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CIA Chiefs Ask Obama to Scrap Interrogation Probe
Disclosure of CIA methods will help the enemy, decrease national security, former directors warn
By Nick McMaster
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Posted Sep 18, 09 3:05 PM CDT
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(Newser)
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Seven former CIA directors—appointees of both political parties—are calling on the Obama administration to call off the Justice Department’s investigation of Bush-era interrogation practices, the Hill reports. The probe, ordered by AG Eric Holder, will reveal too much about the CIA’s methods in an environment where "success often depends on surprise and deception and on creating uncertainty in the mind of an enemy,” the directors wrote. Such disclosure would foster "an atmosphere of continuous jeopardy."
“Intelligence officials must be free to do their jobs without worrying that years from now a future Attorney General will authorize a criminal investigation of them for behavior that a previous Attorney General concluded was authorized and legal,” the letter continues. Former directors John Deutch, Porter Goss, Michael Hayden, James R. Schlesinger, George Tenet, William Webster, and R. James Woolsey signed the letter.