>> 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 brutality of its interrogation methods. john brennan responded in a press conference. >> i have stated our reviews indicate the program produced useful intelligence that helped the u.s. thwart attack plans, capture terrorists, and save lives. 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.

>> though directly involved in 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 to me a time for a conversation. >> i was given this report. i read it. >> how many pages? >> 6000 pages. the summary and findings and 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 were cia's interactions with the executive branch. and cia's 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. they produce a report, in my 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 website, something the former directors and deputy directors have put together, it shows the cia 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. briefings on the enhanced 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. torture, in the context we are discussing it, is a legal term. it doesn't matter what you think is torture or what i think is

torture. it is what the lawyers think is torture. and the department of justice. on multiple occasions, they have said these techniques are not torture. they do not rise to the legal 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 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. >> they say, a, that was not 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 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 eit's. 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. they 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 when i was acting director, does not say that eit's were 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 found the leader of this, 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. i was not part of this program.

i was not even aware of it until july of 2006. when i took on the -- >> where 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 responsibility 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? and then what information did we have after? i had a chart compared that show this. the information we got after.

i can tell you that my view, my personal view, is there is a significant difference between 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 told us about a guy named abu. it was two detainees who after they were subjected to eit's who

gave us very specific information about abu. one individual told us he is one of bin laden's careers. that was the most specific information we had -- couriers. >> this was after enhanced interrogation. >> after. >> all you knew before was -- >> he was an important guy. he was hanging out with ksm. the mastermind of 9/11. he is somehow associated with bin laden. the information we got after made it clear he was bin laden's courier.

the question was, if we never got that specific information, would we still have 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 to eit's, it led us to take this 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. there are two detainees who by the time they are asking

questions about abu, have already been subjected to eit's 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 abu. one of them, ksm -- >> khalid sheikh mohammed, the man who ordered the attack. >> the man who conceptualized, sold it to bin laden. he told us abu 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. >> they help you get ksm.

>> 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. the other guys very senior, too. 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. and then ksm goes back to his cell and we are monitoring the conversations. he tells everybody he can reach, and, don't talk about the 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

officers believe eit's made a difference. now we get to the mississippi, was it necessary -- the 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 question,, was it necessary for abraham lincoln to suspend habeas corpus to win the civil war? was it necessary for the u.s. to drop atomic bombs on japan? we will never know.

of course 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. >> you have to understand the context. the word they use his context. give us a sense of the context. mike hayden is saying, if we had not done these things, and there had been a successful attack six months later, there would be hell to pay. people would have said, why did you not know this? what is the context? >> context is important. >> who is pushing and demanding. >> let me tell you how this played out.

the context is important. i was therefore part of this. in 2001, i was president bush's daily briefer. george tenet and i would go to the oval office every morning. i was personally aware of the context and the feeling 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? >> it was again less specific. it was more like going into 9/11 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. credible intelligence that 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. >> 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? in that context, we capture abu. >> how do we capture him? >> in pakistan, with the help of the pakistanis. he is injured.

>> he is shot on the roof or something? is shot in a firefight that leads to his capture. he talks at first, and then 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 george tenet and say, we are not getting information 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. the conversation was with the 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. >> there were 10 things, he said 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 somebody by the lapels to get their attention -- somebody by the lapels to get their attention all the way to water

billing. sleep deprivation, one of the most effective. waterboarding, very effective. they ranged. approved them. he approved the specific techniques. he said so in his book. this is where you get to the morality question. legal 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 this person has information that goes right to the point of some eminent threat. you have to accept that this person has information. you can just go out and torture a bunch of people. one of them may know something. >> your continuing use of the 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. in the history of the cia detention programs, there are about 100 people in 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 the less -- 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. that was their job for years. their complete trained u.s. --company 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. >> this did not happen the way people think of torture typically. people were not being asked questions while undergoing

enhanced interrogation techniques. >> the enhanced interrogation -- >> to get into a compliant state. 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 stop -- 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. he said, i had 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. when 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 of 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 have 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. >> i will tell you 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? >> don't know whether he did. 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 time is,, guys, i want to make sure everybody understands there is a contradiction here between what we are actually doing any and the statement by the u.s. that we are treating all detainees humanely. >> because we are not. >> because, you know, we 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. >> in the room are the national security staff and the president? >> one of the interesting things about the history i asked to be written, 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. even though it is their own documentary. >> you will see there are large blocks of text inked out. most of those 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. that information, i have asked 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 process. you said you did not write it. who did? >> the historian for the cia. >> what was your role?

>> my role was overseeing their 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 was director panetta who agreed 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 senate 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 the task 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. i can go much further than that. >> the cia report site in internal memo with instructions from the white house to hide the program from colin powell. >> the only thing i can tell you is, he was briefed. in 2004, by 2003-2004, he was briefed. >> why would they want to keep

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. one of the things that happens in the democratic report as they take e-mails. they pull sentences, sentence fragments, out of the e-mails and say, look. you lose the context of the e-mail. think of if somebody grabbed all your e-mails and through a few sentences on the table. look where i am heading. the other thing i would say was, the cia operation i know the

best, 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. >> who knew this? >> i do not know who knew. i am waiting for my history to be declassified. >> when might that happened? telling me a couple of weeks. i want a historian. i want a group of historians. i want 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,

talking to about this, is that for the vast majority of my officers, they follow the rules and did what they were directed to by the president of the u.s. they 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. my passion about this, charlie, 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. they 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. >> confinement in coffin like boxes for many days. threats to slit the throat of a detainee's mother. >> they fall into one of three boxes. the first box is things that were authorized and briefed to 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. that second 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. >> so they did not die. >> so they did not die. if jose rodriguez had asked, should he destroy the tapes,

would the answer have been? >> at the time he destroyed the tapes >> what did he do? >> he ordered a cable be written to the field, ordering the destruction of the tapes. the director of cia was opposed to the destruction of the tapes. at the time, the white house counsel, was opposed. jose, 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 general eric holder asked that john durham look at, look into the cia detention and interrogation program. for a number of years, john durham, special prosecutor, looks into every single interaction that the cia officer has with the detainee. decides there is only about 100 cases that are interesting. looks at all of them here he to only do a full investigation in two cases. in no case does he decide to bring charges. he looks at joe's decision to

destroy the tapes and decides not to bring charges. jose had been told by the lawyers that he had the legal 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. lying to congress. the cia lying to congress . 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. >> consequences have to do with, what impact do you think this will have on people who work for the cia? 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. i don't worry about cia officers questioning their orders and not following through. having doubts.

cia officers do what they are 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. there are things i worry, down the road, somebody might say, the there was a legal justification -- was that the right thing to do? was that moral?

i worry about somebody pulling the rug out from under the cia and the future. >> what is the lesson here? what ought to be, other than 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? >> he doesn't know where he is 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 f 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

leaders, and leaders of foreign 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. >> president obama? >> president obama. i worry about the effect for 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. a lot we need to understand as we go forward as a country.

thank you for joining us. see you next time. ♪

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>> from pier 3 in san francisco, welcome to "bloomberg west," where we cover technology, innovation, and the future of business. i'm emily chang. u.s. stocks fell in a whirlwind day that sought to rallies than initially be at a seven-week low. the drop coming after the rate increase failed to stop the rubles slide. the nasdaq 100 slid 1.6%. a taliban attack on an army school in the northwestern pakistani city left children dead in the most violent strik