Hayden said the legality of waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques is an "uninteresting question to the CIA" right now because the agency has not engaged in the practices since March 2003. "We don't do that. We haven't done in it since March 2003. We have no intent to do it," said Hayden. He added that given the new legal climate since the passage of the Military Commission Act and the Detainee Treatment Act, "I wouldn't know what kind of answer I'd get from the Justice Department, were I to ask. But we haven't asked."
Hayden was not CIA Director at the time that the enhanced techniques were legally authorized for use at secret CIA prisons, but he offered a strong defense nonetheless. "I am convinced that the program got the maximum amount of information. Particularly out of that first generation of detainees."
Referring to 9-11plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and al Qaeda financier Abu Zubaydah, Hayden said he couldn't conceive of another way for them to have provided useful intelligence, "given their character and given their commitment to what it is they do."
The CIA has acknowledged that waterboarding was used on three "high-value" detainees including Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, the plotter of the 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Yemen.
Hayden said the agency did not undertake the controversial program of rendition and interrogations out of "enthusiasm, it did it out of duty and it did it with the best legal advice it had."
Asked if he was concerned that Holder's characterization of the techniques as torture might lead to investigations of the agency's past activities, Hayden said he was "heartened' by President-elect Barack Obama's comments to George Stephanopoulos this weekend that he was "looking forward." Hayden said that approach was appropriate: "It's what this agency has done in the past. What it's doing now. And I'm sure what it will be doing in the future will be based on the very best legal counsel it has at that time."
Hayden was dismissive of congressional efforts to impose the Army's field manual on the agency's interrogation efforts, labeling it a "real shot in the dark" that the manual "would suit the needs of the Republic in all circumstances," particularly when it comes to interrogating al Qaeda leaders.
