Officials: CIA gave waterboarders $5M legal shield

[Valin]

AP:

12/17/10

WASHINGTON (AP) — The CIA agreed to cover at least $5 million in legal fees for two contractors who were the architects of the agency's interrogation program and personally conducted dozens of waterboarding sessions on terror detainees, former U.S. officials said.

The secret agreement means taxpayers are paying to defend the men in a federal investigation over an interrogation tactic the U.S. now says is torture. The deal is even more generous than the protections the agency typically provides its own officers, giving the two men access to more money to finance their defense.

It has long been known that psychologists Jim Mitchell and Bruce Jessen created the CIA's interrogation program. But former U.S. intelligence officials said Mitchell and Jessen also repeatedly subjected terror suspects inside CIA-run secret prisons to waterboarding, a simulated drowning tactic.

(Snip)

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Sure to make a certain people blow their lids! And that's a good thing.

[nickydog]

Good. I'm glad to see this.

[Valin]

Good. I'm glad to see this.

 

 

 

Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack

 

From the Inside Flap

Waterboarding Al Qaeda Leaders Prevented Terrorist Attacks and Saved Thousands of Lives…

 

Now Barack Obama Wants to Prosecute The Men and Women Who Kept Us Safe

 

Marc Thiessen knows more than almost anyone outside the CIA about what went on at CIA “black sites” and at the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. As chief speechwriter for President Bush, he was given unprecedented access to some of the most sensitive intelligence our government possessed on al Qaeda terrorists. He has since spent countless hours interviewing the men and women involved in the interrogations at every level—from Vice President Dick Cheney to the interrogators themselves. What he reveals is a shocking, thoroughly documented account of just how close we came to suffering follow-on 9/11 attacks, how so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” (including waterboarding) were directly responsible for unearthing the actionable intelligence that foiled them, and the extraordinary measures the Bush administration took to stay well within the bounds of what was not only legally but morally right.

 

Courting Disaster shows how America’s dedicated intelligence professionals went head-to-head with the world’s most dangerous terrorists, and won—only to have Barack Obama expose America’s secrets to the enemy, endorse smears against our intelligence officers, and put them at risk of prosecution for defending our country. In Courting Disaster, Thiessen reveals:

 

Why “enhanced interrogation techniques” did not qualify as torture by any objective standard

Specific terrorist plots foiled by the CIA, based on information that came from “enhanced interrogation”—ranging from attacks against Los Angeles and London to the breaking up of an al Qaeda cell that was developing anthrax for terrorist attacks inside the United States

New evidence that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi knew about and approved CIA waterboarding

The real stories of abuse at Guantanamo—not of the detainees by the guards, but of the guards by the detainees, and how released detainees have returned to the jihad.......

 

Marc Thiessen.com