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Newsmakers

December 14, 2007

Host: Pedro Echevarria

Guest: U.S. Sen. Christopher “Kit” Bond (R-MO)

Reporters: Siobhan Gorman, “Wall Street Journal,”

and Chris Strohm, CongressDaily

PEDRO ECHEVARRIA, HOST, C-SPAN’S “NEWSMAKERS”: Joining us on the “Newsmakers” is Senator Kit Bond. He is the vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee, represents Missouri.

Thank you for joining us, senator.

U.S. SEN. CHRISTOPHER “KIT” BOND (R-MO): Pedro, a pleasure to be with you and the reporters.

ECHEVARRIA: And joining us in the studio are our reporters, Siobhan Gorman, national security correspondent for the “Wall Street Journal,” and Chris Strohm. He reports on national security issues for CongressDaily.

Senator. with the House passing its conference report on the authorization for intelligence, what happens now as it goes to the Senate?

BOND: Unfortunately, the authorization bill that we took into the conference, I thought was a good one. We worked out many differences with the House.

But at the end of the conference, a new amendment was dropped in, that was barely adopted on a nine-to-eight vote. That would require the CIA to limit its interrogation techniques to those specified in the Army Field Manual.

Now, the Army Field Manual was drafted for a wide-ranging use in the Army by junior officers, who would be interviewing battlefield combatants for tactical information.

Regrettably, the techniques in the Army Field Manual are well-known and well-trained by mid- and upper-level al Qaeda, Taliban and other Hezbollah organizations. So these high-value detainees will not talk as a result of the Army Field Manual interrogation techniques.

The CIA does not use torture. It does not use cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment in getting cooperation. It abides by not only the conventions, but the laws, military commissions and Detainee Treatment Act that have been passed, which say no torture, no cruel, degrading or inhuman treatment.

But other techniques, which clearly do not fall within those prohibitions, have been used to gain information from top level detainees, who have information on al Qaeda, its leadership, its operations, and even operations planned against the United States. They have been extremely important. They are used under close supervision.

And they have been perhaps the most valuable source of intelligence we can obtain, to keep not just our troops safe in the field, but to keep us – in the United States, in America – safe from terrorist attacks.

And unfortunately, that military commissions Army Field Manual limitations would put the CIA program out of business, a result that the safety of our nation and our troops and other personnel abroad cannot live with.

ECHEVARRIA: And with that, we turn to Siobhan Gorman.

SIOBHAN GORMAN, NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT, “WALL STREET JOURNAL”: Senator, going off of that set of issues around these enhanced interrogation techniques, I was wondering if you could explain a little bit more some comments that you made earlier this week that sparked a little bit of controversy, likening waterboarding to swimming free style or backstroke.

And I was wondering if you could explain a little bit more sort of how those – what the similarity is there?

BOND: OK. Let me be clear. I did not explain thoroughly – I did not finish the analogy. That was my mistake. What I meant was, there are many different forms of swimming, as there are many different forms of waterboarding.

Clearly, waterboarding, as it was used by the Japanese against our troops in World War II, where they poured water into the lungs of American servicemen, was clearly torture. And there may be other activities under the heading of waterboarding which are torture.

However, the tactics we use to train our pilots who go through the SERE school – survival education, resistance training, members of the Marine Corps – are likened to waterboarding. And when we use them on our troops, I think by definition, our military volunteer, Americans volunteering for service, you can understand that they would not fall within any of the prohibitions.

So, while waterboarding is not being used now, the fact is that, in a very small number of instances, it was successful in the past. It is not used now. And it – you can’t ban a broad category without defining it, although I would only suggest that it would be used in cases of extreme national emergency. But it is not being used.

The enhanced interrogation techniques that are used by CIA to question high-value detainees are clearly not – do not fall within any of the prohibitions. They are only different from the tactics described in the Army Field Manual.

GORMAN: If I can just ask one quick follow-up, senator.

If you’re talking about different types of waterboarding, I was just wondering if it’s your understanding, based on the guidelines that, say, CIA interrogators get, do they – does that address the idea of sort of gradations of, or different types of waterboarding? Is there an understanding among those interrogators that some types of activity known as waterboarding might be allowable and some might not?

BOND: Well, we’re not talking about anything that’s being used now.

GORMAN: Right.

BOND: What was used in the past, in my view, would not constitute a torture, cruel or inhuman, degrading technique. But those are not being used.

So, the torture that the Japanese used is clearly out. I can’t get into specifics and describe any of the enhanced interrogation techniques, because the more we talk about them, the more our enemies – those who wish to do us harm – will know what we’re using.

