you can be loquacious. i'm bill o'reilly, please remember the spin stops hereb(ú cause we're definitely looking out for you. it took just 77 minutes to change the course of our nation forever. the day september 11, 2001. nearly 3,000 innocent people murdered at the hands of terrorists.  followed government and intelligence agencies embarked on a global campaign to keep america safe. but this week they came3ib÷ und fire for how they did it. and that's where we begin this "the kelly file" special on the cia report. welcome everyone. i'm megyn kelly. tonight we take a hard look at the senat=0 intelligence report produced by all democrats that has divided the country2íñfç an officials say endangered american service personnel overseas. arguments for and arguments

against so-called enhanced interrogation techniques used by the cia in the fight against al qaeda. but first we must start at the beginning. trace gallagher reports from our west coast newsroom. trace. >> and, megyn, let's begin with the part that everyone including president obama agrees toñmvr t the days and months after 9/11 were unprecedented times. and there were credible reports attacks against the u.s. including reports that osama bin laden was trying to acquire nuclear weapon. six days after 9/11 president bush authorized the detention and interrogation program. the cia admits at the time it had very little if any experience housing and interrogating detainees. in essence agents were learning on the fly. ten months after 9/11 hai)t then-attorney general john a ashcr

ashcroft approved of facial slaps, sleep deprivation, use of diapers and waterboarding. here's cia director john brennan. >> there were no easy answers. and whatever your views are on eits, our nation and in particular this agency did a lot of things right during this difficult time to keep this country strong and secure. >> brennan has acknowledged that some officers used interrogation techniques that had not been authorized and that some officers were not held accountable. but the biggest point of contention is whether eits were effective. keep in mind that former cia officials have gone on the record saying that relationship-building techniques with detainees were not working and it was well-known that detainees had gotten al qaeda camps. still, the senate intelligence report says that critical information could have been obtained without enhanced six former cia directors and deputy directors dispute that. and here's what the current cia

director says. >> there was useful intelligence, very useful, valuable intelligence that was obtained from individuals who had been at some point subjected to eits. whether that could have been obtained without the use of again, that is unknowable. >> brennan also says enhanced interrogation provided information that led to the capture of osama bin laden. the report disputes that and goes onto criticize the cia for the management and brutality of the enhanced interrogation program. it should be noted the report was prepared by a democratic majority staff and not a single cia official involved in the program was interviewed. during enhanced interrogation two detainees died. but in 2012 the department of.5 justice found there was not enough evidence to file charges )(q)s involved. megyn. >> trace gallagher, thank you. well, in his latest column charles krauthammer call thd a

travesty of a report writing that the democrats who put it together areñ4  guilty of c condesention. charles, welcome to you. the democrats appear to be justifying the release of this report acknowledging that it may be placing american service personnel in dangerc,zíu sayingn america we must hold ourselves to account. your thoughts. >> well, that's not what the democratic leadership of the intelligence committees were saying at the time. it seems that they were in support of this until ten years later, many years later when we are now sarukñ& and all of a sun they are appalled by it. we know for example nancy pelosi who was the ranking member of the house intelligence committee was briefed on these interrogation. the chaix#(d÷ of that committee

has written that they knew what the cia was doing, they supported it, they funded it. jay rockefeller, the chairman, the chairman on the other side of the senate intelligence committee. and the point i want to make is not just that this is hypocritical to all of a sudden change your mind and your public stance long after the fact, but it is to say how consensual democrat and republican was the idea that we were hit, we were blind.sfá sided, we knew almos nothingqt,x about al qaeda. it was our pearl harbor. and it was a very rationale n decision at that point to go ahead with interrogation ry of high value detainees like khalid sheikh mohammed who planned the 9/11 attack and who

was planning other attacks after he was subjected to these techniques they broke his will and he was giving seminars to the cia interrogators on the structure of al qaeda telling us an enormous amount that we needed to know. democrats are not coming out and r(t&háhp &hc% we know they were briefed. the evidence has come outy5akg they were briefed. so they're not saying we were briefed and we agreed, but now in retrospect we regret we went along wit. they're saying we didn't know, we didn't know. put that to the side. what about the argument whether you supported it at the time or not it was wrong. joe biden came out this week and was praising america for being so quick in his view to recognize our misdeeds and own them. up >> every country has engaged in activities somewhere down the

