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.
Malaysia yesterday installed a motorcycle-riding billionaire sultan as its new king in lavish ceremonies for a post seen as a ballast in times of political crises. The coronation ceremony for Malaysia’s King Sultan Ibrahim, 65, at the National Palace in Kuala Lumpur followed his oath-taking in January as the country’s 17th monarch. Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy, with a unique arrangement that sees the throne change hands every five years between the rulers of nine Malaysian states headed by centuries-old Islamic royalty. While chiefly ceremonial, the position of king has in the past few years played an increasingly important role. Royal intervention was
X-37B COMPARISON: China’s spaceplane is most likely testing technology, much like US’ vehicle, said Victoria Samson, an official at the Secure World Foundation China’s shadowy, uncrewed reusable spacecraft, which launches atop a rocket booster and lands at a secretive military airfield, is most likely testing technology, but could also be used for manipulating or retrieving satellites, experts said. The spacecraft, on its third mission, was last month observed releasing an object, moving several kilometers away and then maneuvering back to within a few hundred meters of it. “It’s obvious that it has a military application, including, for example, closely inspecting objects of the enemy or disabling them, but it also has non-military applications,” said Marco Langbroek, a lecturer in optical space situational awareness at Delft
The Philippine Air Force must ramp up pilot training if it is to buy 20 or more multirole fighter jets as it modernizes and expands joint operations with its navy, a commander said yesterday. A day earlier US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that the US “will do what is necessary” to see that the Philippines is able to resupply a ship on the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) that Manila uses to reinforce its claims to the atoll. Sullivan said the US would prefer that the Philippines conducts the resupplies of the small crew on the warship Sierra Madre,
AIRLINES RECOVERING: Two-thirds of the flights canceled on Saturday due to the faulty CrowdStrike update that hit 8.5 million devices worldwide occurred in the US As the world continues to recover from massive business and travel disruptions caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, malicious actors are trying to exploit the situation for their own gain. Government cybersecurity agencies across the globe and CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz are warning businesses and individuals around the world about new phishing schemes that involve malicious actors posing as CrowdStrike employees or other tech specialists offering to assist those recovering from the outage. “We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this,” Kurtz said in a statement. “I encourage everyone to remain vigilant