Freedom Line Blog

Former Department of Justice official John Yoo is helping set the record straight on how much credit the Obama Administration should be sharing with its predecessor.

Writing in today’s Wall Street Journal, Yoo makes the case that the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound would have been impossible without Bush era policies such as warrantless wiretapping and enhanced interrogation techniques – both critically important to finding the terrorist mastermind.

And the credit-shifting doesn’t stop there.  When asked by NBC News’ Brian Williams whether waterboarding was used to extract information from detainees, CIA chief Leon Panetta evaded answering.

Here’s the relevant excerpt, courtesy of RealClearPolitics:

BRIAN WILLIAMS: I’d like to ask you about the sourcing on the intel that ultimately led to this successful attack. Can you confirm that it was as a result of waterboarding that we learned what we needed to learn to go after bin Laden?

LEON PANETTA: You know Brian, in the intelligence business you work from a lot of sources of information, and that was true here. We had a multiple source — a multiple series of sources — that provided information with regards to this situation. Clearly, some of it came from detainees and the interrogation of detainees. But we also had information from other sources as well. So, it’s a little difficult to say it was due just to one source of information that we got.

WILLIAMS: Turned around the other way, are you denying that waterboarding was in part among the tactics used to extract the intelligence that led to this successful mission?

PANETTA: No, I think some of the detainees clearly were, you know, they used these enhanced interrogation techniques against some of these detainees. But I’m also saying that, you know, the debate about whether we would have gotten the same information through other approaches I think is always going to be an open question.

WILLIAMS: So, finer point, one final time, enhanced interrogation techniques — which has always been kind of a handy euphemism in these post-9/11 years — that includes waterboarding?

PANETTA: That’s correct.

President Barack Obama may not have to defend the chasm between his campaign rhetoric denouncing the Bush Administration’s policies and his use of those same tactics to find and kill bin Laden.  Don’t expect Panetta, his nominee to be the next Secretary of Defense, to be so lucky in his Senate confirmation hearings.

Britain’s Telegraph says General David Petraeus may be nominated to replace CIA Director Leon Panetta, after the latter is tapped to become Secretary of Defense when Robert Gates retires.

If that happens, President Barack Obama will have kept not only former President George W. Bush’s people, but also his rationale for staffing key national security posts.  Gates’ last government job before Defense Secretary was as CIA Director.  Air Force General Michael Hayden led the CIA under Bush before Panetta took over.

Despite his campaign rhetoric, President Obama has continued the war in Afghanistan, and reversed himself on civilian trials for Guantanamo Bay detainees.  Now, it looks like the current president is adopting the staffing rationale of his predecessor too.

Somewhere in Texas, I’m sure former President Bush is flattered.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates is finding a much more favorable response from Japan than China about how to get tougher with North Korea.  On the Tokyo leg of Gates’ weeklong Asian tour, the Pentagon chief “discussed the potential export to allies of missile defense capabilities both countries are developing,” according to reporting by Reuters.

CFIF recently profiled missile defense expert Brian Kennedy about the rationale for implementing a broad-based system of missile defense to deter not just a North Korean nuclear strike, but also one from China.  You can read the entire article here.