line that it has not been proud of. but think about it, name me another country that's prepared to stand up and say this wast7t mistake. >> your thoughts. >> well, i don't agree with that analysis. and i haven't for ten years. when i began to write about it. look, there obviously were abuses. there were people that went beyond the limit. there were people who should have been and were reprimanded. but number one we found the justice department looked into ñextensive investigation under eric holder and he found no offensive worthy of prosecution. but as a matter of principle there is something called the ticking time bomb scenario. essentially we learn a position where we are vulnerable to some other attack, and i would that if you were to give this proposition to anybody, i'll give you the extreme hypothetical, a nuclear device in new york city it's about to go off in an hour and you

capture a terrorist who knows where it is and won't tell you where and you can't evacuate the city. do you think there is anybody who would not advocate using any method, any means at all, to receive that information? the answer is no. so the question is do you acknowledge that and then establish the limits of where and when and what you're allowed to do? or do you pretend that you're hollier than thou and wouldn't do anything. >> on the sliding scale how close are we to that scenario at the time we're doing these enhance ed interrogations. but you read the report, the senate democrats are saying we could have used less harsh techniques and gotten the same information. >> so, megyn, put yourself in the position of the people in authority right after 9/11. you got two choices. the moral high ground is we're going to do gentle interrogations.

we're going to have an experiment. we're going to do only gentle interrogations. we're going to ask khalid sheikh mohammed would you kindly help us out in learning about the plots that now now having trained. and we'll see if you get hit on 9/11. or we'll say we can't conduct the experiment with the lives of thousands of americans. we're going to do everything in our power and we take on the %b ponsibility and it is a deep and a serious one of going beyond the bounds of what we would like to do in ordersafjf safeguard the nation. you do not conduct an experiment in gentle interrogation when the lives of thousands of americans are at stake. >> all good questions. and a sobering thought. charles, it's great to see you. thank you. >> thank you. well, the white house backed the release of this report saying we needed to admit our mistakes, as i mentioned, and take the moral high ground.

up next, see what happens when ed henry challenged that argument. and some of the top democrats now attacking the cia say they were never told about these enhanced interrogations. the cia says that is a lie. the investigation into who is telling the truth just ahead. >> madame speaker, just to be clear, you're accusing the cia of lying to you. >> yes, misleading the congress of the united states. misleading the congress of the united states. [ female announcer ] hands were made for talking.

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fox news chief white house national attention this week the obama administration on its response to the cia report. ouse asicular the% sq)uq points. ed joins us now from the white house to explain. ed. >> megyn, good to see you. the president's been facing real about thisjqf#h senate report particularly democratic senator mark udall$ç$$÷ calling for the resignation of john brennan, the cia director, other top officials at that agency the president called these tactics from the bush administration un-american and yet@ officials like john brennan thoughgsfjñ he didn't do anythi back years ago to stop these tactics. in fact, john brennan said this week he believes these tactics contrary to what the president is saying brought in good intelligence. then you have the fact josh earnest repeatedly said this

week the reason the president banned these interrogation tactics was to restore america's moral authority. i pressed him on the contradiction of that statement with the president's policy on i drones. listen. >> we've seen many cases around the world where u.s. drones have killed innocent civilians. despite those safeguards. so how do you have moral authority? >> so what i'm saying is it's a stark difference than the ]qñ tactics employed by our enemy who seek to use car bombs to actually target innocent civilians. >> no one's defending the terrorist tactic, but by your tactic -- >> but you're asking about moral authority. >> the moral authority -- >> there's a very clear difference between the tactics counterterrorism tactics bz america that go to great lengths to protect the lives of innocents. >> and the president may face more heat from the left at the upcoming confirmation hearings of loretta lynch who may :foñree ericz%]ñ holder -- they want tow

why the president and his justice department have not pressed criminal charges against former current cia:83 former bush officials involved in these tactics basically saying they think the president's had it both ways. if he believes the tactics are wrong, they should prosecute actual crimes. >> thank you. alan, what about that hypocrisy by the obama administration? >> we have drones and we've actually -- >> i'll get to the drones in a second. but what about they head up the fbi and cia. these are pretty important positions. >> not only that, but the whole defense securityé9÷ apparatus o the defense administration. >> how can he come out now and condemn them? >> i don't think that's appropriate. even though torture is --7 condemns we torture. how do we know we're still not rendering to black site sns. >> he ended that program.

