of the uss cole. you didn t like what you saw. i watched the chief interrogator use a variety of physically coercive measures that i believed were not on the list of approved techniques. they included the two stress positions discussed earlier. dousing al-nashiri with cold water while using a stiff bristled brush to scrub his ass and balls and mouth and blowing cigar smoke in his face until he became nauseous. so what is it about that that you regarded i don t know if you would use the word as torture but that crossed the line and yet your own water boarding was within limits. distinguish. the main distinction is that the president approved of it. the justice department, the highest law enforcement agency in the country decided judged that it wasn t illegal and that it wasn t torture and those other things he imported that stuff from south america
then president clinton at the time in this final few months in office had this to say. if as it now appears this was an act of terrorism, it was a dispeckable and cowardly act. we will fine out who was responsible and hold them accountable. if their intention was to deter us from our mission of promoting peace and security in the middle east, they will fail. i know a number of yemenee terrorists were arrested in sued dannys case where we thought this originatedded from. we unfoes $13 million in sudanese assets and divide emt them among the family of those killed but wed deget to the bottom of the culprit misdemeanor? the bottom line cull pictures yes. took a face shot and he is no in bide bag at the bottom of the indian ocean when we took out osama bin laden bin but the guy that mutt this together was a guy named al-nashiri, currently
it was not until the cable excuse me, the tapes were burned that chairman rockefeller and kit bonn each designated staff to take a look at three cases. and that was abu zubaydah, it was k.s.m. and al nashiri. and they did and they reported back. and at that point when the intelligence committee saw what had been done, the vote was 14-1 to move ahead with a fuller investigation. and that fuller investigation has taken 5 1/2 years. we stand by it. we believe it will meet the test of time. and we believe that it says to our adversaries that we admit when we re wrong and we change the path. more importantly, wolf, as i said this morning on the floor, we had the cia inspector general
and records that the videotapes were destroyed shortly after cia attorneys raised concerns that congress might find out about the tapes. in any case, at that same december 11th committee hearing, director hayden told the committee that cia cables related to the interrogation sessions depicted in the videotapes were, and i quote: a more than adequate representation of the tapes and, therefore, be you want them if you want them, we ll give you access to them. that s at the december 2007 hearing. senator rockefeller, then chairman of the committee, designated two members of the committee staff to review the cables describing the interrogation sessions of abu sa buy da and al-nashiri.
zubaida and al nashiri. senator bond similarly directed two of his staffers to review the cables. the designated staff members completed their review and compiled a summary of the content of the cia cables by early 2009 by which time i had become chairman. the description in the cables of cia s interrogations and the treatment of detainees pressed a starkly different picture from director hayden s testimony before the committee. they described brutal around-the-clock interrogations, especially of abu zubaida in which multiple coercive techniques were used in combination and with substantial reputation. it was an ugly, visceral description. the summary also indicated that