Former Democratic Sen. Bob Kerrey, who served on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence for eight years, blasted the committee’s Democrats for their report on the CIA’s enhanced interrogation program on Tuesday.
According to Kerrey, the Democrats "started out with the premise that the CIA was guilty and then worked to prove it," and criticized them for failing to interview the CIA operators involved in the program.
When Congress created the intelligence committees in the 1970s, the purpose was for people's representatives to stand above the fray and render balanced judgments about this most sensitive aspect of national security. This committee departed from that high road and slipped into the same partisan mode that marks most of what happens on Capitol Hill these days. […]
The Senate's Intelligence Committee staff chose to interview no one. Their rationale - that some officers were under investigation and could not be made available – is not persuasive. Most officers were never under investigation and for those who were, the process ended by 2012.
Republicans on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence also released a report on Tuesday rebutting the claim that the CIA’s program was ineffective and arguing that the intelligence gathered through it saved lives.