so he should have -- he should know more than we know about whether or not it's going on. but why would he come out and say they shouldn't have done this and is on and so forth and the democrats so up in arms about this when these two guys have been given powerful posts in this administration? >> he's certainly playing to his base, his constituency. clearly it's a political move because he wants to be assuring the people who are his base. >> let's talk about the drones. that's the other thing. even if you feel as dianne feinstein and everybody else does in this report that this was torture and is terrible and isn't effective, isn't it better than dying? >> i mean, people have died as a result. >> it's torturous for these drone strikes. >> we go after -- we have the authority to say the whole world is a war theater and we can target anybody who"sv2 we feel threat even if they're american too. >> josh earnest was on his heels

there because you can't really split hairs like that andit's bo waterboard them or hold them with their arms above their head. >> rather be dead than go through some kind of torture. >> not me. not me. >> who knows what kind of condition. living is certainly the preference. >> yes. i mean, they're caught in this. they're caught in an imponl place because they haven't been id logically. that's ideologically different. they support torture -- by the way, they have not negated anything in the report. clearly they're defending themselves -- >> oh, yes they have. >> basically said we did not do any of this stuff. >> they've chosen a few things and tried to provide perspective. their main defense is and they knew about it. we briefed them. not only did they say it was

okay, they said you're too risk averse, you should be doing more. and now the democrats are like i don't remember that. >> we have to get up and lie to cofs"zls as mark udall shows they've lied to congress, some would say under oath, udall thinks they should be prosecuted. >> udall wanted the names of the operatives revealed and when the security concerns about these poor men and women who are just trying to defend us must be said, can get a bodyguard. thanks, senator. fzñ hey shouldn't reveal the names. >> he's on the crazy far, far left. >> i think that he actually has it right that these people did not tell congress it's good to have the light of day shine on them. >> why on earth would he -- and they went to the doj skb got a blessing and briefed congress on it. th disclosed was in addition to that. but for that he wants them prosecuted, he wants them outed. >> look, they didn't keep us safe because of torture.

we found out torture didn't work. >> okay, that's #ocñ20/20. >> they said they weren't prepared for this kind of interrogation. >> don't you feel a little uncomfortable these people trying to keep us safe. there was a fear there might be a nuclear bomb set off in the united states. >> we don't compromise our values for the sake of anything. benjamin franklin compromise security for -- >> he lived before the dawn of the dirty bomb -- >> he@7b> now you're an originalist. that's interesting. we'll talk about that next time. all right, alan. good to see you. >> thank you. >> some of the top democrats now attacking the cia now say they were never told about these enhanced interrogation techniques. the cia says that's a lie. up next, who's telling the truth? and why are we now hearing that senator dianne feinstein, the woman in charge of this report may have an axe to grind with the% rp(ip r(t&háhp &hc% we'll investigate just ahead.

>> they went into our computers illegally to take out information not once, not twice which i believe is a separation of powers violation. your hepatitis c.forget

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-- i repeat, we were not told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used. >> that was then-speaker of the house nancy pelosi back in 2009 denying that she or her colleagues had ever been briefed about the cia's enhanced interrogation techniques put into place after september 11th. the folks over at the politifact

website investigated that claim and rated it false. so when did democrats find out about this program, and how much did they know? trace gallagher live in our west coast newsroom with that. trace. >> megyn, the exact date is september 4th, 2002, that's when nancy pelosi and other members of the house and senate intelligence committees were briefed on enhanced interrogation techniques. and that fact has been triple checked and double confirmed, first by then-chair of the house intel committee porter goss who would later head up the cia. in an op-ed goss writes "the chairs in the ranking member of the house and senate intelligence committees known as gang of four were briefed that the cia was holding and interrogating. we gave the cia our bipartisan support. we gave the cia funding to carry out its activities."

