Torture ‘not needed’ to capture Bin Laden

WASHINGTON - Reuters

‘I think we could have gotten Bin Laden without that,’ US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta (C) said referring to controversial interrogation methods. AFP photo

Leon Panetta, who as CIA director oversaw the U.S. operation that killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, said the job could have been done without resorting to controversial interrogation methods that some have said constitute torture.

The outgoing defense secretary, in remarks aired Feb. 3 on the NBC program “Meet the Press,” said there had been many pieces to the “puzzle” solved to find bin Laden.

“Yes, some of it came from some of the tactics that were used at that time, interrogation tactics that were used,” said Panetta, who headed the CIA from 2009 until he became U.S. defense secretary on July 1, 2011.

“I think we could have gotten Bin Laden without that,” Panetta added in response to a question about what the interviewer called enhanced interrogation or torture. Panetta did not elaborate on how this might have been done, but said most of the intelligence used to find bin Laden had been stitched together without resort to enhanced interrogation.

CIA defends use of harsh techniques

He was commenting on the 2012 film “Zero Dark Thirty,” which portrayed the hunt that led to the successful May 2, 2011, raid on the al-Qaeda leader’s hideout in Pakistan.

Some CIA veterans have defended the use of harsh techniques such as water boarding, to obtain information that helped get bin Laden. Jose Rodriguez, who played a key role in setting up and administering the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation” program, recently traced an early break in the bin Laden hunt to a detainee subjected to what Rodriguez called enhanced interrogation short of water boarding.