Carly Fiorina defended the use of waterboarding under President George W. Bush’s administration, arguing that the technique “kept our nation safe” in an interview with Yahoo News published on Monday morning.
“I believe that all of the evidence is very clear — that waterboarding was used in a very small handful of cases [and] was supervised by medical personnel in every one of those cases,” she said. “And I also believe that waterboarding was used when there was no other way to get information that was necessary.”
The Senate Intelligence Committee last year released a report detailing the Bush administration’s use of torture. The investigation revealed gruesome details about the torture tactics used by the CIA, including waterboarding, and the committee concluded that torture was not an “effective” way of getting information from prisoners.
During her interview with Yahoo News, Fiorina also spoke about her work on a CIA external advisory board and her belief that the government should be more open about its intelligence practices.
“One of the things that I advised the NSA and CIA to do is to be as transparent as possible about as much as possible — because transparency reassures people,” she said. “Intelligence agencies that engage in covert activity need to be very creative about how they can be transparent while not jeopardizing our personnel and sources and methods.”
