head to the facebook page join in on the conversation at #keep talking. the cia director firing back against a highly critical senate report on interrogation methods. john brennan defending the agency and taking on democrats. here s fox news chief intelligence correspondent katherine herridge. it would plunge us into a seemingly never ending more against a globally dispersed collection of terrorists with a murderous agenda. john brennan had a senate intelligence committee report that the enhanced interrogation program also known as eit s did not provide substantive leads in the decade long hunt for the al qaeda leader and pakistan. it was information obtained subsequent to the application of bit s from the detainees that was useful in the bin laden operation. brennan offered a more nuance assessment of the program in connection of the waterboarding
on the committee has gone back and said it doesn t look like a lot of stuff was got by the bad cop and other people say, no, we think the bad cop was necessary to get them to talk to the good cop. that s the explanation as clear as i understand it as a u.s. citizen. and again, this is the architect of the program, enhanced interrogation. private citizen. doesn t work for the government. chris frates sat down with james mitchell. i want to go back to the qualifications. he and his partner have degrees in psychology and beyond that, what did they know about interrogations of a high level terrorists? if you believe the senate intelligence report, they didn t know a whole heck of a lot. that report says that they didn t have actual training interrogating detainees or terrorists of any kind. they didn t have any expertise about al qaeda.
operatives cal leighed sheikh mohammed and the information provided. the cause and effect relationship between the use of eit s and useful information subsequently provided by the detainee is in my view unknowable. the report had a fundamental flaw because they were never questioned. you lose the opportunity to really understand what was taking place at the time. the live news conference here at cia headquarters is undprentsed and reflects the impact of the senate reports on the agency and its mission. this is a feature i think of our past and one that we have to come to terms with and deal with. this agency is determined to move forward. while not offering specifics brennan said the revelations were damaging and reinforced the views among the american allies that we cannot be trusted. there are things that we do with partner services under our
to get it with a clean funding bill. thanks so much donna edwards and luke russert. coming up, guess who is defiant inzkw;o the face of the torture report? dick cheney. the man who once said we d have to work through the dark side. he s unapologetic about what the cia did. he said he d do it all over again in a minute. big surprise. that s ahead, this is hardball, the place for politics. you don t need to think about the energy
attorney, we briefed the national security adviser and we didn t brief the president. and i guess one of my questions would be, did they not brief the president so the president could say he hadn t been briefed? i do think it s interesting that you had briefed those people at a time, as we talked b-such heightened awareness about the potential for another attack and yet not brief the president on that. that seems like an interesting facet that we should drill down on. i think condi actually said or somebody said there s no reason to brief the president. i think that just protects. they were just trying to protect the president. the most fascinating subplot of the torture report was the role that condi played in deciding what the president got briefed on and what he didn t get briefed on but that she was the pivot point, that she was the conduit which course the national security adviser