this is mike huckabee from new york. good night. god bless. and merry christmas. oh, and stay tuned for "justice with judge jeanine." [ applause ] this is a fox news alert. in new york i'm leah gabriel. an apparent hostage situation drags on in a chocolate cafe in australia with no resolution in sight. the tense drama's been going on for about five hours now. as you can see, cops have swarmed around the cafe, and just a short time ago the associated press reported that two people ran out of the building where this situation is unfolding. authorities have not confirmed the number of hostages, but australian media reports there are ten employees, 30 customers being held inside. video shows several people along a window with their hands in the air. it also showed two people holding up what appear to be a black flag with white arabic writing on it. the police commissioner for new

south wales says they're doing all that they can to reach a peaceful resolution and the situation is contained. listen. >> we have not yet confirmed this is a terrorism-related event. we are dealing with a hostage situation with an armed offender, and we're dealing with it accordingly. now, we are ready toes clait should we need to, but at this stage we have a vast amount of resources available to us. the best trained, most prepared and most professional police agency in the nation. and we're looking to resolve this just as quickly as we can. the u.s. has reportedly evacuated our consulate in sydney as a precaution and issued an emergency warning to americans there. the reuters news agency reports officials are urging u.s. citizens to "maintain a high level of vigilance and take extra steps to keep themselves safe." we're also receiving reports that some local schools are on lockdown and not allowing school groups to leave the school grounds. we're following the story very closely, and we'll bring you updates as we get them. i'm leah gabriel.

we now join "the kelly file" already in progress. >> 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 counterinterrogation training at al qaeda camps. still, the senate intelligence report says that critical information could have been obtained without enhanced interrogation. 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 those eits is something, again, that is unknowable. >> brennan also says that enhanced interrogation provided information that led to the capture of osama bin laden. the report disputes that and goes on to 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 justice found there was not enough evidence to file charges against the officers involved. megyn. >> trace gallagher, thank you. in his latest column charles krauthammer called this a

travesty of a report writing that the democrats who put it together are guilty of condescension and hypocrisy. charles is a syndicated columnist, a fox news contributor, and author of "things that matter," which has sold more than a million copies. charles, welcome to you tonight. so the democrats appear to be justifying the release of this report, acknowledging that it may be placing american service personnel in danger, by saying in 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 safe, and now all of a sudden they are appalled by it. and it's not just the hypocrisy. we know, for example, that nancy pelosi, who was the ranking member of the house intelligence committee, was briefed on these interrogations. porter goss, who was the chairman of that committee, has

written that they knew what the cia was doing, they supported it, they funded it. jay rockefeller, who was chairman, the vice chairman on the other side of the senate, 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 blindsided, we knew almost nothing about al qaeda. it was our pearl harbor. and it was a very rational decision to at that point go ahead with interrogation programs for very limited number of high value detainees like khalid shaikh 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. >> what of the argument -- the democrats are not coming out and saying -- we know they were briefed. the evidence has come out that they were briefed. but -- so they're not saying we were briefed and we agreed but now in retrospect we regret we went along with it. they're saying we didn't know, we didn't know. but put that to the side. okay? what about the argument that 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. here's the sound bite. >> it's a badge of honor. every country, every country has engaged in activities somewhere along 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 was a 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 are people who went beyond the limit. there are people who should have been and were reprimanded. but number one, we found the justice department looked into this very extensive investigation under eric holder, and he found no offense worthy of prosecution. but as a matter of principle there is something called the ticking time bomb scenario. essentially, we were in a position where we were vulnerable to some other attack, and i would argue that if you were to give this proposition to anybody, i'll give you the extreme hypothetical. a nuclear device in new york city that'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 when and where and what you're allowed to do? or do you pretend that you're holier than thou? and even in those circumstances you wouldn't do anything? >> so on a sliding scale how close are we to that scenario at the time we're doing these enhanced interrogations? but you've read the report. the senate democrats are saying we could have used less harsh information. >> so megyn, put yourself in the position of the people in authority right after 9/11. you've 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 experiment -- gentle interrogations. we're going to ask khalid shaikh mohammed, would you kindly help us out in learning about the plots that you now have in train, and we'll see if we get hit on 9/11, or would you say we can't conduct an experiment with the lives of thousands of americans, we're going to do everything in our power and we take on the responsibility and it is a deep and a serious one of going beyond the bounds of what we would like to do in order to 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. >> madam speaker, just to be clear, you're accusing the cia of lying to you in september -- >> yes. misleading the congress of the united states. >> and all the -- >> misleading the congress of the united states. instead of mailing everyone my vacation photos,

