would say something else. You mix it all together, you weave it together to get the picture that led you to bin Laden.

BLITZER: Peter, you've got an excellent article on cnn.com that you posted today on whether or not these enhanced interrogation techniques helped the U.S. find bin Laden. Let me read a couple of sentences from your article.

"The Senate report provides the fullest accounting so far of the exact sequence of intelligence breaks that led the CIA to determine that the courier, the Kuwaiti, was likely to be living with bin Laden in Pakistan. This reads more like a careful Agatha Christie detective story than a story about the efficacy of coercive interrogations which some have criticized as torture."

So the question to you is, did the enhanced interrogation techniques help the United States, not by itself, but contribute to the finding of bin Laden?

PETER BERGEN, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: In the CIA rebuttal, which Bill Harlow just referred to, they do talk about a detainee called Amar al Balluki (ph), who they say in the CIA rebuttal was important in identifying the courier as - and was the first lead to bin Laden. Now --

BLITZER: Was he the recipient of enhanced interrogation?

BERGEN: Yes, he was.

BLITZER: And during the intense interrogation he spilled the beans?

BERGEN: This is what the CIA rebuttal says. But the reason the Senate report, I think, is a more powerful statement in many ways. First of all, it's much more fulsome. Secondly, as a historian and as a journalist, it's full of - it's a copiously footnoted back to the original documents, which in themselves are a part of a much larger report, which is still classified, which is the 6,000-page report. But I think what the Senate is saying is, there were a variety of methods, signals intelligence, human intelligence, and also information from detainees before they were coercively interrogated, particularly somebody called Hassan Ghul (ph), who was held by the Kurdish regime in the north of Iraq, who was very explicit about bin Laden's courier.

And one final point, which I think is really interesting and hasn't been much pointed out, five of the most senior al Qaeda detainees held, who were subjected to these cohesive interrogation techniques, all provided misinformation about the courier. So, you know, I think, you know, the CIA has pushed back and, you know, I --

BLITZER: So there's a legitimate debate underway. You want to respond because I want to get Bob Baer in on this too.

HARLOW: Yes. I'd like to respond - right. This thing about misinformation, that was valuable to us, too. We learned stuff that we knew for sure that some of these senior detainees had contact with this courier. And at this point in time, they were providing enormous amounts of correct information to us. They were providing information we could verify. And when they started lying to us about the courier, that said, hey, this is really important. If they're going to be telling you most -- a lot of stuff that's really good and accurate and they go out of their way to lie about it, this highlights these (INAUDIBLE).

BLITZER: (INAUDIBLE) clues.

BERGEN: Well, but, I mean, you know, they could - they would have lied about it if they weren't coercively interrogated presumably as well. So, I mean, and I think --

BLITZER: Because only a handful of people knew about this Kuwaiti courier.

Let me bring Bob Baer into this.

What do you make, Bob, when someone like John McCain, who's got a lot of credibility when it comes to torture interrogation, he was a P.O.W. during the Vietnam War. He goes on the Senate floor right after Dianne Feinstein and he applauds what she has just done? Because he makes the point, and others make the point, that if you torture someone, you're going to -- they're going to say whatever the hell they want you to think. They're just going to want to stop being tortured and they're going to say, sure, sure, yes, yes, and the information is not reliable. What do you say to that argument?

BOB BAER, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: I would come down with McCain. I've been in and around torture. I've watched foreign governments do it from South America to the Middle East. I was involved in the investigation of the first embassy bombing in 1983 when the Lebanese tortured to death a suspect. And the production from these tortured interviews are -- is just abysmal. The Egyptians are terrible at it. In general, it does not work.

Now, there will be exceptions when it does, but right now we're talking about a lot of inside baseball. And I happen to agree with Peter that the Senate and McCain didn't come out and say this without good reason. They didn't stake their reputations on this unless they believe that the information was obtained outside of torture.

BLITZER: You want to respond to that, Bill?

HARLOW: Well, yes, I think it's, you know, that the -- the Senate minority and the CIA current leadership and former leadership didn't stake their reputations on saying what they did without good reason as well, you know? And the cartoon image of torture that might have been done in Egypt or someplace where they're twisting an arm and asking questions, twisting an arm and asking questions, that's not what this is. These people were subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques for a matter of days or weeks at most. And then for three years later, thousands and thousands of absolutely verifiable intelligence came out of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah. This was information which there is no doubt was accurate and helpful to us.

BLITZER: And I want to point out, Bob, the current director of the CIA, John Brennan, he was a career CIA official, but he was appointed, he was nominated to be the CIA director by President Obama. The CIA, yesterday, put out a statement on this very specific point that we're seeing and it says this. It says, information that CIA obtained from detainees through this enhanced interrogation, played a role in combination with other streams of intelligence in finding Osama bin Laden. So if John Brennan and the CIA say this right now, you say what?

BAER: Well, listen, I agree with Bill Harlow. We, the CIA, obviously has a position on this. They're not making things up. But what we really need to do is see the interrogation reports and compare them with arrest in - and all other documentation. And it may turn out that the CIA is right. But right now, this has become too partisan and we're not getting at the truth. And I think it would behoove the CIA to make its case, just as it's made its case that it did not go off on this program of enhanced interrogation on its own. This was ordered from the top. It was approved by the Senate and the House. And I think it's done a good case in making this not a rouge agency. And I think at this point we -- it should point out why it believes that enhanced interrogation led to the arrest or the murder of bin Laden.

BLITZER: All right, Peter, button this up for us, because you're the historian, you're the scholar. You've been - you've gone through the Senate Intelligence Committee report, the minority report, the CIA report, but you've also spent more than a decade studying all of this.

BERGEN: Well, look, I mean, hopefully a conversation to be continued because, you know, there's a 6,000 page version of this. There is --

BLITZER: Which is classified.

BERGEN: Which is classified. But, I mean, if indeed, you know, I mean the CIA would have a strong interest in putting out more information that would buttress this. After all, bin Laden's dead, you know? I mean there's a lot of stuff that you can put -- continue to put out in the public realm, so push back harder. Give us a better case for why this - the Amar al Balluki (ph) was the guy who really, you know, kind of tripped the wire that led to bin Laden.

BLITZER: It's a little nugget that I'm sure you're going to pursue. You're going to pursue, Bob Baer.

Guys, thanks very much to all of you, Bill Harlow, Bob Baer, Peter Bergen. Good conversation.

We're going to have much more on this CIA report that the Senate Intelligence Committee released yesterday.

Also, other news, negotiators reach a deal that likely will keep the federal government from shutting down. We're going to check in with our own Dana Bash up on Capitol Hill to get a closer look at some of the unusual items in this compromise deal. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)