Speaking on a Sunday talk show, former Vice President Dick Cheney continued to attack President Barack Obama for releasing Bush memos that authorized waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics that may have amounted to torture. Cheney wants Obama to release more memos that he says will prove valuable intelligence was gleaned from the questionable interrogation tactics.
Former CIA special agent Jack Rice called Cheney “hypocritical” for calling for the release of memos after leaving office. “If he wanted to release these before [leaving office] he could have,” said Rice.
Rice questioned the timeline Cheney and other use to back up claims that the harsh interrogations produced valuable intelligence. One such claim says that the waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah lead to intelligence that stopped an al Qaeda plot to bomb the Library Tower in Los Angeles. “I mean, if we look at the timeline, they already said that they stopped the attack in 2002 and [Zubaydah] wasn’t arrested until 2003. Now, let’s face it. If you can get interrogation in 2003, that stops an attack in 2002, I want to get me some of that,” quipped Rice.