Jose Rodriguez, former head of the CIA Counterterrorism Center and National Clandestine Service said Sunday that Rep. Nancy Pelosi and other members of the Intelligence Committees of both houses were aware of all the enhanced interrogation techniques his agency was conducting on terrorism suspects.
Rodriguez disputed charges in the recently released Senate Intelligence Committee report that he withheld information on any of the techniques from elected officials in Congress or the White House.
Rodriguez told Fox News he clearly remembers briefing Pelosi in September 2002 about the techniques used on Abu Zubaydah. He said he briefed then-House Intelligence Committee Chairman Porter Goss and Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller.
"All of these people knew exactly what we were doing," Rodriguez said.
Despite her recent denials, Pelosi knew about all the techniques, he said. "She never objected to the techniques at all."
Rockefeller, a Democrat, actually told him to go after more suspects with more techniques, Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez was the person in charge of implementing the program, and it was he who ordered 92 videos of the interrogations to be destroyed.
"There is a full written record of what's on those tapes," Rodriguez said.
He destroyed them to protect the agents whose faces can be seen on them in case they were ever leaked, he said. Also, he said he feared that if they were ever leaked, the clandestine program would be in jeopardy because members of the media would equate the "legal activity" shown on them with the Abu Ghraib case that Rodriguez said was conducted by "psychopaths."
"The report throws the CIA under the bus," he said. "I am just shocked that the United States of America would betray its liaison counterparts who actually stepped up to the plate to help us after 9/11."
The CIA may be more timid in the future if agents felt the authority given to them by the president won't survive past the next election.
"This is a serious problem for us and for the intelligence community, and we're going to pay the price for this," he said.
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