Luke Skywalker
Super Moderator
{vb:raw ozzmodz_postquote}:
Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.(Photo: LM Otero, AP)
Former president George W. Bush and top aides remained low-key Tuesday in the wake of the Senate report on CIA interrogation techniques, issuing few statements on the report's claims that the agency exceeded its authority and lied about the results.
Bush's office referred reporters to statements the former president made to CNN in which he defended the agency and its leaders.
"We're fortunate to have men and women who work hard at the CIA serving on our behalf," Bush said in the interview broadcast Sunday. "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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Bush described the CIA officials he worked with as "good people, really good people, and we're lucky as a nation to have them."
Former vice president Dick Cheney, a supporter of the CIA interrogation program, also did not make any public comments Tuesday. In a Monday interview with The New York Times, Cheney denounced the very idea of the Senate report.
"What I keep hearing out there is they portray this as a rogue operation and the agency was way out of bounds and then they lied about it," Cheney told the Times. "I think that's all a bunch of hooey. The program was authorized. The agency did not want to proceed without authorization, and it was also reviewed legally by the Justice Department before they undertook the program."
George Tenet, the CIA director during the early years of the Bush administration, denounced the Senate report as "a selective and faulty interpretation" of certain documents in a statement that was released Tuesday.
Then-president George W. Bush and then-CIA director George J. Tenet at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., on Sept. 26, 2001.(Photo: Tim Dillon, USA TODAY)
"The committee leadership say the report will ensure this never happens again," Tenet said. "My hope is that a report like this — biased, inaccurate, and destructive — will never happen again."
President Obama and members of the current administration also had little to say about their predecessors' actions.
In his written statement, Obama said that "the previous administration faced agonizing choices about how to pursue al-Qaeda and prevent additional terrorist attacks" in the wake of 9/11.
Obama added: "As I have said before, our nation did many things right in those difficult years. At the same time, some of the actions that were taken were contrary to our values."
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The dispute between some Obama and Bush officials over "enhanced interrogation techniques" revolves around the legality of the programs and whether they yielded valuable intelligence as the U.S. raced to block attacks.
Bush, Cheney and other Bush administration officials say the programs yielded actionable intelligence that helped uncover possible terrorist plots.
Congressional Democrats and Obama officials said the report shows that tactics such as waterboarding yielded nothing that could not have been obtained by other means.
In his memoir Decision Points, Bush discussed why he approved the interrogation program, including the intensely disputed technique known as waterboarding.
"I knew that an interrogation program this sensitive and controversial would one day become public," Bush wrote. "When it did, we would open ourselves up to criticism that America had compromised our moral values."
Bush added that "the choice between security and values was real. Had I not authorized waterboarding on senior al-Qaeda leaders, I would have had to accept a greater risk that the country would be attacked. In the wake of 9/11, that was a risk I was unwilling to take."
Senate Intelligence Committee report
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