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fox news chief white house co chief white house correspondent ed henry got national attention this week when he challenged the obama administration on its response to the cia report, in particular the white house, as he confronted them on two key points. ed joins us now from the white house to explain. ed? >> meg, good to see you. the president's been facing real pressure from the left this week about this senate report. particularly democratic senator mark udall calling for the2yñ resignation of john brennan the cia director. other top officials at that agency. basically charging that 5look, the president called these tactics from the bush administration un-american and yet has put in place former bush officials like john brennan, actually promoted him, even though he didn't do anything back years ago to stop these tactics and in fact john brennan said this week he believes these tactics contrary to what the president's saying, brought him good intelligence. then you have the fact that john

brennan repeatedly said this week that the reason the president ban these interrogation tactic was to restore america's moral authority. i pressed him on the contradiction of that statement with the president's policy on drones. >> 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? >> what i'm saying is that is a stark difference than the tactics that are employed by our enemies, who seek to use car bombs to actually target innocent civilians. >> innocent civilians. no one's defending the terrorist tactics. but by your -- >> you're asking about a moral authority. and i think there is a very clear difference. there is a very clear difference between the tactics that are used by terrorists and the counterterrorism tactics that are employed by the united states of america that go to great lengths to protect the lives of innocent civilians. >> and the president may face more heat from the left at the upcoming confirmation hearings of loretta lynch, who's been nominated to replace eric holder as attorney general. the american civil liberties union tells me that they want to know why the president and his

justice department have not pressed criminal charges against former, current cia officials, former bush officials who were involved in these tactics, basically saying they think the president's had it both ways. if he thinks these tactics were wrong, they should prosecute actual crimes, megyn. >> ed henry, thank you. joining me now, alan combes, host of the alan holmes radio show. what about that? hypocrisy by the obama administration? >> absolutely. we have drones -- >> i'll get to the drones. but what about the employing of brennan? they headed up the fbi and the cia. these are important positions. >> not only that. the obama kept on the whole defense skrurt apparatus of the bush administration including the head of the defense administration at the -- >> but could he come out now and condemn them? >> i don't think that's appropriate. and do they even know torture's not taking place?  president has condemned what's in the report, condemns the idea we torture. but how do we know we're still not rendering two black sites? i hope we're not. >> he should know more than we

know about whether it's going on. but why would he come out and say they shouldn't have done this and so 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? >> well, he's certainly playing to his base, his constituency, and to the left. >> there it is, right? >> clearly it's a political move. because he wants to be assuring the people who are his base that this isn't happening and he doesn't support it. >> let's talk about the drones because that's the other thing he got hit on. even if you feel as dianne feinstein and everybody else does in this report, that this was torture and that torture is terrible and should never be used and isn't effective. isn't it better than dying, than being killed by a drone? >> it's an extreme result of torture. people have died as a result -- >> torture is to be drone striekd too. >> when we also use drones to go after american citizens anywhere in the world and we have the authority to say the whole world is a war theater and we can target anybody who we feel is a threat even if they're american citizens without a trial, that's

wrong too. >> ed was on his heels there because you can't split hairs like that and say it's better to kill them than to waterboard them or hold them with their arms above their head. >> i'd rather be dead than have to go through some kind of torture -- >> not me. i'd rather live. >> what kind of condition. living is certainly the preference. no question about it. >> yes. i mean, they're caught in this. they're caught in an impossible place because they haven't been ideologically -- >> the impossible place is where the cia is. of course they're going to lie. they're not going to tell the truth. >> the cia is in favor of all of this i assume. it's ideologically consistent. >> well, for them. but the fact that they support torture, the fact that they -- by the way, they've not negated anything in the report. clearly they're defending -- >> no, they have. oh, yes, they have. >> but they've basically not said we didn't do any of this stuff. >> they have. well, they've chosen a few things and tried to -- >> they've used careful language. >> their main defense is we did it 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 these democrats are like -- >> we had to get up and -- mark you'd jaul as you showed in that clip showed they've lied to congress, they've lied some would say under oath, udall thinks they should be prosecuted for that. >> udall actually wanted the names of the cia operatives revealed and when the security concerns about these poor men and women who were just trying to defend us it must be said, were raised, they said, well, they can get a bodyguard. thanks a lot, senator. >> they shouldn't reveal the s. >> but that just shows you his bias, where he is on this. he's on the crazy far lunatic fringe. >> i think he actually has it right that these people did not tell congress the truth. it's good to have the light of day shine on them. >> so people who could engage in these tactics were trying to keep us safe. why on earth would he want to -- and they went to the d.o.j. and got a blessing and they briefed congress on it. so anything that wasn't disclosed was in addition to that. but for that he wants them prosecuted, he wants them outed, he wants their lives potentially -- >> that's wrong. but look, they didn't keep us safe because of torture. we found out that torture didn't

