Former CIA director George Tenet on Sunday heatedly denied allegations that US interrogators have used torture to extract information from prisoners in the so-called US "war on terror."
"The image that's been portrayed is, we sat around the campfire and said, `Oh, boy, now we go get to torture people.' Well, we don't torture people. Let me say that again to you. We don't torture people. Okay?" Tenet told the CBS news show 60 Minutes.
"Come on, George," replied interviewer Scott Pelley, who questioned Tenet repeatedly during a tense exchange about accusations of torture, many from terror suspects held at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
"We don't torture people," Tenet answered.
"Waterboarding?" Pelley asked, referring to a process whereby water is continually poured over a detainee's face and mouth, causing a sharp gag reflex.
"We do not -- I don't talk about techniques," Tenet replied.
"It's torture," Pelley said.
"And we don't torture people," Tenet insisted. "I want you to listen to me. The context is it's post-9/11. I've got reports of nuclear weapons in New York City, apartment buildings that are gonna be blown up, planes that are gonna fly into airports all over again."
"Plot lines that I don't know -- I don't know what's going on inside the United States. And I'm struggling to find out where the next disaster is going to occur," Tenet added. "Everybody forgets one central context of what we lived through. The palpable fear that we felt on the basis of the fact that there was so much we did not know."
Tenet, who led the Central Intelligence Agency in the runup to and after the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, released a book yesterday, At the Center of the Storm, in which he says here was no real debate in the White House about the imminent threat posed by former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's regime.
In it, Tenet alleges, without using her name, that then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice did not submit ideas from then-defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney to the same level of scrutiny as she did the CIA and State Department.
Tenet resigned from office in July 2004 under a cloud of controversy about a series of US intelligence setbacks.
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