>> from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." mike morell is here. he is a cbs news security

conservator. he was involved in preparing the cia's response to the senate intelligence committee's report. the study was made public last week and claims the cia misled the white house and congress about the effectiveness and interrogationts methods. john brennan responded in a press conference. our reviewsated indicate the program produced useful intelligence that helped the u.s. tort attack plans, -- thwart attack plans. but let me be clear. we have not concluded it was the use of interrogation techniques that allowed us to obtain useful information from detainees subjected to them. the cause and effect relationship between the use of the techniques and information provided by the detainee is, in

my view, unknowable. inthough directly involved creating and running the program, you have come forward in defense of the agency, i am pleased to have mike morell back at the table. we want to have a sensible conversation about this. we also want to ask ourselves, as a country, what have we learned from this and how do we go forward? at the same time, because this has been driven by a report from senate democrats on the intelligence committee, with the cia and its former directors pushing back, it seemed for me -- to me a time for a conversation. >> i was given this report to read i read it. >> how many pages? >> 6000 pages. andsummary and findings

conclusions were several hundred pages. i read the summary findings and conclusions carefully. i skimmed the 6000 pages. one of the things that struck me, when i read the report, was how much of the story that was missing. the pieces of the story that were missing or cia -- were cia's interactions with the executive branch. interactions with the congress undertaken and done while the program was carried out. that was missing. i asked our historians at cia to put that story together. in myroduce a report, final weeks as deputy director.

that is the report you and i discussed. >> what does it say in the report? >> what it says in that report, which is on the cia saved lives the formermething directors and deputy directors have put together, it shows the had extensive conversations with the rest of the executive branch about the program. about its legality. it is absolutely clear that the rest of the executive branch approved the program. this was not a rogue operation. you get the sense that it was when you read the senate democrat report. conversations across the executive branch, president bush approved the program. the other thing you see which you will not find anywhere in the senate democrat report. no discussion of our discussions with the white house and

approvals from the white house. >> and justice. >> and justice. and state department, the department of defense. the other thing it shows is there were detailed briefings, multiple briefings of both the senate intelligence committee leadership in the house intelligence committee leadership. briefings on the program. enhanced on the interrogation techniques. briefings on the legal basis for conducting those techniques. very clear. also very clear that no one who was briefed in congress opposed to the program. many said words of support. in a couple of cases, when we had to stop the program because the law had changed, the legal landscape had changed, and we

stopped the program -- >> that was when? 2004, 2005. when we stopped at to make sure the legal basis was sound, there were those in congress including democrats who urged us to continue the program. one of the senators said, you are being risk-averse. i don't want you being risk-averse. >> one of the democrats who is now -- >> yes. >> supporting the release of this. wanted you to do more. >> did not want us to stop the program. >> it was all legal, in your judgment, at that time? >> yes. >> when you have defined what the cia was doing at the time as torture? >> let me talk about this>>. in the context we are discussing it, is a legal term.

it doesn't matter what you think is torture or what i think us which are. -- think is torture. think our the lawyers justice. -- is torture. and the department of justice. on multiple occasions, they have said these techniques are not torture. the legalt rise to standard of torture as defined in the torture act in the u.s. or in our treaty obligations that the u.s. has signed up to. the department of justice of said this is not torture. as you know from our other discussions, this is one of the things that drives me crazy. when people say this is torture. it drives me crazy because the justice department says it it is not.

more important, when somebody calls a torture, even the president, it says that my officers who carried out these operations at the direction of the president and were told by the department of justice that they were legal were torturers. that upsets me. to have somebody call them torturers. this was legal at the time. that was nota, effective, and be, that is not what we want to do. >> there are three issues. one is the legal issue. one is the effectiveness issue. the other is the morality issue. you have to separate effectiveness for morality. -- from morality. the effectiveness issue. it is interesting what the democrats on the committee said in the report. it is not that the techniques were not effective.

