CNN’s Anderson Cooper is denying that he ever intended to compare the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation methods” of captured al Qaeda terrorists to past regimes that killed millions of their own people.
“I did not say that the CIA actions against terrorists were in any way equivalent to horrors of the Nazis, as some now imply I said,” Cooper tweeted Thursday. “I did say that some techniques used by CIA were ones used by Khmer Rouge and others. When [Khmer Rouge] water-boarded, it was considered torture.”
He followed up in another tweet: “To clear up any confusion, I obviously do not think what U.S. did was equivalent to horrors of genocidal regimes.”
Cooper’s tweets are the exact opposite of what he said Tuesday on CNN during a discussion on a new report by the majority staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The report said the CIA engaged in excessive interrogation methods against suspected terrorists in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which killed more than 3,000 people in New York, Pennsylvania and the Pentagon.
“When you read this, if you envision Nazis doing this, and I even hate to say this, if you envision the Khmer Rouge doing this, it all — you can imagine that,” Cooper had said. The Washington Examiner requested comment from CNN at the time but did not receive a response.
The Nazis murdered an estimated six million Jews from across Europe during the Holocaust prior to and during World War II. The Khmer Rouge, the fanatical communist regime that reigned supreme in Cambodia from 1975-1979, is believed to have murdered two million people in the infamous “Killing Fields.”
