CIA interrogations yielded 9,000 reports: Hayden

The information was obtained using techniques within the boundaries of U.S. law and didn’t include torture, Central Intelligence Agency Director Michael Hayden said in an interview on “Charlie Rose” to be broadcast later tonight.

The reports “comprise some of the most critical information we’ve ever gained on al-Qaeda,” Hayden said. “If you accept the premise that torture doesn’t work, then you have to accept the fact that this did work.”

The U.S. and the CIA, in particular, have been accused by lawmakers, civil-rights groups and detainees of employing harsh methods, including waterboarding, a technique that simulates drowning. Hayden reiterated that the CIA has changed its methods in the past few years, although he declined to say how the agency is operating differently.

Less than a third of the detainees were subjected to “enhanced interrogation,” Hayden said. U.S. law allows the CIA to use more extreme techniques than those detailed in the Army Field Manual, he said.

Hayden also said the CIA has sent fewer terrorist suspects to be imprisoned in other countries since the Sept. 11 attacks than in the 1990s. While not divulging how many were sent to prisons abroad — a move known as a rendition — Hayden said the number was “mid-range, two figures.”

About 70 renditions occurred before Sept. 11, 2001, most under the administration of President Bill Clinton, according to the Washington Post, citing former CIA Director George Tenet.

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