CIA chief defends detention of prisoners

September 08, 2007|Adam Goldman, Associated Press

NEW YORK - The director of the CIA praised the government's much-criticized program of detaining and interrogating prisoners yesterday, crediting it for most of the information in a July intelligence report on the terrorist threat to America.

General Michael Hayden said the CIA has detained fewer than 100 people at secret facilities abroad since the capture of Abu Zubaydah, the Al Qaeda operative, in 2002, and even fewer prisoners have been secretly transferred to or from foreign governments.

In a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, Hayden defended the government's policy of extraordinary rendition, criticized the media for publishing stories about the government's intelligence activities, and warned that Al Qaeda is trying to plant operatives in the United States.

Extraordinary rendition refers to the interrogation policy involving the secret transfer of prisoners from US control into the hands of foreign governments, some of which have a history of torture.

The US government says it does so only after it is assured that transferred prisoners will not be subjected to torture.

The use of extraordinary rendition for terrorism suspects - some of whom were later released, apparently because they were innocent - was revealed by news media in 2005.

The renditions have been "conducted lawfully, responsibly, and with a clear and simple purpose: to get terrorists off the streets and gain intelligence on those still at large," Hayden said.

The CIA director said 70 percent of the information contained in the National Intelligence Estimate on the terrorist threat, which was released in July, came from the interrogation of detainees.

He said reports in the media "cost us several promising counterterrorism and counterproliferation assets" because CIA sources stopped cooperating with the agency out of fear they would be exposed.