work. you develop a rapport with your subjects -- >> that's 20-20 hindsight. >> they said they weren't prepared for this kind of interrogation in the first place. >> don't you feel a little uncomfortable junling them so harshly when these are people trying to keep us safe? >> no. >> even "the new york times" was writing about there's 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 said compromise security for safety -- >> you know, he lived before the dawn of the dirty bomb -- >> but he wrought constitution. and the forefathers were very smart. >> now you're on originalist. all right, alan, good to see you. >> thank you. >> some of the top democrats now attack the cia now say that 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 ax to grind with the cia? was that the real motivation behind this? we'll investigate, just ahead.

>> 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. you don't think much about it...

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-- 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,b$ first by th chair of the house, intel committee, porter goss, goss who would later head up the cia. in an op-ed goss writes, "the chairs and ranking members of the senate and house intelligence committees known as the gang of four were briefed that the cia was holding and interrogating high-value terrorists. we understood what the cia was doing. we gave the cia our bipartisan support. we gave the cia funding to carry out its activities." and now listen to what the former director of the cia's national clandestine service told sean hannity back in 2012.

>> you personally briefed nancy pelosi. >> i did. >> about enhanced interrogation. >> we briefed her on 4 september 2002 about the interrogation of abu zubaydah. so we went through the techniques that were used on him, including waterboarding. >> and this wasn't just a courtesy call by the cia. 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, an outspoken liberal who after the capture of khalid shaikh 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 a man who has killed hundreds ólxx hundreds o americans over the last ten years." senator dianne feinstein, a vocal 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, gang of four and the 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 ax 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. so,as my personal financial psychic,

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this is a fox news alert. i'm leah gabriel in new york. an apparent hostage situation in sydney, australia continues to unfold at this hour. president obama getting an update on the situation from homeland security. the number of people being held hostage inside a chocolate shop remains uncertain, but police now say it's not nearly as high as 30, as previously reported. nor do we know how many captures are involved or what their motivation might be. a short time ago at least three people were seen running out of the building where the situation has been unfolding for nearly six hours now. so far no reports of any injuries. police and australian security forces are out in force, though. they say they're treating this

as a "armed incident" and are hoping for a peaceful solution. >> we have not yet confirmed this is a terrorism-related event. we are dealing with a hostage situation with an armed offender, and we're dealing with it accordingly. now, we are ready toes clait should we need to, but at this stage we have a vast amount of resources available to us. the best trained, most prepared and most professional police agency in the nation and we're looking to resolve this as quickly as we can. >> thank you. >> okay? >> some of the hostages have been lined up in the shop's windows arms in the air with hands pressed against the glass. video shows two people holding up what appears to be a black flag with white arabic writing on it. police say they are looking into what is on that flag exactly but they are not classifying this as a terrorist incident at this point. the u.s. has reportedly evacuated our consulate in sydney as a precaution and issued an emergency warning to americans there. the reuters news agency reports officials are urging u.s.

citizens to "maintain a high level of vigilance and take extra steps to keep themsue@x safe." we will keep you updated through the night as the situation develops. this has been a fox news alert. i'm leah gabriel. now back to "the kelly file." mitch cloury is editor of the national review and a fox news contributor. so rich, she's not a fan of the cia. the cia did snoop on her committee and take documents off of their computers that they hacked into. 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 its dispute over the computers, but you don't take that, let that flow over into this inquiry, which really deserved, if you're going to have a final accounting, let's have a dispassionate, accounting. it's what the committee managed to do over the intelligence failure over iraq wmd, which was a very hot-button issue -- >> she's claiming it was bipartisan because she says the republican senators voted in favor of kicking this thing off