they did not make a judgment on that. what they said was, you did not need the information you got from detainees after they were subjected to eits. because you already had it. what they did in the report was to try to show, in the 20 cases we said, look at how effective it was, they looked at those 20 cases. purport to show that in each of the 20 cases, we already had the information we got from people after they were subjected to the techniques. the cia response, what i oversaw cting director, eit's werey that effective or not.

it says, you are wrong that that information was already available. it says, that information was not already available. the information that came from them after was new, critical information to capture other senior leaders and save lives and stop plots. let me give you an example. people talk about this in the abstract. >> let me ask you a question first. do you believe you would have the leader of this, we captured -- in -- who you captured in pakistan, without using earlier information. >> let me first say this. what i told you are the views of the senate and credit and the views of the cia rebuttal. let me to you my own view.

this program.t of i was not even aware of it until july of 2006. when i took on the -- >> were were you when this was going on? >> i was overseas for three years. i was number three on the analytic side of the agency. i was not operational. i did not have a need to know. when i took on the of reviewing our response, i dug into this. i dug into this issue in a significant way. when i looked at all the evidence, one of the things i looked at is, what information did a detainee give us prior to being subjected to eit's? information did we have after? i had a chart compared that show this.

got after.tion we i content you that my view, my personal view, is there is a ce betweent differen the information provided before and after. that difference is, the information provided before is not full answers to questions. vague. not specific. not actionable. information provided after, specific, full answers to questions. actionable. you can see a big difference between the information before and after. to your specific question on bin laden, detainees who were not subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques told us --ut this guy named abu detainees not subjected to eit's , four who were not -- they told

us about a guy named abu. it was two detainees who after t's whore subjected to ei gave us very specific information about abu. when individual told us he is careers.n laden's that was the most specific information we had -- c ouriers. >> this was after enhanced interrogation. >> after. >> all you knew before was -- >> he was an important guy. sm.was hanging out with k the mastermind of 9/11. he is somehow associated with bin laden. the eight information we got

after made it clear he was bin courier. neverestion was, if we got that specific information, would we still have full of the trail? probably -- followed the trail? probably. but what my guys tell me is, the information, the very specific information we got from the two detainees who had been subjected take this led us to particular lead to the top of the lists. >> is it also said, because you were listening to the detainees, once you begin to ask specific questions about the courier, they got nervous? especially khalid sheikh mohammed? >> great point. are two detainees who by

the time they are asking haveions about abu, it'sady been subjected to e and are fully compliant. they are asking questions with specificity. answering the majority of questions we put to them. one of them is khalid sheikh mohammed. we asked them about a blocbu. one of them, ksm -- >> collegiate mohammed, the man who ordered the attack. >> the man who conceptualized, sold it to bin laden. u left al qaeda. let me interrupt this. at that moment, what was the level of cooperation he was giving you and what was the

level of information you trusted? and information that was actionable? >> full and complete. >> you think that was because of what? he was being waterboarded 100 times? >> my officers who conducted these interrogations -- this is said in the agency response, although it is hidden -- my officers believe that they were necessary. this gets to the necessary question. believes they were necessary to get detainees to provide actionable information. >> waterboarding? >> specifically, khalid shaikh mohammed. my officers believe that was necessary. back to the bin laden story.

ksm.ey help you get >> that's what we say. the committee says, no. ksm says, he used to work for al qaeda. the other guy says, i never heard of him. too.ther guys very senior, he says, i have never heard of him. two guys who were being fully cooperative with us lie to us about abu. that tells us he is really important. his cen ksm goes back to and we arel monitoring the conversations. he tells everybody he can reach, andl, don't talk about the career -- courier. >> deny his existence. >> it shows the importance of abu in the detention program. i just said something important about the necessity argument.

