MOSCOW, August 3 (RIA Novosti) – The CIA’s harsh interrogation and torture techniques banned after President Barack Obama took office in 2009 helped foil a number of terrorist plots and capture terrorists, including Osama bin Laden, a senior Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee said Sunday.
“The information gleaned from these interrogations was in fact used to interrupt and disrupt terrorist plots, including some information that took down [Osama] bin Laden,” Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss said on CBS's "Face the Nation”.
The Republican spoke in favor of such a practice as waterboarding claiming it is not torture under the Geneva Conventions.
“Waterboarding is one of the specific issues that was investigated by the Department of Justice from the standpoint of does it comply with the Geneva Convention and they made a determination that it is authorized, that it is not torture,” he said.
The Senate Intelligence Committee is expected in the next days to declassify a report that labels the CIA’s detention, rendition, and interrogation program in the years following the 9/11 as “torture by a common definition.”
Earlier this week, President Obama said that under the Bush’s rule the CIA had in fact tortured some people.
"We did some things that were contrary to our values," Obama stressed.
A full probe into the interrogation practices was commissioned by the Intelligence Committee back in 2009. The investigation resulting in a roughly 6,300-page report was finalized and authorized in December 2012 despite disagreements between Republicans and Democrats within the committee.
“I thought it was a mistake then, I still think it’s a mistake,” stressed Chambliss who was the only one to vote against approving the investigation.
