CIA Interrogation Program Saved Lives: Head

A Senate panel has voted to release a giant report slamming CIA interrogation methods, the Washington Post reported this week. But regardless of what the Senate report says, the interrogation program saved lives, its former head writes in the Post. "Unlike the committee’s staff, I don’t have to examine the program through a rearview mirror. I was responsible for administering it, and I know that it produced critical intelligence that helped decimate al-Qaeda and save American lives," Jose Rodriguez, Jr., writes. The Senate Intelligence Committee members, meanwhile, "started with a conclusion in 2009 and have chased supportive evidence ever since."

Senators "never spoke to me or other top CIA leaders involved in the program, or let us see the report," Rodriguez writes, calling on the public to remember the "context" of the program following the 9/11 attacks and numerous other threats. What's more, he notes, the program was effective—and "intelligence work is like doing a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle without the picture on the box top and with millions of extra pieces." Finally, the program was "approved at the highest levels of the government." Ahead of the report's release, "authorities must ensure that we don’t make the job of my successors, who are trying to prevent future terrorist attacks, any harder." Click for the full piece. (More Jose Rodriguez stories.)