The Most Dangerous Act

That’s what Marc Thiessen calls it in today’s Washington Post, explaining the damage to national security from the release of CIA interrogation methods. Of particular interest, the administration has given highly valuable information to al Qaeda while withholding valuable information from us:

But just as the memo begins to describe previously undisclosed details of what enhanced interrogations achieved, the page is almost entirely blacked out. The Obama administration released pages of unredacted classified information on the techniques used to question captured terrorist leaders but pulled out its black marker when it came to the details of what those interrogations achieved.

Yet there is more information confirming the program’s effectiveness. The Office of Legal Counsel memo states “we discuss only a small fraction of the important intelligence CIA interrogators have obtained from KSM” and notes that “intelligence derived from CIA detainees has resulted in more than 6,000 intelligence reports and, in 2004, accounted for approximately half of the [Counterterrorism Center's] reporting on al Qaeda.” The memos refer to other classified documents — including an “Effectiveness Memo” and an “IG Report,” which explain how “the use of enhanced techniques in the interrogations of KSM, Zubaydah and others . . . has yielded critical information.” Why didn’t Obama officials release this information as well? Because they know that if the public could see the details of the techniques side by side with evidence that the program saved American lives, the vast majority would support continuing it.

Add to that the fact that the news media have largely ignored the information in the report that details how intelligence was gathered successfully using those methods.

Did those techniques make us safer? Obama says unequivocally no, but the evidence indicates otherwise. Even if reasonable minds could differ on that question, there is no doubt that releasing the information has made us more vulnerable.