>> you personally briefed nancy pelosi? >> i did. >> about enhanced interrogation? >> we briefed here on 4 september 2002 about the interrogation of abu zabaydah. >> this wasn't just a courtesy call. u.s. law requires the cia to inform top congressional leaders about covert activities. one of the ranking members notified was west virginia senator jay rockefeller who after the capture of khalid sheikh mohammed in 2003 said we should be "very, very tough with him" and that "we have no business not getting that information." i wouldn't take anything off the table where he's concerned because this is the man who has killed hundreds and hundreds of americans over the last ten years. senator dianne feinstein, a local critic of enhanced interrogation claims she didn't learn about the interrogation

techniques until years later. and this week former cia director michael hayden backed that up on america's newsroom. listen. >> senator feinstein did not, the congress, the gang of four and gang of eight, knew this from the very beginning. >> so as michael hayden acknowledges some did not know. plenty of others did. megyn. >> which begs the question of course because dianne feinstein had no right to know earlier than when she ascended to her position on the intel committee. those who were in those top positions were told. and now she's pretending like that didn't happen. that's at least how it seems based on the evidence. trace, thank you. well, the democrats went with this report despite repeated requests from secretary john kerry and others to at least delay its release out of concerns for the safety of our american military personnel. so now we're hearing questions about whether the woman in charge, senator feinstein, has an axe to grind here with the cia. we'll take a look at that next. plus, a 9/11 family member joins

us to speak for those he says are not being heard in this debate. his powerful message ahead. why do i cook? because i make the best chicken noodle soup. because i make the best chicken noodle soup. because i make the best chicken noodle soup. for every way you make chicken noodle soup, make it delicious with swanson®. celebrate what's new, the bigger, better menu at red lobster! with more of what you love! try our newest wood-grilled combination! maine lobster, extra jumbo shrimp, and salmon! so hurry in! and sea food differently.

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or have flu-like symptoms or sores. don't start humira if you have an infection. talk to your doctor and visit humira.com this is humira at work live from america's news headquarters i'm robert gray. a major storm flooding parts of southern california. firefighters coming to the rescue of several people trapped in a swollen river near los angeles. mudslides also forcing dozens of people from their homes. so far the system has been blamed for two deaths in oregon. the bad weather is now moving into nevada and arizona. the new york police department beginning its internal investigation into the chokehold death of eric garner. the probe had been on hold while a grand jury decided whether the officer who placed him in the chokehold would face criminal

charges. that officer was not indicted, but it's possible he and six other cops could face departmental charges such as excessive force or abuse of authority. possible penalties range from reprimands to dismissal. i'm robert gray, now back to "the kelly file." the cia spends $40 million to prevent us from issuing this report. that is fact. we did not spend the money. we used our staff to do this report. they went into our computers illegally to take out information not once, not twice but three times. which i believe is a separation of powers violation. >> that was senate intel chair dianne feinstein suggesting in the wake of her cia report that the agency might have been trying to sabotage this project.

but as we learn more about why senator feinstein says she released this thing, we're also hearing growing questions about whether she has an axe to grind with the cia. kirsten powers, rich lowry editor of -- fox news contributor. she's not a fan of the cia. the cia did snoop on her committee and take documents off of their computers that they hack sbood. so she's got a right to be ticked off. but do you think that's the motivation here? >> yeah. as you say, she may be right about everything the cia did wrong in this dispute over the computers, but you don't let that flow over into thissin k y inquiry. over the intelligence failure over iraq wmd, a very hot button issue -- >> she says that the republican senators voted in favor of kicking this thing off

initially, this investigation. >> right. then they quickly got off the train. and in part because they believed it was going to be a prosecutor's brief. and, megyn, i think if you had this as a bipartisan report you'd still get a lot of these conclusions, the cia wasn't prepared enough, it didn't control this program enough, it went too far in some cases, the cia was too invested in defending it. but what you would have gotten is this ridiculous pretense that no useful information came from any of it, which i think is completely absurd. >> in which the cia directors are disputing. kirsten, what about the democrats who appear to be engaging in revisionist history that we weren't told, we didn't know. look back at the example cited in that trace report like rockefeller out there saying we should consider shipping them to a country with no laws against torture, we have no business not getting the information from him and so on not to mention porter goss in these meetings with pelosi and others saying we were told. >> if they're lying that's

