FOX "Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace" - Transcript: CIA Detention and Interrogation Program
Interview
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WALLACE: OK, let me pick up on that for you, Senator Whitehouse, because the 2002 Justice Department memo that was the legal basis for this enhanced interrogation says this, let's put it up on the screen. Because specific intent is an element of the offense, the absence of specific intent negates the charge of torture.
Here's what former Vice President Cheney told Bret Baier about waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
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CHENEY: We know he's the architect, and what are we supposed to do, kiss him on both cheeks and say, please, please, tell us what you know? Of course not.
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WALLACE: Senator Whitehouse, how do you answer Vice President Cheney?
WHITEHOUSE: We decided waterboarding was torture back when we court-martialed American soldiers for waterboarding Philippine insurgents in the Philippine revolution. We decided waterboarding was torture when we prosecuted Japanese soldiers as war criminals for waterboarding Americans during World War II, and we decided waterboarding was torture when the American court system described waterboarding as torture when Ronald Reagan and his Department of Justice prosecuted a Texas sheriff and several of his associates for waterboarding detainees --
WALLACE: What about the Justice Department memo which says the specific intent to inflict severe pain is a key element for it becoming -- being seen as torture?
WHITEHOUSE: I think if you are involved in the kind of activity that was described in this report, it would be hard not to, for a jury, not to conclude that you had that specific intent if you were applying those techniques and seeing what the consequences and effects were on those individuals.
WALLACE: Karl?
WHITEHOUSE: Every torturer wants information or propaganda. So, the fact there's an ulterior motive I don't think takes away specific intent. That was a very flawed report.
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WALLACE: Senator Whitehouse, the three CIA directors who oversaw this program say it was central to foiling terror plots and helping to capture al Qaeda leaders.
WHITEHOUSE: The problem with that is there is a trick in the way that they say it. They describe the interrogation program, but they don't distinguish between the enhanced interrogation techniques and the rest of the program. If you look at the information we had on the courier that took us to Osama bin Laden, we had four sources on that, and those four sources all provided all the information that the CIA needed to track this guy before they were exposed to enhanced information techniques or never having been exposed to those techniques.
WALLACE: Karl?
WHITEHOUSE: So, I think --
ROVE: Simply not true. Al-Kuwaiti, the courier, was identified as a low level al Qaeda operative. It was only after enhanced interrogation techniques were used on al-Baluchi, he's the first guy to say he's Osama bin Laden's courier. That happened only after enhanced interrogation techniques.
Remember, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed at this point, they said, no, no, don't worry, he left al Qaeda in 2002. Then, Ghul after EIT confirms that he is lying and that al-Kuwaiti is actually the courier who is delivering messages to and from Osama bin Laden.
This is what -- you talk to Mike Hayden. Mike Hayden is the CIA director who took the extraordinary step of authorizing a huge commitment of resources by the CIA on -- in essence the hunch of these interrogators that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was not telling the truth and that al-Kuwaiti was more important than the current information had led them to believe.
WALLACE: Senator Whitehouse?
WHITEHOUSE: The Senate report debunks that theory with live CIA traffic at the time. Hassan Ghul, before he was submitted to the EITs, was described by the CIA interrogators as singing like a tweety bird, and he gave up the connection to al-Kuwaiti, as did all four of the sources.
They did not --
WALLACE: Let me just say, there is a lot of information that indicates that Abu Zubaydah, the first person who was caught helped lead him directly to the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, which helped lead to the capture of --
WHITEHOUSE: Let me jump in on that, because --
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WALLACE: I mean, there are a lot of --
WHITEHOUSE: Got it.
WALLACE: -- people who were interrogated that seemed to lead to the capture of other people.
WHITEHOUSE: The Zubaydah case proves my point. This was the case that went all the way to the Whitehouse. The president of the United States stood up and said, the reason we know these techniques work is because of al Zubaydah.
So, we went and look at that case. I had a hearing in the Senate with the FBI agent who actually conducted that initial interview. He gave up Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and he gave up Jose Padilla, the shoe bomber.
Then, the CIA --
WALLACE: Not the shoe bomber, the dirty bomber.
WHITEHOUSE: The dirty bomber.
Then, the CIA interrogators got their hands on it. But actually went, he gave up KSM, then the torture contractors got him, then he was given back to the legitimate interrogators, then he took about Jose Padilla --
WALLACE: All right. Quickly, Karl, counterpoint to that.
