Hayden: Enhanced Interrogation ‘Wasn’t Retribution or Punishment’
RUSH TRANSCRIPT:
SCARBOROUGH: "I remember David Ignatius saying one time after the president went to Langley and delivered a speech that was critical. He said something along the lines of — it was a — had the same effect as a car bomb going off."
HYDEN: "That was David’s line. A car bomb in a driveway."
SCARBOROUGH: "In a driveway. Going off."
HYDEN: "He gave the president — in the book. Gave the president credit for doing this. It’s not a warm audience after this has gone on. Unfortunately the president called it kind of a — he used the line, a teachable moment. You have a bunch of hardened case officers."
BRZEZINSKI: "Who didn’t need to learn anything, right?"
HYDEN: "Look, this is quite different from whether or not it was a good idea or bad idea. Two days after the inauguration when the president said we’re out of this game I sent a note to the entire work force saying the president has given us exactly what we needed. He has told us where the edge is. It’s a different edge, but that’s okay. We’re going to play now within the new edge."
BRZEZINSKI: "Can I ask you —"
WALLACE: "I’m sorry."
BRZEZINSKI: "Go ahead."
WALLACE: "I think it’s the same question. 15 years now of harsh rhetoric about the tactics and people have branded them as ineffective. One, is that the truth about it and, two, what impact does the rhetoric from Donald Trump saying not only am I going to brininterrogation tactics but I’m going to do more."
HYDEN: "You have kind of three things you have to prove or talk about, all right. Number one, a perfectly honorable position, one with which I sympathize if perhaps I don’t always agree is I really wish my nation wasn’t doing this. There is no question, Nicolle, this is edgy stuff to another human being. That’s one. Frankly, that could be enough. If you just simply say, no, we don’t do that."
SCARBOROUGH: "You are saying you respect those who say Americans aren’t about that."
WALLACE: "I got it. That’s honorable."
HYDEN: "My informal summary is we went to the same high school I think. We have the same values. Another one is it doesn’t matter because it doesn’t work. I have a lot of people who work for me who believe they did. They did it out of duty, not enthusiasm. They got a stack of stuff they seemed to get after the tactics were applied. About 115 total. Of the total three, total three, who were water-boarded. There is a case to be made, could you have gotten that information by other means, and, again, trying to be as objective as possible, I say, well, you know, we didn’t form a control group of terrorists over here to see how the experiment would work. So what we have here is —"
SCARBOROUGH: "By the way, in 2001, 2002, 2003. No Democrat or Republican on the Intel committee was telling the CIA, guys, we’re uncomfortable with this. Why don’t you take it easy and let’s try other routes."
HYDEN: "We never — I pull a few threads in the book, Joe, that have the attitude quite the opposite. Now, Nicolle, we get to chapter 3 with a presidential candidate saying I would do water-boarding more because they deserve it. It takes this discussion out of this discussion. None of this was because they deserve this. It’s not punishment. This is a passage in the book at Gitmo. These people are human beings. Now you have someone saying I’m going to do this because they deserve this? We didn’t do it because they deserved it. It wasn’t retribution or punishment. It was not backward looking. It was all about the future. Does he know something we have to get in order to protect ourselves."
SCARBOROUGH: "I talk to people that were pretty involved, and their attitude was not that they deserved it. It was they are the most valuable assets that we have because they have information that can save Americans’ lives. The last thing we want to do is brutalize them and make them unable to give us information at the end of the day."
HYDEN: "Look, at the end of the day you want this person across the table from you — now, I understand you have coerced it, you have controlled his environment in such a way, but you want this person at the end of the day across the table from you, with your getting to say, would you like some more hummus? I want to talk more now about what happened in mosul back in — that’s what — you want to get it into a debriefing formats. One of the cartoons is that you’re actually asking him questions when you’re applying the pressure in order to move him into a zone of being more compliant. That’s not true."
