Dick Cheney made a splash last year when he asserted that his support for torture – including waterboarding – was vindicated by secret CIA memos showing the effectiveness of so-called "enhanced interogation". But like a disturbing number of Cheney's statements – remember the link between Saddam Hussain and al-Qaida? – this claim also seems a stranger to the truth.
Cheney told Fox News back in April last year:
There are reports that show specifically what we gained as a result of this activity. They have not been declassified. I formally ask that they be declassified now.
The memos are still secret, despite Cheney's request. But Newsweek's Michael Isikoff, in reporting the latest review on the use of torture, published last Friday, explains:
A crucial CIA memo that has been cited by former Vice President Dick Cheney and other former Bush administration officials as justifying the effectiveness of waterboarding contained "plainly inaccurate information" that undermined its conclusions, according to Justice Department investigators.
Isikoff's piece is confirmation of earlier reporting by Spencer Ackerman in the Washington Independent, which concluded:
Cheney's public account of these documents have conflated the difference between information acquired from detainees, which the documents present, and information acquired from detainees through the enhanced interrogation program, which they don't.
