Sen. Kit Bond tells Newsmax that the Barack Obama administration is playing politics by "cherry-picking" the information it releases about the interrogation of terrorist detainees.
The Missouri Republican, vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, also said Obama's plan to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay is "frightening."
See Video: Republican Sen. Kit Bond describes the dangerous games the Obama administration is playing with national security - Click Here Now
Sen. Bond and Republican Pete Hoekstra scheduled a press conference for Thursday to discuss Obama's plan to close Guantanamo.
Newsmax's Chief Washington Correspondent Ronald Kessler referred to a published report that the Obama administration is planning to release information about interrogations where in one case U.S. agents went beyond normal bounds. Meanwhile the Obama people have not released CIA reports that depict the successes that allegedly resulted from the interrogations, Kessler noted, and asked for Sen. Bond's reaction.
"Unfortunately they're cherry-picking what they want to release," Bond declared.
"We agreed on a bipartisan basis to look into the application of the interrogation techniques . . . and whether they were done properly, and then what kind of information came from them. Everybody, I thought, had agreed that we ought to do this in the Intelligence Committee.
"Cherry-picking things that may make the previous administration or the CIA look bad just doesn't make any sense."
When an admiral "sent out a letter to the intelligence community saying, 'You've done a great job, we got very valuable information,' the White House edited out the very valuable information," said Bond. "So the far left wing can now go out and say, 'Oh well, they did all these horrible things for no good reason.'
"It's really distressing to see politics being played like this."
Kessler observed that during the George W. Bush presidency there were accusations that people in his administration were politicizing intelligence, and that Vice President Dick Cheney was pressuring people.
"We looked into that," Bond said.
"All of these claims about pressure on intelligence analysts were found to be totally without basis. All the accusations that they misused or didn't use the intelligence they had were totally without merit.
"What we found [in a report issued in 2004] was that the intelligence itself was bad. One of the reasons was that the intelligence community was in a risk-averse mode. And if there's anything that they're doing now, with the Obama administration and their allies attacking the [intelligence community] you can be sure they're going to go back into that risk-averse mode and we're going to be a lot less safe."
Kessler asked for Bond's view on President Obama's stated intention of closing the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay even though there are no plans for holding them elsewhere.
"That's something that should have people frightened all over," Bond said. "These are not white-collar criminals. These are trained terrorists who've sworn to kill Americans, and to bring them back to the United States, even if they are in some kind of facility, is frightening.
"The Senate voted 94 to 3 not to allow them to come back, so the Obama administration for political gain and symbolism went ahead and announced we're closing Guantanamo Bay. Where's the plan? That's what we call ready, fire, aim. I'd prefer that they'd aim before they fire, and they may not want to fire if they aim."
Because of press leaks, intelligence capabilities worth hundreds of millions of dollars have been compromised and CIA agents have been killed, Kessler pointed out
"Leaks have been a very serious problem," Bond acknowledged.
"Right now leaking intelligence seems to be a riskless effort that can bring you all kinds of glory. Unless we see some of those leakers in orange jumpsuits doing calisthenics behind bars, we're not going to stop this.
"It's been a huge problem. And it's leakers in the executive branch primarily."
Kessler asked: "How do you feel personally about our safety? Are you more frightened now that we are going to have a successful attack because of the new policies?"
"I can't predict an attack but I do believe we've lost some of our best intelligence capabilities," Bond responded.
"There are still groups out there. It's scary every day to get the reports of the kind of people and organizations who want to come after us, and we are losing our ability to get information on them.
"So I really think we're going in the wrong direction."
Bond also said "it's clear" that despite her denial, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was briefed on the ongoing use of waterboarding — and asserted that "MoveOn.org, Code Pink, the far left-wing groups, are certainly cheering" disclosures about interrogation techniques, adding: "They wanted to destroy our forces."
See Video: Republican Sen. Kit Bond describes the dangerous games the Obama administration is playing with national security - Click Here Now
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