8/8/2007

Regarding the CIA’s secret detention program: “Because the CIA did not maintain any prison facilities, it had to rely on a network of allied countries to provide locations where it could detain and interrogate terror suspects. Tyler Drumheller, a former chief of European operations at the C.I.A., was reported to have stated [in an August 8, 2007, New Yorker article]: ‘The agency had no experience in detention. Never. But they insisted on arresting and detaining people in this program. It was a mistake, in my opinion. You can’t mix intelligence and police work. But the White House was really pushing. They wanted someone to do it. So the C.I.A. said. *we’ll try.* [CIA Director] George Tenet came out of politics, not intelligence. His whole modus operandi was to please the principal. We got stuck with all sorts of things. This is really the legacy of a director who never said no to anybody.’ ”

 – M. Cherif Bassiouni, The Institutionalization of Torture by the Bush Administration, Page 148