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,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 18, 2009 3:05 PM CDT
CIA Chiefs Ask Obama to Scrap Interrogation Probe
Attorney General Eric Holder delivers the keynote address at the White House Conference on Gang Violence Prevention and Crime Control, Monday, Aug. 24, 2009.   (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

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.
(More Eric Holder stories.)

Get the news faster.
Tap to install our app.
X
Install the Newser News app
in two easy steps:
1. Tap in your navigation bar.
2. Tap to Add to Home Screen.

X