initially, this investigation. >> but then they quickly got off the train, in part because they believed it was going to be a prosecutor's brief. i believe 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, we went too far in some cases, the cia was too invested in defending it. but what you wouldn't have gotten is this totalist rejection of the program and this ridiculous pretense that no useful information came from any of, it which i think is completely absurd. >> and which the cia directors are disputing. kirsten, what about the democrats who appear to be engaging? n. some revisionist history about we weren't told, we didn't know, and you look back at the example cited in that trace report, like rockefeller out there saying if we get ksm we should consider shipping him to a country with no laws against torture, i wouldn't take anything off the table, we have no business not getting the information from him and so on. not to mention porter goss who was in these meetings with pelosi and others saying we were told. >> right. well, look, 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 and you know, 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. even if at the time people were scared i don't think that justifies a lot of what -- >> i was just being flip with alan when i said benjamin franklin didn't know about a nuclear -- but the point i was trying to raise with him is it's the whole jack bauer thing. there's 24 hours. you've got the guy. he knows where the ticking time bock is. what would you do? >> it's a tv show, megyn. >> in any circumstances you would be against these enhanced techniques? >> i think while -- i agree with john mccain, who by the way has said that this is a good report and has disputed that feinstein has an ax 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, i mean, this -- 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 has been discredited for only getting one side of the story. britt human hume was on the show saying this is the same thing, there's only one side of the story in this report. >> this report goes out of its way to portray michael hayden, the former cia director, as a liar. in what universe is it a fair process you that 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 of justice department -- >> not michael hayden. not the top-level guys. and the investigation ended at some point and they didn't go back and talk to him. so i think kristen's right -- kirsten's right-o to disaggregate the process from the substance, but the process i think was clearly a travesty. >> why didn't she go? why didn't dianne feinstein and these others go to the cia and the operatives and the people who ran the program and ask them what they say? >> so what their answer is, you know, what you just said, which is that they couldn't because -- for -- because they were under investigation. that's been a little bit debunked. i suspect that 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 so they probably felt we're 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 -- basically making stuff up. i just don't think that they think they're honest brokers in this process. >> i believe they just didn't want to have any significant countervailing information on it. and if you look at when they 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, 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. in what universe, again, is corroboration not an important thing? in journalism do we say, oh, we just have a source that corroborates something we already-v it's not important? no, it's extremely important. >> it's full of 20-20 hindsight, which in a matter like this, you know, can seem unfair to those we charge with keeping us safe who were told by the d.o.j. that they could do this stuff, although feinstein's claim is they went beyond what they were told they could do. panel, thank you both. >> thanks, megyn.

>> thank you. the controversial tact wrikz take neb response to the 9/11 terror attacks. so 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 befall our homeland in recent history. tragedy to fall ♪ tragedy to fall just look at those two. happy. in love. and saving so much money on their car insurance by switching to geico... well, just look at this setting. do you have the ring? oh, helzberg diamonds. another beautiful setting. i'm not crying. i've just got a bit of sand in my eyes, that's all. geico. fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance.

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in the aftermath of 9/11 our nation ached, it cried, and it prayed, and in our pain we pledged to come together as one and 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 that the u.s. used to get information from terror suspects. my next guest says it should have never been released. joining me now, don arias. his younger brother, adam, was killed in the world trade center attacks. thank you very much for being here, don, and our condolences on the loss of your brother adam who was on the 84th floor of tower 2 on 9/11, 2001.

your reaction first to the report being released now at a time when the homeland security department, the pentagon, and others have said it will potentially endanger the lives of american security personnel. >> it's unfathomable for me. i just don't understand it, megyn. the 2,976 americans that are dead, yet we obsess over the treatment of 24r killers. you know, the spirit of national masochism that we're going through with this administration, with this government, and now with dianne feinstein, it just -- it's beyond the pale of hypocrisy. >> what do you make of the comments of some of our guests tonight, alan colmes, kirsten powers, saying we don't sacrifice our values in defense of our country, you don't make that trade-off? >> you have to put things in the context of the times. and those very same people who say they would not sacrifice their values would 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 have to -- 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 her ij and said you don't understand the frame of mind we were in. folks who had been given legal authorization from the d.o.j. he said we were watching these guys behead american citizens. he said we would watch video every day of the 9/11 attacks and see these poor people being forced to choose between gettin÷ burned alive and jumping to their deaths. that's what we had in our head. that's what we were worried about and were trying to prevent. >> you know, it's very easy now years later to say oh, we did so many things wrong and america's so terrible. but given the choice of, you know, saving an american lifeor not, you would have to do what you can. and 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 you went down to gitmo and actually observed some of the trials. i mean, do you feel like there is too much of an effort to bend over backward to protect terrorists? i mean, these are terrorists who we have down there at gitmo playing soccer and who now -- some of these tactics were very brutal. but do you feel like the sort of pendulum has swung too far to the other side? >> oh, it's way too far. could you imagine this happening at, say, nuremberg, for instance? you know, this committed leftist that quite honestly want to bring khalid shaikh mohammed et al. to federal court only so they can have a torture trial, you know, 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, and this is the next best thing to putting america on trial. in defense of ksm. >> when you hear the president come out this week and say 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 it won't be the obama kids who are going to be at risk, and it certainly won't be joe biden's kid who will be at risk. it will be my kid or it will be the guy who drove me here today, just traveling. >> don, all best to you and your family. thanks for coming on. >> thank you so much, megyn. i appreciate it. >> well, howie kurtz says there's a fascinating lesson in how the media covered the release of the cia report, and he joins us next with that. a co. he joins us next with that. go, go, go, go, go! doesn't take a holiday.

