Dick Cheney Urges Continued 'Enhanced Interrogation' of Terror Suspects

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - Enhanced interrogation techniques such as waterboarding that were used on terror suspects following the September 11, 2001 attacks would still be used today if it were up to former US Vice President Dick Cheney, he said in an interview on Thursday.

"If it were my call I would not discontinue those programs; I’d have them active and ready to go and I’d go back and study them and learn," Cheney told Fox Business News. "If it were my call, I’d do it again."

Cheney said only three suspects were waterboarded, including 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and that intelligence from Mohammed’s interrogation helped protect the United States from additional mass casualty attacks.

He claimed that waterboarding, a method that simulates drowning, was not torture. However, the former US top diplomat admitted that the CIA was unlikely to use the techniques in the future since they had been outlawed by Congress.

A 2014 report by the Senate Intelligence Committee found that CIA officials involved in the interrogations routinely questioned the program’s effectiveness only to be overruled by superiors.

The report not only concluded that the interrogation techniques proved ineffective, but also produced fabricated information on critical intelligence issues in contrast to useful intelligence obtained before suspects were turned over to the CIA and subjected to waterboarding and other forms of torture.

#DickCheney endorses Gina Haspel to head the CIA. He wants to make #torture great again.
•https://t.co/kVmDAOsMZxpic.twitter.com/0LdSWlhdKw

— Psychonaut (@WakingLifeDream) 10 мая 2018 г.