And we’re debating history now of whatever was used previously. And waterboarding, as I said, is not being used now.

ECHEVARRIA: Chris Strohm?

CHRIS STROHM, NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER, CONGRESSDAILY: Senator, retired General Paul Kern has said that having two standards for interrogations – one by the CIA, one by the military – is wrong. It doesn’t make sense, it creates confusion and it doesn’t lead to accountability.

He has signed a letter, along with other generals, saying that there should be one standard for interrogations, and that should be the military standard.

Why is General Kern, a respected military leader, wrong?

BOND: Well, that’s right for the military. And what I’m talking about is not interrogations by the military.

And if he and others propose to shut down the CIA interrogation, we would lose in the future the kind of robust intelligence that identified al Qaeda targets, and actually stopped attacks in the United States.

And I think that it’s perfectly right for the military. The military had egregious abuses at Abu Ghraib that weren’t even related to intelligence. They were random, criminal acts, which were prosecuted as they should have been.

And the point is that degrading techniques are not to be used by the military. The military has to train its own people.

But the CIA and the FBI use different interrogation techniques.

And while we appreciate the military’s view about what the military should do, this is not their area. And to attempt to apply it in areas where they – with which they are not familiar, is totally inappropriate, and could substantially inhibit our Central Intelligence Agency and the FBI from obtaining information that is critical to our safety and the safety of personnel and troops abroad, as well as those of us at home.

STROHM: Well, if I could just ask a follow-up.

To the best of your knowledge, when was the last time that any intelligence agency, whether it’s CIA or military, used waterboarding?

BOND: I think it’s been a long time. The reports – I think the reports have indicated it was back in 2002 or ’03.

GORMAN: On a related topic, sort of moving over to one of the other more recent issues, this revelation of the destruction of CIA tapes.

You’ve now heard some testimony from …

BOND: That’s it (ph).

GORMAN: … General Hayden. And I was wondering if you could update us a little bit in terms of what your thinking is about where the investigation needs to go from here.

Are you going to be speaking with other people who were involved? And sort of, what’s your level of understanding of what happened and what the timeline is at this point?

BOND: There are about seven different questions that you’ve asked. Let me try to answer them.

Number one, General Hayden was very forthcoming when he talked to us, but that was based only on the records. There are other people we’ll be interviewing, who were actually involved at the time. We will get to that information.

I think that it is clear that the destruction of the tapes was a serious mistake.

Now, the agency’s rationale for destroying the tapes – which were not, or are no longer being made – any tape of any CIA interrogation is overseen by people not just from the CIA, but from the Department of Justice and other outside agencies, some watching in real-time video, others, they are present in the room, whose responsibility is to stop any kind of unauthorized interrogation techniques.

And from what we have been told, that same kind of oversight was exercised during the time that the taping was going on.

What the CIA has told us, based on their records, are, number one, that after thorough review and full report of the activities and the interrogation were reviewed, both locally and at the headquarters, there was found to be nothing violating the law or being outside of standards.

Having said that, these tapes, if they were exposed somehow, if they were retained and turned over and somehow leaked, could potentially do three things: number one, compromise the identity of covert agents of the CIA conducting the questions; number two, it could expose all of the techniques used, which would be a valuable addition to the al Qaeda handbook, to know precisely what’s done; and number three, you could expect it to be shown on Al Jazeera as a propaganda tool.

And they felt, despite objections from one of the House members of the Intelligence Committee and their recommendation by a high-level executive branch official that they not be destroyed, they were destroyed.

The Department of Justice, along with the CIA’s inspector general, are now going back thoroughly to review whether there was any criminal activity in the destruction of the tapes.

And we in the Intelligence Committee, and I assume on the House, as well, will continue to look into that.

If there was any violation of law, any criminal activity, then the appropriate remedies will be administered by the Department of Justice.

GORMAN: Do you have any concerns that there was a violation of law?

BOND: So far, nothing we have been told indicates that.

But there are other things that we don’t know about, whether there were existing judicial orders to preserve that information. We don’t know where those – whether there was a judicial decree or other standard to maintain those tapes.

And that will be reviewed by the inspector general and the lawyers for the Department of Justice, and we will likely be seeking those answers in the intelligence community hearings, in the committee itself.

ECHEVARRIA: Senator Kit Bond, our guest on the “Newsmakers.” Also joined by Siobhan Gorman of the “Wall Street Journal” and Chris Strohm of CongressDaily.