i just made the argument that eit's making difference and my made as believe eit's difference. now we get to the mississippi, theit necessary -- necessity, was it necessary? >the cia continues to say it. we will never know whether these techniques were necessary to the information. my view, charlie, after having thought about this, that is a bit of a copout. you can say that about anything unpleasant in the u.s.. for example, you can desk the fortion,, was it necessary abraham lincoln to suspend habeas corpus to win the civil

war? was it necessary for the u.s. to japan?omic bombs on we will never know. of course it is a noble. -- it is unknowable. the people on the ground believe it was necessary. >> john brennan thinks it is unknowable. >> i think it is politically convenient to say it is unknowable. towe talk about -- you have understand the context. the word they use his context. give us a sense of the context. saying, if we had not done these things, and there had been a successful attack six months later, there would be held to pay. people would have said, why did you not know this? what is the context? >> context is important. >> who is pushing and demanding. you how thisl

played out. the context is important. i was therefore part of this. i was president bush's daily briefer. george tenet and i would go to the oval office every morning. of theersonally aware context and the feeling any room. -- in the room. >> you knew with the president knew. >> the context was, 3000 people had just been killed. there was credible intelligence of a second, that there would be a second wave of attacks against the u.s. credible intelligence. >> what was it, what did you know? again less specific. 9/11s more like going into and some of the more specific

threats. reporting from multiple sources saying al qaeda had in place the resources to conduct a second wave attack in the u.s. it came from credible sources. this is not second or third hand. these were our people picking this up. thatble intelligence turned out to be true that bin laden was meeting with pakistani nuclear scientists in order to try to get his hands on a nuclear weapon. intelligence that we did not was credible at the time or not, turned out not to be true, but there was intelligence that al qaeda was try to get a nuclear weapon into new york city. that was the context. that was the context -- the idea that there was a possibility of a nuclear weapon coming. they believe there was an effort to do that. i have never seen a pilot

intelligence about threats to this country that i saw, post 9/11. to make it personal, george tenet and i would meet in his office, across the street, before we would go to the oval office. with this pile of intelligence growing and growing. with the context, we would say to each other as we walked from the executive office building to the oval office, is today the day we are going to get hit? we were serious. is today with the day we are going to get hit again? abu.at context, we capture >> how do we capture him? >> in pakistan, with the help of the pakistanis. he is injured.

he is shot on the roof or something? >> here shot in a firefight that leads to his capture. and thenat first, shuts up. our people at cia, with this context, worried to death about a second attack, but a nuclear weapon in the u.s., come to we are nott and say, getting information from the sky. we think he has information about additional plots -- from this guy. we think he has information about additional plots. we are afraid that we don't do this, americans will die. george tenet had that same conversation with the white house. >> did that include the president? >> not initially. ith theversation was w

national security advisor. >> condoleezza rice preview know she is going to tell the president. >> she comes back and says, i told the president. the president says, i was told. he said were 10 things, these eight are ok but not these two. what were the two? >> i don't know. he took two off the table. i have heard one, i have heard two. >> what did he accept? >> the list. >> waterboarding? sleep deprivation? >> kind of the least was grabbing 70 by the lapels to get somebody byion -- the lapels to get their attention all the way to water billing.

of theeprivation, one most effective. waterboarding, very effective. they ranged. he proved them. he approved the specific techniques. he said so in his book. this is where you get to the morality question. and effective. certainly thought to be effective at the time. the morality question is not easy. some people make it sound really easy. why would you ever do this? the morality question is difficult. on the one hand, the question is, how could you possibly do the stuff at the far end to another human being? particularly by a country that stands for human dignity and human rights? how could you possibly do that? i understand that. it resonates with me to some extent, as it does with a lot of

people. then you look at the other side of the morality point. how could you possibly not do those things when you believe that you need to do them in order to stop plots and save americans from being killed? >> let me put two questions -- these you cannot easily determine. one is, you have to believe that thatperson has information goes right to the point of some eminent threat. you have to accept that read this person has information. you can just go out and torture a bunch of people. one of them may know something. use of thetinuing>> word torture is bothering me. >> enhanced interrogation. we are having this conversation, in part.

