'"Milton Bearden, a former Central Intelligence Agency Pakistan station chief who served at the agency for three decades, says claims that the Bush administration’s so-called enhanced interrogation techniques saved American lives are likely false.
The retired senior CIA officer also says that the former administration’s repeated assertions that attacks were foiled through torture are hurting US credibility abroad, endangering alliances and aiding the cause of would-be terrorists.
Bearden, who formerly headed the CIA’s Soviet/East European Division and served as station chief in Pakistan, Nigeria and Sudan, was a key figure in the funding and training of the mujahedeen in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation. He retired in 1994 but says he has communicated with contacts who agree they’ve heard of no evidence to support Bush officials’ claims.
If the Bush administration had proof of a plot stopped by enhanced interrogation, they would have produced it, Bearden says. “I cannot imagine that the system would not have leaked such a story,” he insists. “It would have been leaked in a New York minute.”
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Two other CIA officers, who have asked to remain anonymous due to their ongoing involvement in covert operations, seconded Bearden’s skepticism that any domestic plots of significance were disrupted during the Bush administration.
“Certain officials of the Bush administration would have had no qualms about exposing any of our officers, operational methods and sources of information if it meant scoring political points,” said one CIA covert officer, whose focus is the Middle-East, referring to the outing of CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson. “The fact that [the Bush administration officials] continue to use the protection of sources and methods as a reason for why they can produce no evidence of a serious plot is not believable given what they have already made public.”'