obviously wrong. and i do think -- i disagree with the overall criticism of, i think, you know you brought this up earlier where you were saying to alan this is 20/20 hindsight. i disagree with that because i think we have sort of our values and our principles and our laws that should be followed no matter what's going on. so even if at the time people were scared, i don't think that justifies a lot of what was in this report. >> i was just being flip about it when i said benjamin franklin didn't know about a nuclear -- the point i was trying to raise is the jack bower thing. there's 24 hours, you got the guy, he knows where the ticking time bomb is, what would you do? >> it's a tv show, megyn. >> in any circumstances you would be against these enhanced techniques? >> i agree with john mccain who by the way has said that this is a good report and it's disputed that feinstein has an axe to grind and has disputed a lot of things the republicans are saying. i agree with him that it doesn't

really give you good actionable intelligence. we hear constantly that it did, but i don't think if it does on occasion give that to you that it's worth it. and i think that a lot of what they were doing -- look, i appreciate the complaints that people weren't interviewed for this and perhaps the report could have been better. but what's in the report is pretty factual and it's pretty concerning. and i don't believe that a lot of that was necessary to protect the united states. >> you and i have been talking this past week about the uva alleged gang rape and the rolling stone article which has now been discredited. we don't know whether there was a rape, but the article's been discredited. for only getting one side of the story. brit hume on earlier saying this is the same thing. >> right. look at a little slice of it. this report goes out of its way to betray michael hayden, the former cia director as a liar. in what universe is it a fair process you spend all this time and all this money and malign a

man's reputation like that and don't even call him up? and don't even quote him? >> she says she couldn't do it because the justice department investigation into these people. >> not michael hayden, not the top level guys. and the investigation ended at some point and then they didn't go back and talk to him. so i think kirsten's right to disaggregate the substance from the process. >> why couldn't she go? why couldn't dianne feinstein and these others go to the cia and operatives and ask them what they say? >> so what their answer is what you just said is they couldn't because they were under investigation. that's been a little bit debunked. i suspect they didn't do it because they feel that the cia has lied a lot and that the cia has an interest in lying and protecting themselves. and that they, you know, they probably felt were going to have to put what they're saying side by side with these official documents and you're going to have people saying that, you know, basically making stuff up.

i just don't think that they think that there are honest brokers in this process. >> i believe didn't want to have any significant countervailing information on it. when you look go through case by case on the question of whether we actually got useful actionable intelligence, it does read like a lawyer's brief. and they apply these ridiculous standards. if someone gave us something under harsh interrogation, well, we don't know. if you hadn't interrogated him so harshly, you might have gotten the same information. and they discount incredibly things that we got that corroborated information we already have. and what universe, again, is corroboration not an important thing. in journalism do we say we just have a source that corroborates something we have that's not important? no, it's extremely important. >> it's 20/20 hindsight in a matter like this could seem unfair with those charged with keeping us safe told by the doj they could do this stuff. feinstein claims they went beyond what they were told they

could do. thank you, both. >> thank you. up next, what do the families of the victims think about this new report and its findings? we'll speak with a man who lost his brother in the towers next. >> the events of 9/11 will be forever seared into the memories of all americans who bore witness to the single greatest tragedy to fall our homeland in recent history. with contour detect technology that flexes in 8 directions for the perfect shave at any angle. go to philips.com/new to save up to $40. innovation and you. philips norelco. motor trend's 2015olf car of the year. so was the 100% electric e-golf,

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in the immediate aft9/11 ou nation ached, cried. and we came together to do what we could to prevent osama bin laden and his killing machine from ever carrying out another attack against our beautiful country. never again, we vowed, never again. >> that was cia director john brennan thursday saying the u.s. would do anything in its power to prevent another 9/11 from happening again here in america. the promise coming days after a controversial cia report was released detailing the enhanced interrogation tactics the u.s. used to get information from terror suspects. my next guest says it should have never been released. joining me now, don aria, his younger brother adam was killed in the world trade center attacks. thank you very much for being here, don. our condolences in the loss of your brother adam who was on the 84th floor of tower 2 on

