Former Vice President Dick Cheney insisted in a new interview that the enhanced interrogation techniques he supports are not torture and must remain in place, and said they are much more effective than asking terrorist suspects politely for information that could save lives.
In a Fox News interview that aired Sunday, Cheney said waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed several times is what gave the U.S. intelligence to prevent more devastating attacks after 9/11, and to eventually locate and kill Osama bin Laden.
“If you know Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is the mastermind behind all of this, if you know he is No. 2 to bin Laden in terms of the attack, if you know he’s probably the guy who knows more than anybody else except bin Laden what’s next, what’s the next target, how many people are they gonna kill and how are they gonna do it, and then you tell me that only method we have is, ‘please, please, pretty please, tell us what you know,” I don’t buy that,” Cheney said.
Cheney said the techniques used by the U.S. that some call torture are not torture at all, and said clear guidelines were developed to ensure the U.S. did not go that far.
“I’m not one of those people who calls it torture, an awful lot of people do,” he said.
“It was set up in a way that what we did was in fact consistent with our fundamental statutes and agreements that were in place,” Cheney added. “And it worked.”
He said waterboarding was only used on three people, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Cheney also noted that a classified report called KSM a “pre-eminent source” of information on al Qaeda.
“He’s the guy who got waterboarded more than anybody else,” Cheney said. “I think what we did helped ultimately produce the intel we needed to be able to get Bin Laden.”
Cheney also said he would push to keep these techniques available to U.S. interrogators in the future.
“If it were my call, I would not discontinue those programs. I’d have them active and ready to go,” he said. “And I’d go back and study them and learn.”
