War Handwavium

In 2004, the CIA’s Inspector General John Helgerson found that there was no conclusive proof that waterboarding or other harsh interrogation techniques helped thwart any specific imminent attacks.

President Bush told a September 2006 news conference that one plot, to attack a Los Angeles office tower, was “derailed” in early 2002 — before the harsh CIA interrogation measures were approved, contrary to those who claim that waterboarding revealed it.

Some officials at CIA headquarters insisted on the repeated waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah, the first prisoner to undergo the technique, even after the interrogators on the scene sought to discontinue the technique.

Some interrogators went beyond what the Justice Department initially authorized in an Aug. 1, 2002, memo

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/world/story/66895.html