9/11/2001. your reaction to the time when others have said it will potentially endanger the lives of american service personnel. >> it's unfathomable for me. i just don't understand it, megyn. there are 2, 976 americans that are dead, yet we obsessed over the treatment of their killers. you know, the spirit of national masochism that we're going through with this administration and with this government and now with dianne feinstein, it's beyond the pale. >> what do you make some of our comments tonight saying we don't sacrifice our values in defense of our country? that you don't make that trade-off? >> you have to put things in the context of the times. and those are the very same people who say they would not sacrifice their values will probably be the very first people to go looking for a cia agent or a soldier or someone in

the military to protect them. you know, we didn't know. we didn't know where the next attack would come from. we had to do things that were very desperate at the time because they were desperate times. >> one of the cia operatives spoke to our own catherine herridge and said you don't understand the frame of mind we were in. we, folks who had been given legal authorization from the doj. he said we were watching these guys behead american citizens. we would watch video every day of the 9/11 attacks and see these poor people being forced to choose between getting burned alive and jumping to their death. that's what we had in our head. that's what we were worried about and were trying to prevent. >> it's very easy now years later to say, oh, we did so many things wrong in america. so terrible. but given the choice of saving an american life or not, you would have to do what you can. i have to tell you this morally superior intellectual elite that

dictates to us what our values should be at a moment of national survival is just hypocritical. >> i know that you went down to git mo and actually observed some of the trials. do you feel like this is too much of an effort to bend over backwards to protect terrorists? these are terrorists we have at gitmo playing soccer. some of these tactics were very brutal, but do you feel like the pendulum swung too far to the other side? >> it's way too far. could you imagine this happening at nourmburg, for instance. this leftist quite honestly want to bring khalid sheikh mohammed to federal court only so they could have a torture trial. that was thwarted by the american people and congress and 9/11 family members. so being denied their torture trial in manhattan, now they release this report. this is the next best thing to putting america on trial. >> when you hear the president come out this week and say, you know, we're america and when we

do something that's wrong, we admit it and we take accountability for it. your thoughts on that. >> i think we should take accountability for it, in private. i mean, they had an i.g. investigation. these are covert operations. you're putting american lives at risk. and won't be the obama kids at risk and certainly won't be joe biden's kid at risk, it will be my kid or the guy who drove me here today it will be his kid at risk while serving overseas in uniform or just traveling. >> don, all the best to you and your family. thanks for coming on. >> thank you so much, megyn. i appreciate it. so howie kirts says there's fascinating revelation how the media covered the report. he joins us next with that. what can your fidelity greenline do for you?

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the blockbuster report on torture blows the lid off some gruesome cia tactics post-9/11. >> the explosive report that we never knew the cia torture reveal. >> tonight, the senate scathing report on cia interrogation of terror suspects. >> the release of a highly controversial and inflammatory report on cia interrogation techniques following the 9/11 attacks. >> a few samples there of the media reports earlier this week after the senate released its report on the cia's enhanced interrogation techniques. so how does the media do in covering this story? how art kurts is the host of media buzz. howie, how'd they do? >> well, there are two waves of media outrage here, megyn, that kind of collided over the story. one was captured by the sound

bites you just played, horrifying details about gruesome interrogation techniques employed by the cia, "new york times" banner headline, but the other wave, jose -- dianne feinstein and democrats for potentially jeopardizing the americans around the globe for releasing this report and the one-sided nature of this story not interviewing any cia officials. >> it's interesting, i don't know if we have the wolf blitzer sound bite folks in the control room, but it was interesting to see dianne feinstein go on with wolf blitzer. i watched the interview. i thought he did a great job. he pressed her on all the relevant points and she either wasn't expecting it. they said earlier in the interview they'd known each other a long time. she either wasn't expecting it or just didn't like it. but he asked her about that point. about what about endangering people's lives. i want to play it for the audience. watch. >> if americans are killed as a result of this report and they tell you that, i would assume

