While a "vigorous discussion" on interrogation techniques would have been beneficial with intelligence officials and legislators, making Tuesday's Senate Intelligence Committee report public was a "terrible idea" that will do "huge damage to our ability to work with foreign intelligence," according to former CIA director James Woolsey.
Joined by former CIA case officer Fred Rustmann, Woolsey appeared Wednesday on
Newsmax TV's "America's Forum."
"There are values on both sides avoiding torturing on the one hand, saving the republic from attack by terrorists on the other," Woolsey said. "This is a major and important question.
"What is a terrible idea was to release this publicly, because this will do huge damage to our ability to work with foreign intelligence services," and will certainly "help produce attacks on Americans abroad."
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There is no "coherent reason" for Sen. Dianne Feinstein and other Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee to have released the report, Woolsey said, which detailed enhanced
interrogation techniques used on detained terror suspects following 9/11, such as waterboarding, rectal feeding, forced nudity, and extended periods of confinement in a coffin-sized box.
Woolsey characterized it "as bad a decision about intelligence as has been made in this country for the last half century."
It's "incomprehensible," he added, that those conducting the investigation would not have interviewed former CIA directors and other senior intelligence officers.
Americans were highly fearful in the months following the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks when the alleged torture occurred, Woolsey said.
"Three thousand Americans-plus had died, and we were worried about another attack," he said. "In those circumstances, it is understandable that people stretched the situation in terms of some of the tactics and techniques they used.
"But most all of the things that one would not want to have done, someone chained to the walls, for example, happened within the first few months of [9/11] in getting organized.
"To go back and publicly go into all of this — it's fine to have a dispute within the intelligence community, but to do it publicly is going to really seriously damage the country and our ability to gather intelligence," Woolsey added.
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Rustmann, the former CIA case officer, said he was "aghast" at how the CIA has been thrown under the bus.
"The CIA is the tip of the spear," he said. "We're out there, we're fighting right alongside of our military. Our military is beloved; everybody talks about how great the military is, and the CIA, who is out there risking its lives every day, gets treated this way.
"This is just a political broadside in the waning days of the Democratic-controlled Senate. That's all it is and it's going to hurt."
Rustmann called it a "nasty, nasty attack, and it's wrong. It's wrong, and there's nothing good to be said for this. There's no reason to do this to [the CIA]."
Rustmann is the author of
"The Case Officer," and founder of the CTC International Group, a "private intelligence organization for corporate America," according to its website.
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