Panetta admits that enhanced interrogation helped bag bin Laden

Panetta admits that enhanced interrogation helped bag bin Laden

The Sunday network news shows are beginning to seem like the Obama administration’s nemesis. It was on the Sunday circuit that U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice made questionable claims about the Benghazi consulate raid that ultimately dashed her chances at a nomination for Secretary of State.

The latest Sunday news drama played out today on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Outgoing Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta was a guest on the show, and at one point intimated that the CIA did in fact employ “enhanced interrogation” methods similar to those depicted in the film “Zero Dark Thirty” on detainees and that the tactics were effective.

While Panetta wouldn’t go so far as to say that waterboarding of jihadi prisoners was responsible for the capture of Obama bin Laden — whom he insists the U.S. would have caught up with anyway, he did say:

The real story is that in order to put the puzzle of intelligence together that led us to bin Laden, there was a lot of intelligence. There were a lot of pieces out there that were a part of that puzzle. Yes, some of it came from some of the tactics that were used at that time — interrogation tactics that were used. But the fact is we put together most of that intelligence without having to resort to that. I think we could have gotten bin Laden without that. [Emphasis added]

Gateway Pundit provides a reminder that this was not the first time Panetta admitted that enhanced interrogation techniques led the U.S. to bin Laden, noting that the secretary made similar comments back in May 2011.

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Howard Portnoy

Howard Portnoy

Howard Portnoy has written for The Blaze, HotAir, NewsBusters, Weasel Zippers, Conservative Firing Line, RedCounty, and New York’s Daily News. He has one published novel, Hot Rain, (G. P. Putnam’s Sons), and has been a guest on Radio Vice Online with Jim Vicevich, The Alana Burke Show, Smart Life with Dr. Gina, and The George Espenlaub Show.

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