Turns out torture -- waterboarding and other forms of torture -- did not have a seminal, or even particularly useful role in the effort to find Osama Bin Laden. This is contrary to the knee-jerk claims of Dick Cheney and other unabashed apologists for favoring torture over effective methods of interrogation.
Leon Panetta wrote to John McCain on the topic a week ago, and the letter has been released, or leaked, to the Washington Post. Here is a portion of the letter..
Nearly 10 years of intensive intelligence work led the CIA to conclude that Bin Ladin was likely hiding at the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. there was no one “essential and indispensible” key piece of information that led us to this conclusion. Rather, the intelligence picture was developed via painstaking collection and analysis. Multiple streams of intelligence — including from detainees, but also from multiple other sources — led CIA analysts to conclude that Bin Ladin was at this compound. Some of the detainees who provided useful information about the facilitator/courier’s role had been subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques. Whether those techniques were the “only timely and effective way” to obtain such information is a matter of debate and cannot be established definitively. What is definitive is that that information was only a part of multiple streams of intelligence that led us to Bin Ladin.
Let me further point out that we first learned about the facilitator/courier’s nom de guerre from a detainee not in CIA custody in 2002. It is also important to note that some detainees who were subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques attempted to provide false or misleading information about the facilitator/courier. These attempts to falsify the facilitator/courier’s role were alerting.
In the end, no detainee in CIA custody revealed the facilitator/courier’s full true name or specific whereabouts. This information was discovered through other intelligence means.
Unlike scum like Cheney, this letter places the credit for finding Bin Laden where it is properly due: on the many people who labored for years through tons of data, leaks, hints, false hints, lies, and more to finally come up with the info that led to the attack on Bin Laden's house -- rather than on the self-aggrandizing Cheney and his GOP apologists who want to claim that torture is the cheap and easy way to critical info.
The Post writer, who is more cautious than I, puts it this way: "Panetta’s account — the most extensive public accounting we now have — simply doesn’t square with claims that torture was key to getting him, which would vindicate Bush’s torture policies."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/exclusive-private-letter-from-cia-chief-undercuts-claim-torture-was-key-to-killing-bin-laden/2011/03/03/AFLFF04G_blog.html?wpisrc=nl_pmpolitics
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