Darryl Thibault [Managing Director, PeXis Security & Investigations]: "The controversy over what to do about interrogation techniques used by the CIA under the Bush Administration is not likely to go away soon. Nor will it be easy to know who are the winners and who are the losers as the debate and its resolution play out. Discussion of the legal issues is well underway and the moral issues are also heatedly debated in the evening news. Then there is the political issue: Is the Obama Administration's handling of the issue motivated by political concerns?

But there is a fourth issue that is now moving onto center stage. This issue might best be described as practical concerns associated with the "harsh" interrogation techniques used by the CIA: First, did these interrogation techniques (waterboarding) yield valuable intelligence that, in fact, saved American lives, and that could not have been obtained by other means? Second, will full and public disclosure of these techniques hurt the security of America by undermining American intelligence collection efforts in the future? These two questions are briefly addressed in the following paragraphs.

To date, there are only limited details available to answer the first question. One dramatic example comes from the report of the interrogation of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks). According to the report, under waterboarding, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed gave up details on a "Second Wave" attack using East Asian terrorists to crash a hijacked airliner into a building in Los Angeles. This operation was interrupted as a direct result of intelligence obtained during his waterboarding interrogation. Another example is provided by a former CIA officer who handled the interrogation of Abu Zubaida, high-ranking member of Al-Qaida and close associate of Osama Bin Ladin. According to the Report, after being "defiant and uncooperative" during his initial months of interrogation, Zubaida was subjected to waterboarding and "broke down in about 35 seconds," providing information that is credited with thwarting several planned Al-Qaida attacks. Between 2001 and 2003, there were a total of three terrorists subjected to waterboarding: In addition to Khalikd Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaida, the third and final terrorist to be subjected to CIA waterboarding was Rahim Al-Nashiri, head of Al-Qaeda operations in the Persian Gulf and suspected mastermind behind the attack on the USS Cole. The results of his waterboarding remain classified. Aside from the above examples, four former CIA Directors have all attested to the value of the intelligence obtained under the CIA's highly restrictive enhanced interrogation program.
The second question, much less well understood by the general public, has to do with the potential impact a detailed public airing of the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques could have on the future of American intelligence. There has been some professional speculation over the impact of telling the enemy what they can expect down the line if they are captured, thus, terrorists and other potential enemies can train their own on how to resist anticipated interrogation techniques. Certainly, the intelligence that came from NSA's interceptions of Al-Qaeda cell phone communications immediately after 9/11 was exceedingly valuable in assessing the threat and planning countermeasures; this valuable source of intelligence was abruptly and permanently lost when that intelligence technique was made public in the American Press shortly after 9/11, clearly dealing a serious blow to American intelligence capabilities against Al-Qaeda. Whether or not telling the terrorists that the CIA's interrogation threats and related psychological techniques are largely bluffs, will probably not single-handedly render our country's intelligence capability ineffective. However, there is another, far more serious hidden threat inextricably woven into any public airing of the CIA's modus operandi surrounding the identification, tracking, capture, housing, and interrogation of foreign terrorists. That threat is the inevitable exposure of foreign intelligence services that were directly or indirectly involved in any part of that sequence of events that eventually led to the interrogation.

Following the terrorists attacks of 9/11, the common cry that went up across Capitol Hill and the country was, "Why didn't we have better intelligence?" "Why didn't we connect the dots and prevent what happened on 9/11?" After agonizing reviews and enough embarrassment to go around, it was eventually acknowledged that, indeed, our overseas intelligence collection capabilities were inadequate, particularly in the terrorism arena. New initiatives were launched to energize our collection efforts against the terrorist target. Renewed energy was put into improving or developing new liaison relationships with both friendly and not-so-friendly foreign intelligence services. This was particularly important in the Middle-East where countries were bluntly told to choose with which side of terrorism they wished to be aligned. Given the lack of on-the-ground intelligence from this part of the world, these liaison relationships quickly proved extremely valuable in a number of ways, the details of which are better left undisclosed. However, the value of these enhanced liaison relationships, and in some cases, new relationships with foreign intelligence services opened doors previously closed to American intelligence and have played a significant role in America's intelligence capabilities, particularly against Al-Qaeda, but also against the broader terrorist target.

It is these relationships that stand to be lost with the public airing of the CIA's enhanced interrogation program – a program developed and designed specifically for the terrorist target. Every foreign intelligence service that has cooperated with American intelligence against the terrorist target, at any point along the way, will come to realize that the US Government cannot protect its own secrets, much less guarantee confidentiality to those who work with them in their own countries. If not out of practical considerations, then domestic political pressure will force both friendly and not-so-friendly foreign intelligence services to rethink the consequences of cooperating with American intelligence. In the struggle against terrorists, this will be a very costly loss."