Responding to criticism of the movie “Zero Dark Thirty,” Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said Sunday that though some intelligence from torture interrogations led to the killing of Osama bin Laden, the United States would have ultimately found the al Qaeda leader without torture.
“The real story is that in order to put the puzzle of intelligence together that led us to bin Laden, there was a lot of intelligence, there were a lot of pieces out there that were part of that puzzle,” Panetta said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “Yes, some of it came from some of the tactics that were used at that time — interrogation tactics that were used. But the fact is, we — we put together most of that intelligence without having to resort to that.”
“I think we could have gotten bin Laden without that,” Panetta said.
