There was "actionable intelligence" gained from the CIA's enhanced interrogation procedures used on suspected terrorists after 9/11, talk show host Joe Scarborough said Thursday.
"When it comes to whether the program is effective or not, it really is. For professionals, it is beyond debate. It just is, that it worked. They got actionable intelligence," the former Florida Republican congressman said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Thursday. "People said they didn't get actionable intelligence, they're either fools or they're ideologues."
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Scarborough said Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, considered the architect of the 9/11 attacks, "spilled his guts and continued to talk" when interrogated by intelligence officials about the 2001 terror attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans.
The Senate Intelligence Committee released a report prepared by Democrats and their staffs on Tuesday that detailed interrogation procedures that have been roundly criticized for bordering on torture. Scarborough said Democrats weren't "telling the truth to the American people about their role in this."
"If they would just come out and say, as I can say as somebody who was supportive of the program, 'Hey, OK. Look. There's some excesses in there. And, we're going to get attacked again. And, when we're attacked again, these are the things we're going to have to avoid, and we'd better be ready next time. If they would just say that," he said.
Scarborough said the Senate report should have interviewed those involved if they were going to "blast a report all over the world that's going to hurt America's reputation."
"They refused to interview people that disagreed with their conclusions, including the CIA directors that ran the program, including the interrogators," he said. "I think they would have had a lot more credibility if they had actually tried to get both sides."
Scarborough suggested similar reaction could be expected in years to come if reports about the effects of President Barack Obama's drone program were released.
"Ten years from now, we're going to see pictures flooding in of little five-year-old girls with arms blown off, and grandmothers blown to a thousand pieces. And, we're going to see the 'collateral damage' from this drone war that we have. And, do you want Barack Obama a decade from now being held to the same standard? The answer, of course, is no," he said.
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