there are people who say, the way to get information to befriend the person. that is what the fbi says. >> is a great question. any history of the cia detention the history of the cia detention programs, people inabout 100 cia detention. only a third of those were subjected to enhance interrogation. only three were subjected to waterboarding. there are whole bunch of people that you either judge are talking to you without having to resort to enhanced interrogation or not important enough. do not have information you need to probe for. first of all, there are a whole bunch of people who never -- we never had to go there with. there are a bunch of people were

where the less harsh techniques worked. that is very important. why did the counterterrorism officers who came to george tenet and suggested these techniques, why did they think these would work? >> were these counterterrorism experts within the cia, or were they hired talent that you are paying $80 million to question mark that is where i am going. the officers who came to george were our officers. why did we think the techniques would work? the contractors, discussed in the media, the contractors who the senate committee says has no experience as interrogators,

absolutely true. they have a lot of experience with interrogation. these two guys worked for the u.s. military. they were training for years u.s. soldiers, how to resist these techniques. their job, four years per read their company trained u.s. soldiers how to resist waterboarding. years. was their job for their complete trained u.s. soldiers how to resist waterboarding. a learned from their job that these techniques worked, which is why they suggested them. >> was this information available any other way to any other tactics? could you have somehow used other technique? why was this the only thing that seems available? that is the question people are raising. wayhis did not happen the people think of torture typically. people were not being asked

questions while undergoing enhanced interrogation techniques. interrogation -- >> to get into a complaint state to read another thing was, it worked. it worked. it made them compliant. we got information that we did not have. >> it made them compliant because it was so bad, want to maybe they stopped because they did not want to endure this again. >> that is what i think. abu would tell you it freed him to talk. to resist telling you important information as much as i possibly could. >> why did he have to say that?

why did he say, i have to resist? his own self-esteem? >> this was his way of explaining why he went from noncompliant to compliant. >> he wanted to say to his god, -- >> i resisted as much as i could. because i could not resist anymore, i am now free to talk. that was his psychology. >> i'm not sure there is an answer to this. was there any other way to get this information? could you have been smarter? >> don't know. n some but he walks into your office and says, we need to do this now world's people are going to die, it puts in a different context. ♪ >> are you saying the moral

thing to do was to use this? >> now you are asking another great question.

i have asked myself a lot. people ask me. i have asked myself, what would i have done in george tenet's shoes? the answer is, i don't know. i am glad i did not have to make that decision. i don't know. where i come down on this, at the end the day. i don't think there's anybody that could tell you what they would have done if they were put in his shoes were president bush's shoes. maybe john mccain. maybe, given what happened to senator mccain, maybe i believe him when he says, i would never done this. for the majority of people -- >> you have to believe him. >> for the majority of people, i don't think they could have told you because the circumstances were so unique. i am told that people having

to make the decision in the cia knew exactly what they were being asked to do. on the one hand, what was at stake. they agonized over it. what --l tie you that that there was agonizing at the leadership level inside cia to the point where the leadership said to itself, after they made the decision, we know this is going to come back to haunt us someday. we are going to do it anyway because we think it is the right thing. >> do you think dick cheney agonized over it? did.n't know whether he within the executive branch, there was agonizing. i do know that. because of the history i asked to be written to be written. in that history, you will see there is a meeting of the senior national security team talking

about this. one of the things said to them by the senior cia lawyer at the , guys, i want to make sure everybody understands there is a contradiction here between what we are actually doing any statement by the u.s. that we are treating all detainees humanely. >> because we are not. know, wese, you would are not. everyone in the room said, we understand and we want the program to continue. >> everybody in the room. >> i wasn't there, but it was my understanding, nobody. national room are the security staff and the president? >> one of the interesting things about the history i asked to be and i asked the cia to declassify for me --

>> was there any objection to declassifying it? >> there was no objection. they moved slowly. >> the cia did. it is their own documentary >> you will see there are large blocks of text .n doubt -- inked out most of those ruvell -- revolve around the executive branch. to release that information, you have to go to that information and say, is it ok? have to ask them. i have askedion, for that. they tell me it is coming. the specifics of who is in the room is hidden. i have asked for that to be released. >> why would they hide it? >> is not they are hiding it. it has to go through a different assess. -- process. you said you did not write it and read who did? >> the historian for the cia.

