Ex-CIA chief: ‘I would use waterboarding again if it meant saving lives of Americans and allies’
James Woolsey said waterboarding is acceptable for extracting information
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Your support makes all the difference.A former CIA chief has admitted that he would use the method of waterboarding again, if it meant saving "thousands of American lives", days after the torture report was revealed.
Robert James Woolsey, former director of the US intelligence agency, justified the use of waterboarding on suspected terrorists as he believes it is "not as permanently damaging as other forms of torture" after a preliminary report was released detailing the violent acts of interrogation used by the organisation.
During an interview with BBC Radio 4 Today, he added: "Would I waterboard again Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of the 9/11 killings and beheader of over 40 people?
"Would I waterboard him if I could have a good chance of saving thousands of Americans or, for that matter, other allied individuals? Yes."
The man he refers to, also known as KSM in official reports, is still being held in Guantanamo Bay where he claimed during torture that he was involved in terror plots over the last 20 years, however the interrogation methods used - including 183 acts of waterboarding by US agents - have put his confession under doubt.
Woolsey, head of the agency from 1993 to 1995, added: "The need to get information about the attackers was felt very keenly in this country and, I think, in other parts of the world.
"It is been found twice now by our justice department that these techniques did not involve torture under American law. What is screwy about this is the extraordinary one-sidedness and lack of objectivity by the majority of Democrats on the committee and the fact that it is being conducted in public."
He claimed that waterboarding is not as dangerous as "pulling out fingernails" as agents and journalists underwent the procedure for training and experience, however BBC host Justin Webb stated that the US hanged Japanese operatives - during and after the Second World War - who waterboarded Americans.
The 500-page report revealed two days ago detailed acts of torture used by CIA agents post 9/11 and extreme suffering, which are described by Democrats as "beyond legal limits".
At least 26 out of 119 detainees in secret torture prisons worldwide were found to not "pose a continuing threat of violence or death to US persons or interests" nor having planned terrorist activities.
As well as waterboarding, they were subject to weeks of sleep deprivation, being slammed against walls, confinement to small boxes, prolonged isolation, death threats and at least five were put through forced rectal feeding or rectal rehydration.
The body of Gul Rahman was found shackled to the cement floor of a cell in a secret prison in Afghanistan after he had frozen to death in 2002.
The report also shows that the acts of torture were "ineffective" in producing intelligence.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Intelligence Committee, had said: "At no time did the CIA coercive interrogation techniques lead to the collection of intelligence on an imminent threat that many believe was the justification for the use of these techniques.
"The committee never found an example of this hypothetical 'ticking time-bomb' scenario."
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