Former CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden, said Sunday he would be disappointed if U.S. interrogators weren't disturbed by the type of work they do.
Appearing on ABC's
"This Week," Hayden responded to an op-ed written by a former interrogator at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The piece was headlined,
"I tortured at Abu Ghraib, and I can’t be forgiven."
Hayden pointed out that criminal activity took place at Abu Ghraib, while the Justice Department ruled that the enhanced interrogation techniques used at CIA "black sites" around the world were legal, and not torture as a Senate committee report said this past week.
"He's clearly carrying a burden — a burden perhaps that all of us have put on him by putting him in that situation in war," Hayden said of Eric Fair, the author of the op-ed.
But, he added of others who said the work brought them to tears, "I would be very, very disappointed if this did not take a human toll on our CIA interrogators because, after all, although that person across the table from you was a terrorist, he's also a human being."
Hayden said he thanks God the decision to use waterboarding was made before he became CIA director, and added that he doesn't know whether he would approve it himself. He said it would depend on the totality of the circumstances at the time.
The current discussion on whether the United States engaged in torture might not be taking place had the CIA not used enhanced techniques to get information from terrorism suspects, he said.
"If we had not done this, and a subsequent attack would had taken place, what would today's conversation be like?" he asked.
Overall, he said, he doesn't believe the program creates more terrorists, though "it may now, after all these details we've put out."
The CIA, he noted, disputes much of what is in the report that had no Republican participation.
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