>> what was your role? >> miro was overseeing the role was my overseeing together they report. as part of that, i asked for the history. >> is there some thing called the panetta review? >> i have never seen it. my understanding of it is, it who agreedr panetta to senator feinstein's request that she be given unprecedented access to agency materials to do this report. he put a condition on that. you had to look at the stuff in cia spaces. you cannot take it back to .enate spaces because we were giving them millions of documents to look

at, he asked for an inventory to be done of the documents. a group of officers undertook of inventorying that information and summarizing it. the panetta review, i am told, is just that. an inventory and summary of the information the committee access to. i have never seen it. i don't know what it says. that.go much further than >> the cia report site in internal memo with instructions from the white house to hide the program from: howell because -- powell. >> the only thing i can tell you is, he was briefed. by 2003-2004, he was

briefed. keepy would they want to this from him? why would they not want the secretary of state to know this? >> i don't know the answer. >> he might object to it? >> he did not object at the end of the day. this was a very compartmented program. of the things that happens in the democratic report as they take e-mails. they pull sentences, sentence out of the e-mails and say, look. use the context of the e-mail. -- you lose the context of the e-mail. grabbed allsomebody your e-mails and through a few sentences on the table. look where i am heading.

would say was, i the cia operation i know the best come of the secretary of state was not briefed until a month before. the secretary of homeland security, the fbi director, and the attorney general were not briefed on the bin laden operation on to the day before or the day of. in some cia operations, you keep things tight and read who knew this? >> i do not know who knew. i am waiting for my history to be declassified. >> when might that happened? >> they are tie me a couple of weeks. i want a historian. i want a group of historians. them to come to what they believe the truth to be. that is the first thing. i believe, charlie, history is going to be very unkind to the senate report. the second reason i am here,

is thatto about this, vast majority of my officers, they follow the rules and did what they were directed to by the president of the u.s. there were told by the department of justice it was legal. there were some people who went beyond that. we have heard about them. waving a gun around the head. they exceeded -- >> what happened to them? >> in every case, they were reported to the department of justice for prosecution. the bush department of justice declined prosecution. the obama department of justice did a second look and declined prosecution. >> why? >> because it was not evidence, because they cannot make a case. why the department of justice

declined prosecution in these situations, they do not tell you. charlie,n about this, for my officers who follow the rules. did what they were told by the president. they were told it was legal. i'm going to defend them to my last breath. .hey did not do anything wrong >> john brennan said this. there were certain things done the president did not know about. >> i get asked this question about korea did people do things they should not have done and to do about it? >> things they could do legally but did not tell the president. >> there was nothing not authorized by the department of justice that the president did not know about. nothing on authorized by the department of justice that congress did not know about. there was not anything that was done wrong that congress was not told about.

all these things you hear about, the few cases where people go beyond what they should have done, congress was briefed on every one of those cases as well. one of the things is people hear these things. sleep deprivation. waterboarding. likenfinement in coffin boxes for many days. of ats to slit the throat detainee's mother. >> they fall into one of three boxes. the first box is things that briefed toized and the white house. approved by the white house. approved by congress. that is the first box. sleep deprivation and waterboarding. the second box, are those interrogation techniques that people on rare occasions did

that were inconsistent with what was authorized. what falls in that box? drill to the head. waving a gun around. box, that gets reported to the department of justice and they make a decision about what they are going to do. the third box are things that are not interrogation techniques. rectal hydration. rectal feeding. not done for interrogation, to make sure somebody does not die of dehydration or to make sure they get the nutrients they need. people were pulling out ivs. people were pulling out nasal feeding tubes. those were done for medical purposes. >> of they did not die. >> so they did not die.

