Exclusive: Former CIA station chief & current CIA officers challenge claims torture thwarted attacks

Source: Raw Story

Former CIA station chief challenges claims torture thwarted terror attacks

By Larisa Alexandrovna

Published: June 2, 2009

Two current CIA officers agree

Milton Bearden, a former Central Intelligence Agency Pakistan station chief who served at the agency for three decades, says claims that the Bush administration’s so-called enhanced interrogation techniques saved American lives are likely false.

The retired senior CIA officer also says that the former administration’s repeated assertions that attacks were foiled through torture are hurting US credibility abroad, endangering alliances and aiding the cause of would-be terrorists.

Bearden, who formerly headed the CIA’s Soviet/East European Division and served as station chief in Pakistan, Nigeria and Sudan, was a key figure in the funding and training of the mujahedeen in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation. He retired in 1994 but says he has communicated with contacts who say they’ve heard of no evidence to support Bush officials’ claims.

If the Bush administration had proof of a plot stopped by enhanced interrogation, they would have produced it, Bearden says. “I cannot imagine that the system would not have leaked such a story,” he insists. “It would have been leaked in a New York minute.”

Read more: http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/06/02/cia-chief-questions-claims/

Kicked and recommended.:thumbsup:

once again,
and to you Uncle Joe,
peace, kp

she has done outstanding work!

peace, Joe:hi:

(the ones who don't need to wear a flag pin to prove the point). Probably even the legitimacy of *'s residency. However, Rove and/or Cheney went way, way over the line by outing Valerie Plane, destroying Brewster Jennings in the process and bad-mouthing the CIA for delivering exactly the intelligence demanded of them. I'm still waiting for the other shoe to drop, and am hoping it's a size 15.