Mr. Strohm?

STROHM: Senator, with regard to the destruction of the tapes, there’s been calls for an independent special counsel to take up the investigation.

Why doesn’t that make sense?

BOND: I don’t think that special counsels really have added anything to the law enforcement.

I’m confident that under the new attorney general, Mike Mukasey, that it will be done effectively, with the full resources of the FBI and the Department of Justice, assuring that it was done properly.

For every action in government, somebody suggests an independent commission. I have a minimum amount of high enthusiasm for independent commissions. Some of them have done great work. The 9/11 Commission, the Silberman-Robb commission – those had long-term studies. We did the same studies, and we came to the same results. But I thought those commissions were very helpful.

In this instance, and in several other instances where they have been suggested, I don’t think they would add anything to the body of knowledge. If there are results that should require action, we’ll see that action.

The intelligence committees were set up precisely to do this work – and sometimes 60 to 70 percent of my time every week looking into these things. Not that I’m complaining. That’s our job, and we’re going to continue to do that work.

We’ve got a very able, trained staff, a bipartisan staff, people on both sides with experience and knowledge, who will look into these things.

And honestly, I think we can do an adequate job of oversight, looking over what both the Department of Justice and the inspector general are going to be doing with respect to the tapes. Now, I think that’s one activity that will be handled.

We’ve got a lot of other important things, like extending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, so that we can collect information on foreign terrorists calling into the United States, or elsewhere in the world.

STROHM: You mentioned the 9/11 Commission. And of course, the 9/11 Commission had sought information on detainments and interrogations during the time that these tapes were in existence, but the tapes weren’t turned over to the commission.

There were also congressional inquiries, and there were court cases at the time that the tapes were destroyed.

With the tapes being destroyed in November of 2005, are you concerned about the timing? Does it appear that evidence was being destroyed?

BOND: That’s what I think that – that’s why I mentioned it in my initial answer, that we have not looked at all of the areas where there may have been legitimate uses, where there may have been requirements for the tapes to be reviewed. And if they were destroyed in spite of those, then we will watch carefully to see what steps the inspector general, what steps the agency and what steps the Department of Justice takes.

STROHM: Well, if I can, what specifically is next for your investigation?

BOND: We will see what the Department of Justice and the I.G. do.

Right now, the Intelligence Committee for the next two weeks will be trying to – next week we’ll be trying to pass our Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. We will be trying to pass the Intelligence Authorization Bill. And we do have scheduled hearings involving general counsel and the inspector general of the agency, who were there at the time.

So, with all of the other work we do, we will continue to explore this area. And I am confident that that will be taken care of, and we are going to have to focus on the continuing operations of the intelligence community, as well as our responsibility to pass laws that monitor the intelligence community and give it the authority to continue to act.

ECHEVARRIA: Ms. Gorman?

GORMAN: Well, senator, you mentioned next week’s debate on the surveillance law, and I was just wondering if you could give us your sense of what kind of outcome you’re expecting. There are obviously some pretty controversial issues that are expected to come up in debate, whether it’s immunity for telecommunications companies, or sort of just the degree to which you have judicial oversight in the process.

And I’m just wondering sort of what outcome you’re anticipating. You’ve seen a lot of votes on the Hill, obviously. And what do you think is going to happen?

BOND: I hope we can pass it. I hope we can pass it with a good, substantial, bipartisan majority.

I was the led sponsor of the bill that extended the capacity of the intelligence community to intercept telecommunications from abroad, in August. It was called the Protect America Act. We passed that 60 to 28, right before the end of the summer session. This bill has to be passed by February 1st.

Now, this time, when we had more time to work on it, the Senate Intelligence Committee worked on a bipartisan basis for months, with the lawyers from the Department of Justice, the director of national intelligence, NSA and others, to find out, number one, how the program works.

We added significant new protections for the privacy rights for American citizens, assuring that any United States person who was targeted for collection, would be protected by a court order prior to that surveillance. And as a result of long discussion, staff work, visits by members of the Intelligence Committee to the NSA to see how the program worked and the protections put in place, we passed a good bill, 13 to two. That bill is coming to the floor.

Now, the Judiciary Committee in the Senate – without the background, without the knowledge, without consulting with the officials in the intelligence community and their lawyers – passed on a totally partisan basis, a nine-to-eight partisan vote, a bill which the intelligence community tells us would significantly inhibit our ability to carry out the program, and would essentially shut the program down. And that is our second-best source of intelligence, to protect our country and to assure our troops and personnel abroad are safe.