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secrets and lies, the blockbuster report on torture blows the lid off some gruesome cia tactics from 9/11. >> the cia torture revealed. >> tonight the senate's scathing report on cia interrogation of terror suspects. >> the release of a highly controversial and in flammable report on cia terror techniques following the 9/11 attacks. >> some samples of media reports earlier this week after the senate released its report of the cia enhanced interrogation techniques. so how did the media do in covering this story? howie airs on sunday mornings. howie, how did they do? >> there were two waves of media

that covered this story. the majority were the sound bites you just played, gruesome terror techniques employed by the cia. banner headline, cia of brutality and deceit. but the other way was raaimed a diane feinstein and the democrats for potentially jeopardizing the lives of everyone around the globe by releasing this report and no study identifying any cia officials. >> i don't know if we have wolf blitzer in the control room, but it was interesting to see diane feinstein go on with wolf blitzer. he pressed her on all the relevant points, and either she wasn't expecting it -- they knew each other a long time -- she either wasn't expecting it or just didn't like it, but he asked her about that point, 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 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 did make herself readily available to other media sources this week, howie. >> that was an important moment because wolf blitzer was asking the senator we all would have liked to ask her, which was, how did you feel? did you contemplate what the potential impact would be? we're talking about techniques the cia notice longer uses that president obama has barred for several years. there were other moments, too, i think were important in the coverage. brett baer very pressing with dick cheney. he pressed him about the nature of some of these techniques. also brian williams of nbc asking haney, the former cia director, what if these techniques were being used against your family? no one is on trial, but i think this kind of journalism helped

hold the players responsible by asking them the tough questions in front of the camera. >> it was interesting to watch on another network some of the coverage and the disdain they had for the tactics and the need to make dleclear to the audienc how gruesome they found the tactics employed. 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 anything was possible. is that responsible? >> 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 special after the iraq war when we did have detainees to try to get information out of them. on balance this was such a big story that i think most media outlets carried conflicting viewpoints. richard engle was a

correspondent, not a commentator, calling this a despicable program. but at the same time, he said it was hard to fault the cia because it was doing what the bush white house wanted. >> there was a lot of hypocrisy going around, and it started at the white house when was critical on this report. at the same time they're droning people. and it was interesting to watch our own press journalist on this, a reporter going head to head saying, how do you claim the moral authority when you guys are droning people and yet you're so critical of the torture program? there was no out for justice there, howie. what did you think of that exchange? >> i think it was an important question henry raised, and it seems to me there is a lot of monday morning quarterbacking some years later, whether it was obama administration people or other critics. john mccain is also supporting this report who says we should not have done this, this is not who we are, this is not about our valuesat does, regardless of where you stand on these

techniques, i think that does wrench some of this out of context. and john brennan, cia director, was trying to have it both ways, calling these defectors abhorrent but at the same time defending what they did. >> 11:00 a.m. sunday, right? >> see you then. tell us what you think. go to facebook.com/thekellyfile and tell me what you think. instead of mailing everyone my vacation photos, i'm saving a ton of time by posting them to my wall. oh, i like that one.

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before we go this evening we wanted to take a moment to remember our friend and before we go this morning, we wanted to remember a friend and colleague, dominic di-natale. he was working in baghdad when it was necessary to report from. he brought back a brick from the building which he later donated to the 9/11 museum in new york. he had an exclusive interview with the doctor who helped confirm bin laden's presence and who remains in prison to this day. dominic's work could be seen on television, and what most of you don't know is how hard he worked behind the scenes to help men and women in uniform. i lost count of the number of times in which he asked for help on our troops, which we gladly provided, but he was the one actively thinking of 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 meighan kelly. this is the kelly file. this is a fox news alert. i'm lela gabriel in new york. an apparent hostage situation drags on at a cafe in sidney, australia, with no resolution in sight. the intense drama has been going on for about six hours now. cops have swarmed the exterior of the cafe and a short time ago, six people ran away from the building where the situation is unfolding. authorities have not confirmed the number of hostages remaining inside but say it's less than 30 as previously reported. the captor remains a mystery. there were people's hands in the air, and also s