John Brennan

(Video) "He Was The Agency": Ex-CIA Analyst Questions Brennan Claim He Couldn’t Stop Waterboarding, Torture

"CIA nominee John Brennan was repeatedly questioned about torture at his CIA confirmation hearing, including the use of waterboarding and enhanced interrogation techniques. He refused to say waterboarding was a form of torture, but said he has come to oppose the technique. Under George W. Bush, Brennan served as deputy executive director of the CIA and director of the Terrorist Threat Integration Center. "Remember, he was the cheerleader for some of these onerous policies, particularly renditions and extraordinary renditions. So, for John Brennan today to say he read the Senate committee intelligence report on torture and he learned things he never knew before and that he was shocked with what he learned, this is a case of incredible willful ignorance," says Melvin Goodman, former CIA and State Department analyst. [includes rush transcript]"

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/2/8/he_was_the_agency_ex_cia#transcript

Forgetting Torture: Lee Hamilton, John Brennan, and Abu Zubaydah

The pervasive news surrounding the confirmation hearing of John Brennan, Obama’s nominee for CIA director, is paralleled by another, related story that has been largely ignored by the U.S. media.  That is the story of the man called Abu Zubaydah, whose alleged torture testimony, obtained by the CIA while Brennan was the head of the agency’s Terrorist Threat Center, built the foundation for the official account of 9/11.  This week I spoke to Lee Hamilton, former vice-chairman of the 9/11 Commission, about the serious problems that the government’s new stance on Zubaydah creates for the 9/11 Commission Report.

As stated in my last article on the subject, Zubaydah is at the center of an unraveling of the official account of the 9/11 attacks.[1]  His extensive torture at the hands of the CIA during Brennan’s tenure, which included at least 83 water-boarding sessions, hanging the man naked from the ceiling, slamming him against a concrete wall, and other atrocious experimental techniques, was said to produce valuable evidence about al Qaeda.  However, the government now claims that Zubaydah was never a member or associate of al Qaeda and therefore he could not have known any of the information that the 9/11 Commission attributed to him.

From the start of our conversation, Hamilton told me that he was having trouble remembering Zubaydah.  That was odd considering that an article he and Thomas Kean wrote for the New York Times in 2008, describing how the CIA obstructed the 9/11 investigation, referred several times to Zubaydah specifically.[2]  The article claimed that “Beginning in June 2003, we requested all reports of intelligence information on these broad topics that had been gleaned from the interrogations of 118 named individuals, including both Abu Zubaydah and Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri, two senior Qaeda operatives.”  Kean and Hamilton further wrote that, “in October 2003, we sent another wave of questions to the C.I.A.’s general counsel. One set posed dozens of specific questions about the reports, including those about Abu Zubaydah.”

Obama advisor: The threat of nuclear terrorism constitutes one of the greatest threats to our national security

excerpt from "Briefing by Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and Assistant to President for Counterterrorism and Homeland Security John Brennan"

States News Service, 12 April 2010

"The threat of nuclear terrorism is real, it is serious, it is growing, and it constitutes one of the greatest threats to our national security and, indeed, to global security.

Over the past two decades there has been indisputable evidence that dozens of terrorist groups have actively sought some type of weapon of mass effect. Relative to other such potential weapons -- which include biological, chemical, radiological -- the consequences and impact of a nuclear attack would be the most devastating as well as the most lasting.

Thus, the ability to obtain a nuclear weapon and to use it is the ultimate and most prized goal of terrorist groups. Al Qaeda is especially notable for its longstanding interest in acquiring weapons-useable nuclear material and the requisite expertise that would allow it to develop a yield producing improvised nuclear device.

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