ROVE: That is not what three directors in the CIA who were there at the time and the three deputy directors in the CIA say. They say Abu Zubaydah resisted -- cooperated initially and did identify Khalid Sheikh Mohammed but did not give him information to track him down. It was only after he broke on EIT, and after Ramzi bin al-Shibh was broken at using they were broken that they gave enough information to track Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to his hideout in Pakistan.
WHITEHOUSE: The problem, Karl, is that's wrong, and that's why --
ROVE: That's not according to the three directors of the CIA who were at the time.
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WHITEHOUSE: The information that was provided by the CIA at the time, that's why we went underneath what the directors were saying and saw what the actual traffic was from these black sites at the time, that's why we actually talked to the investigators.
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WALLACE: You never interviewed the directors in the report?
WHITEHOUSE: They were in front of the committee all the time, all the time.
WALLACE: They were -- none of them were interviewed for this report, that's what they say.
Finally, because this gets directly to that question. The third question we want to discuss, did the CIA mislead the White House and Congress? The Senate report says, but again, here's Vice President Cheney.
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CHENEY: The motion that the committee is trying to pedal that the agency was operating on a rogue basis and we weren't being told or the president wasn't being told is a flat out lie.
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WALLACE: Senator Whitehouse, the records show the CIA briefed overall 68 members of Congress on a total of more than three dozen times. Are you really saying that the leaders who were briefed didn't know about the enhanced interrogation techniques?
WHITEHOUSE: We came to learn very gradually about it. First, a few people were told, and they were told they couldn't tell anybody. Then, after it broke in the press or the day it broke before the press, the intelligence committees were briefed. Then we spent a lot of time looking into it and were told, this is a very minor thing. You know, you just touch them with the waterboard and they confess. We did not really understand this program until a considerable period of time had gone by.
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WALLACE: We're beginning to run out of time.
WHITEHOUSE: We were legislating to end it.
WALLACE: Karl, two aspects, congressional briefing but also the report says that President Bush didn't know about these enhanced interrogation techniques until 2006. You were there. Is that true?
ROVE: No, in fact, he says in his book, describes how he was briefed and intimately involved in the decision. He made the decision. He was presented I believe 12 techniques. He authorized the use of ten of them, including waterboarding.
This is in a footnote and it's illustrative of the problem with this report.
WALLACE: The allegation that he didn't know.
ROVE: Yes. They simply didn't talk to the people. They talked to no one. They simply read documents.
And it's like the queen of hearts. You know, verdict first -- you know, judgment first, verdict second. They came to a predetermined conclusion before they ever began.
WALLACE: What about senators that were briefed?
ROVE: Senator Whitehouse was a member of the committee in 2007. Between 2006 -- excuse me, 2002 and 2008, the Senate committee was -- members of the Senate were briefed 35 times and members of the House briefed 30 times.
Now, he's right. At the beginning, it wasn't all the members of the committee. It was the leadership of the committee, the so-called gang of eight. They were briefed. These people are on the record as having at the time encouraged the CIA to take every step possible. And in private, many of those people, some of those people were saying why aren't you doing these things on more of these detainees?
Some of the Democrats who are today depicting themselves as --
WALLACE: One person who has been quoted as -- we got about 30 seconds left. But one person who has been quoted was the chairman then of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Jay Rockefeller, who supposedly said, are you doing everything you can?
WHITEHOUSE: He wrote down notes to try to protect the record and was one of the supporters as soon as we had the legislative capacity to move because the secret was now out enough, we could actually act as a committee to pursue an end to these. The committee, it's simply wrong and not fair to say that the committee bought off on this until the last minute. From the incident we knew it was going on, people were starting to inquire further and to draft legislation to end this torture.
WALLACE: Senator, just briefly, one last question. Why not then declassify and make available the notes, the contemporaneous notes of all the members of Congress who were briefed so we see how they felt and whether or not they raised objections? Would you support that?
WHITEHOUSE: I would certainly have no objection to that. But if we're going do that, we should also declassify the thousand of pages from the White House that are held back and Mr. Rove and the president and the vice president have not offered up all of those either.
WALLACE: Mr. Rove?
ROVE: My sense is those will be declassified in the normal rules promulgated by the National Archive and Records Administration.
But I think it's a good point. There are people who were in those rooms who know what the people said and the Senate committee didn't bother to talk to them. Those people, some of them -- one is going to be on your program today.
WALLACE: We're going to get to him, Jose Rodriguez.
Senator Whitehouse, Karl, thank you both so much. Thanks for coming in today.
WHITEHOUSE: Good to be with you, Chris.
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