As Spencer Ackerman thoroughly documented here, those two memos from 2004 and 2005 that former vice-president Dick Cheney wanted the CIA to release because, he said, they would prove that a set of alternate procedures torture produced actionable intelligence that saved lives and prevented terrorist attacks, prove no such thing.
That did not stop Cheney from telling CNN that the memos do vindicate the use of harsh interrogation techniques torture — but he does it without ever saying that life-saving information was gained through the use of torture. Sound impossible? It isn’t for Dick Cheney — the master of obfuscation (emphasis in original):
I’ve noted this before, but Dick Cheney is as masterful as any Washington hand at using precise languate to obfuscate. And today the old master completely had his way with poor, hapless CNN.
Look at how CNN is now reporting Cheney’s claims of vindication today:
Cheney says documents show interrogations prevented attacks
Former Vice President Dick Cheney says documents released Monday support his view that harsh interrogation techniques used on terrorism suspects prevented attacks and yielded crucial information about al Qaeda.
Actually, no, Cheney didn’t claim that the newly released documents showed that torture “prevented attacks” at all. Here’s the Cheney statement that this story is based on:
“The documents released Monday clearly demonstrated that the individuals subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques provided the bulk of intelligence we gained about al Qaeda,” Cheney said in a written statement. “This intelligence saved lives and prevented terrorist attacks.”
Cheney is not claiming a causal relationship between torture and the intelligence gleaned from interrogations. Rather, he’s saying that the same individuals who were tortured also happened to yield the most important evidence about Al Qaeda. He’s not saying that the docs proved torture was responsible for producing that info.
There’s a reason Cheney worded his statement this carefully: The documents don’t prove torture worked, as he claimed. Don’t believe me? Go to paragraph 11 of this New York Times article, which says the same.
Feeling lazy? I’ll do the clicking and counting for you. I’ll even provide paragraphs 9 and 10 as well as 11, because they help with context and continuity (I’ve bolded the crucial lines):
In what appeared to be a response to the Justice Department’s release, the C.I.A. later on Monday released previously secret agency reports from 2004 and 2005 that detailed intelligence scoops produced by the interrogation program.
One of the reports calls the program “a crucial pillar of U.S. counterterrorism efforts” and describes how interrogations helped unravel a network headed by an Indonesian terrorist known as Hambali. The other report details information elicited from Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, chief planner of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, saying it “dramatically expanded our universe of knowledge on Al Qaeda’s plots.”
Those reports, which former Vice President Dick Cheney had sought to have released earlier this year, do not refer to any specific interrogation methods and do not assess their effectiveness.
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