So, I am hoping that I can work with the bipartisan members of the Senate Intelligence Committee to get a good strong vote, and also conference with the House and get a measure passed, signed into law by the president, so that the authorization for intelligence collection will not run out February 1. So, we have a very real time deadline.

And I think we have a clear, bipartisan consensus on the Senate Intelligence Committee version, which I hope will be adopted on an overwhelming, bipartisan basis, as our committee adopted it when we sent it to the floor.

GORMAN: But is that the one that you expect will pass? Or do you think that …

BOND: Yes …

GORMAN: … it’s going to be difficult to get anything through?

BOND: If that doesn’t pass, no bill will pass until we get it right.

STROHM: Senator, fundamentally, the bill that you passed on FISA does not require individual warrants to do surveillance against U.S. citizens. Why …

BOND: Where do you get that?

STROHM: Your bill does not require individual warrants for surveillance on U.S. citizens.

BOND: Any time we target a U.S. person, that person must – there is a court order to protect it.

STROHM: But as you know, there’s a difference between targeting and incidental surveillance on U.S. citizens.

BOND: Yes. If al Qaeda calls into the United States and tells a U.S. person to carry out an attack, that’s precisely the kind of information we need.

If a U.S. person is involved, and – we don’t know who they’re going to call. We can only – we can only target the senders of the communications. And many times, we don’t know if the recipients are in the United States. But any time we have reason to believe that the person we seek to target is a U.S. person, here or abroad, we have to get a court order.

Now, when there’s an incidental communication that does not have any intelligence value, is collected listening in on a terrorist from abroad, that is – that’s suppressed or minimized, whatever you call it – that’s not information that is of any use.

We do not record it or follow up, unless there is a clear indication of potential terrorist activity, in which case the United States, the FBI would treat it as they normally do on any criminal prosecutions, and seek appropriate legislative authorization for any action that they would take.

STROHM: Well, there are critics who say that any time the communication of a U.S. citizen is involved – any time, even incidentally – there should be an individual warrant to protect their constitutional rights.

BOND: That doesn’t work. And if you did that, you would shut down the program, as it would shut down, because you don’t know who a terrorist in Pakistan or Iraq or Afghanistan is calling. In that instance, you could not initiate any collection against a terrorist who is located abroad.

And when I was in Iraq in early May, our joint special operations commander, General Stan McChrystal, told us that, because that was the application of the old FISA law, they could not listen in on conversations between terrorists in Iraq, who were planning to attack our troops.

Our constitutional protections don’t go to those – to people outside the United States. We are limited to going after known terrorists and stopping terrorist attacks.

If you said, every collection had to have a court order, you would have the situation that we had this summer, where the court, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, was overwhelmed with requests to listen – to target overseas terrorists. They could not handle the workload. And in a classified opinion issued to the intelligence community, they objected to it.

And we have been told that we could say that the FISA court judges said that their efforts provided, at best, minimal protection for any U.S. citizens, and shut down the program.

So you get to the point, if you want to have – if you want to be sure that any incidental collection is covered by a court order, you will not, you will not be able to collect information which could keep Americans abroad and Americans here at home in the United States safe from terrorist attacks. It would shut down the program.

I think that balance is clearly a balance which comes out in favor of the law as we have drafted it.

If you don’t – if you can’t listen in without getting a court order, you’re not going to be listening in to the conversations that we need to listen in to.

ECHEVARRIA: Senator Bond, unfortunately, we are out of time. But we thank you for your time today.

BOND: It’s a pleasure to have the opportunity to lay these things out. Most of the work that we do in intelligence involving sources and methods is behind closed doors. We work long and hard at it.

And when some of these things are public matters, we really appreciate the opportunity to explain what we’re doing. And I thank you and the reporters for asking good questions. So, I hope we can explain – or at least I can explain my positions.

ECHEVARRIA: Thank you for your time, sir.

BOND: Thank you.

ECHEVARRIA: Chris Strohm, continuing on the conversation, and going back to the beginning of our discussion, he said that the passage of the authorization conference report with the amendment on interrogation may make it difficult for the Senate. Do you see that, as well?

STROHM: Absolutely. They face a very difficult position.

Republicans have vowed to block the conference report. There’s also the potential of a procedural point of order against it, because this provision was inserted during the conference proceedings, and that creates some complications procedurally in the Senate.

It’s not even clear that they’re going to go forward with this any time soon, though, because unlike the FISA legislation, that they’re working under a clock to get done by early February. But the Intelligence Authorization Bill, they haven’t had one in two years.