if josé rodriguez had asked, should he destroy the tapes, what with the answer have been? >> at the time he destroy the tapes -- >> what did he do? >> he ordered a cable be written to the field, thwarting the destruction of the tapes. -- ordering the destruction of the tapes. opposedctor of cia was to the disruption of the tapes. estruction of the tapes. at the time, the white house counsel, was opposed. who i have great admiration for, a great officer, he knew that. he knew his superiors, dci, dni, and white house counsel were

opposed. he did it anyway. >> should he have been prosecuted for this? >destroying relevant material? >> that was one of the questions that john durham -- attorney asked thatc holder look intom look at, the cia detention and interrogation program. john number of years, durham, special prosecutor, looks into every single cia officerthat the has with the detainee. decides there is only about 100 cases that are interesting to read looks at all of them here he to only do a full investigation into bank cases. -- in two cases. tono case does he decide bring charges. he looks at hose a's decision to

destroy the tapes and decides not to ring charges. josé had been told by the legals that he had the authority to destroy the tapes. you said, what we really need here is to find out what the truth is. not just believe the senate report of the democrats. the cia was opposed to the release of the report? >> i will tell you i was originally opposed to release. now we are going to start talking about consequences in a second. there were consequences to a release of a report and consequences to how bad the report is. i was originally opposed to the release.

once the committee started leaking out its findings, that happened in the spring of 2013, the findings. congress. dcaa lying to congress. -- the cia lying to compass. once things started leaking, i was in favor of getting everything out. >> soon i you believe everything should be out. including the panetta report. >> including the durham report. to do with,ces have what impact do you think this will have on people who work for the caa? ia? and may worry, i'm not sure what i have authority to do? >> there are a set of things i worry about. let's take your consequence first. it may be the most important. cia officers about

questioning their orders and not following through. having doubts. they areers do what told. they follow orders. it is future cia leaders and current leaders that i am worried about. can current cia leadership or future leadership, in good conscience, ordered their officers to do something that might be close to the edge? that they believe might get overturned or questioned 10 years from now? can a cia leader asked their people to do that? that is a tough question. there are things cia is doing today, not going to talk about them. i worry, downgs the road, somebody might say, the there was a legal justification -- was that the

right thing to do? with that moral? -- was that moral? i worry about somebody pulling the rug out from under the cia and the future. >> what is the lesson here? other thanto be, finding truth, the hard questions we need to understand and find answers to in a transparent and informed debate? >> i believe the real issue we should be talking about, the real issue we should be talking about in this case is the morality debate. that is a legitimate debate. was this the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do? senator feinstein believes deep in her heart this was the wrong thing. john mccain believes deeply it was the wrong thing.

i respect that. there are other people on the other side, is that bush, vice president cheney, who believe this was absolutely the right thing. >> and mike morell? where he ist know because he was not involved in it. >> john mccain was not involved. >> i have people who say to me, i know you well enough that if you had been put in that situation, you would have done this. i have people who say, i know you well enough, you would have taken some of the techniques of the table. i don't know what i would have done. i have had people say different things to me, people who know me well. that the debate we should be having. right or wrong. it is an interesting debate. i respect people on both sides of it. >> you think we have been hurt around the world as of this? >> yes.

in particular, there were foreign governments, foreign of foreignd leaders intelligence services who cooperated with us on this program. they are now in legal jeopardy as a result of the report. and as a result of the u.s. president calling this torture to read obama? ex-president obama. -- the u.s. president calling this torture. >> president obama? >> president obama. effect forut the foreign leaders quite bring with us on intelligence. >> thank you. >> this is a huge question. there is a lot we need to know, a lot we need to compare. asot we need to understand

we go forward as a country. think you for joining us. see you next time. ♪ >> yeah, mark halperin?

>> yeah? my prediction -- [speaking russian] ♪ >> hi, sports fans. lighting our menorah tonight. but first, you can hear them chanting in unison. explore, jeb, explore! now to cable news -- fox news.