you would feel guilty about that? >> i would feel very badly, of course. i mean, what do you think, wolf blitzer? >> it went on from there. she didn't much like his questions, but she didn't make herself really available to other media sources this week, howie. >> yeah, that was an important moment because wolf blitzer was asking the senator the question i think we all would have liked to have asked her which is how would you feel, did you kind of play what the potential impact would be. we're talking after all about techniques the cia no longer uses that president obama has barred for several years. there are other moments too that i think were important in the coverage here, megyn. bret baier's interview with dick cheney and brian williams on nbc asking michael hayden the former cia director how would you feel if these techniques were used against your family. nobody's going to be prosecuted here and this is not a trial, but i do think this kind of journalism helped hold the players accountable by asking them tough questions in front of the camera.

>> it was interesting to watch on another network, some of it coverage, and the disdain they had for the tactics and the need to make clear to the audience how gruesome they found the tactics employed without -- in a vacuum. without taking them back to 3,000 americans had just been killed, there was a ticking time bomb, the "new york times" was citing officials to talk about their fear of a nuclear bomb going off in the united states of america. it was a time when we believed responsible? possible. >> i think you have to explain and remind the audience, the readers, the viewers, about how on edge this country was. with good reason after 9/11 and especially after the iraq war when we had detainees to try to get information out of. i think most media outlets carried conflicting viewpoints. but i was stuck nbc's richard engel who is a correspondent, not a commentator, calling this a despicable program.

but at the same time he said it's hard to fault the cia because it was doing what the bush white house wanted. >> there's a lot of hypocrisy going around obviously and it starts at the white house, which has been critical. at the same time they're droning people. it was interesting to watch our own ed henry press josh earnest on this, reporter going head-to-head with josh earnest saying how do you claim moral authority when you guys are droning people and yet you're so critical of torture program. there was no out for josh earnest there, howie. what did you think of that exchange? >> i think it was a very important question ed henry raised. and it seems to me that there is a lot of monday morning quarterbacking some years later whether it's obama administration people or other critics. look, john mccain is also supportive of this report who say we should not have done this, this is not who we are, this is not about our values. i think that does regardless of where you stand on these techniques, i think that wrenches this out of context.

and john brennan, cia director, was trying to have it both ways calling abhorrent but at the same time defending what his agency did. >> all right. it's been an interesting week. howie has it all covered sunday morning 11:00 a.m., right? >> right. >> see you then. bye, howie. >> thanks, megyn. >> let us know what you think. go to facebook and follow me on twitter. we'll be right back. here's a question for you: when electricity is generated with natural gas instead of today's most used source,

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wanted to take a moment to remember our friend and colleague who came to fox in 2007 and wound up working in baghdad when iraq was a very challenging place to operate. he was relentless when going after a story. not only did he manage to report from the pakistani compound where bin laden was killed, he also brought back a brick from the building which he later donated to the 9/11 museum in new york. dominic even landed an exclusive interview with the doctor who helped us confirm bin laden's presence and remains imprisoned to this day. dominic's hard work could be seen on television, but many viewers did not see what i'll remember most about him was how hard he worked behind the scenes to help our men and women in uniform. i lost count of the number of times he asked for help with something he was working on for our troops, which we of course gladly provided. but he was the one actively thinking about how to make the lives of our service members a little better. we were sorry to learn he took his own life on wednesday after

developing some serious health problems. he was just 43 years old. dominic was a great friend, a patriot, and we will miss him. thanks for watching everyone. i'm megyn kelly. this is "the kelly file." welcome to "hannity." this is a fox news alert. chaos on capitol hill last night as the house narrowly passed a government bill to avoid a shutdown just three hours shy of the midnight deadline. fox's own ed henry is standing by tonight at the white house with all of today's political fallout. ed. >> well, sean, still a lot of drama waiting to see if this is going to finally get through the senate. the white house anticipates it will, but as you know they're still facing criticism from liberal senator elizabeth warren of massachusetts talking about slowing this down, blocking it because of rollbacks and wall street reforms. it also frustrated a lot of house democrats. there was a revolt for the president. even nancy pelosi, his long-time ally voting against the president's interest again