Senior Intel Republican: Only a few detainees were waterboarded

Sen. Saxby Chambliss (Ga.), the senior Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, says the furor over the Central Intelligence Agency is overblown and notes only three detainees were waterboarded at Guantanamo Bay.

{mosads}Chambliss argued that the vast majority of the 789 detainees who passed through the prison camp at the American naval base in Cuba were not subjected to the controversial tactic, which simulates drowning.

“You got to remember there were 789 detainees sent to Gitmo. Three of them — three out of 789 — were waterboarded,” he said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

One of the prisoners, Abu Zubaydah, a mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, was subjected to waterboarding 83 times in August of 2002.

“There were 766 actionable intelligence reports written from Abu Zubaydah. Common sense and logic would tell you that some of those reports were the result of statements Abu Zubaydah made after he went through the EIT program,” Chambliss said, making reference to enhanced interrogation techniques.

Chambliss noted that the Justice Department under former President George W. Bush and President Obama did not find that any of the CIA’s tactics violated the law.

“The Bush administration Department of Justice even determined that these enhanced interrogation tactics were legal, they were authorized by the Department of Justice. That’s the scenario under which these individuals carried out these interrogations,” he said.