If they don’t have one again, it’s possible that they might not do it.

ECHEVARRIA: And Siobhan Gorman, he said during the course of the conversation that, if, when it comes to following interrogation techniques and it was forced to follow the manual, that it would put the CIA, I think he used the word, term, “out of business.”

How do you interpret that?

GORMAN: I’m not sure. I mean, experts that I’ve spoken with, you know, there’s just a wide variety of opinion in terms of what level of harshness and tactics you really need to elicit information from people. And so, I think it’s very difficult for anybody to make that sort of determination.

I mean, certainly for us on the outside, we don’t know the specifics of what they’re doing. But speaking with people who have been involved in those kinds of interrogations and things like that, there’s just an enormous amount of debate about what’s really effective.

So, it’s just difficult for anybody to say for sure.

ECHEVARRIA: And you asked him specifically about his statements on the “Lehrer Report” concerning waterboarding. What did you make of his response?

GORMAN: I thought it was interesting. I haven’t really heard that much discussion as of yet about different types of waterboarding.

I mean, obviously, if you’re talking about a technique where you’re putting people in a certain type of position, I’m sure that there could be variations on that. I’d be interested to learn a little bit more in terms of what range of, you know, positions or tactics we’d really be talking about in terms of different types of waterboarding.

I just haven’t – I haven’t heard a lot of discussion about that yet. So, it’ll be interesting to see if that becomes more of an issue, or whether or not people kind of continue to view it as one particular approach or technique.

ECHEVARRIA: Chris Strohm, what’s the political likelihood of possibly an outside group looking at the destruction of the CIA tapes?

STROHM: At this point, there’s really no pressure on the Hill for an outside group to come in and do that. Certainly, the administration isn’t supporting that. They have their own internal investigations going on.

I think people are waiting to see how far that the intelligence committees go, and whether there’s going to be a need for a special counsel. There have been some calls on the Hill for that. But at this point, I don’t really see any pressure building for that.

And I just want to mention something that Siobhan was talking about. I thought it was interesting that they seem to make – Senator Bond and others – seem to make a distinction in terms of saying that you can’t really lay out what you’re going to do in terms of interrogations, because that gives information to the enemies.

And it just seems, according to that logic, you might as well do away with the Geneva Conventions, because, I mean, those are out there, and those are followed by international law.

ECHEVARRIA: And that’s not the first time that argument has been made on both sides of this issue.

GORMAN: No, no. I mean, these arguments are made all the time. And I think that what’s difficult is that we’re dealing in a gray area. I mean, certainly, it’s plausible that, if our enemies know the kinds of techniques that we use, that they can develop sort of countermeasures against that.

But at some point, a lot of people argue, you’ve got to draw the line somewhere.

And so, I think that the country’s just struggling with, you know, where is it that we are going to draw these lines in terms of what defines this country as a democracy and, you know, standing for certain ideals of freedom and those kinds of things, and, you know, what limits that’s going to put on the way that we treat even people who are really seeking to do us enormous amounts of harm and kill large quantities of American citizens.

ECHEVARRIA: What about the idea of looking into if the destruction of the tapes came at an independent decision of one person, rather than a series of people? Is that a question that’s going to have to be asked?

STROHM: Absolutely.

GORMAN: I’m sure the question will be asked.

From the reporting I’ve done on this, though, it seems very difficult in the system that exists, certainly, at CIA – and particularly the players who were at CIA at the time – it seems rather unlikely from talking with people who know the players, that it would have really come down to the decision of one person, Jose Rodriguez, who was heading the clandestine service at that point.

I mean, my understanding is that he was very sympathetic to the risks the sort of lower-level interrogators were taking would be under, if somehow that video were exposed. But at the same time, the management of the CIA under Director Goss was very detail oriented and very involved in all kinds of decisions.

And the folks I’ve spoken with find it rather difficult to believe that they wouldn’t somehow have been aware of it or signed off on it.

ECHEVARRIA: Chris Strohm, you get the quick final thought.

STROHM: Well, I think that there’s a lot of difficult questions that confront the Senate right now, that it’s not clear that they’re going to be able to do the authorization bill, that FISA is going to be a battle this coming week. There’s a lot of competing proposals on the Hill. And these investigations, obviously, still have a long way to go.

ECHEVARRIA: Chris Strohm writes for national security issues for CongressDaily. Siobhan Gorman does the same as her role as a national security correspondent for the “Wall Street Journal.”

Thank you both for being on the “Newsmakers.”

STROHM: Thank you.

GORMAN: Thank you.

END