José Rodriguez, the former director of the National Clandestine Service of the CIA and 2012 Free Beacon Man of the Year, gave Charlie Rose and the CBS morning crew a quick history lesson Wednesday.
In the interview, Rose asked whether the CIA interrogation program was effective or necessary.
"Let me give you a little history lesson on this," Rodriguez said. "At the time of 9/11, we had general information that an attack was coming, but we didn't know when, where, how--and the reason was because the informants, the agents that we had were on the periphery of the leadership, so we really did not have any inside information."
"Once we captured Abu Zubayda and realized that he was the key to letting us know about the upcoming second wave of attacks, we decided to go with an enhanced interrogation program and once that happened we started to learn about the organization.
"We got information that added to our base information. We were able to capture and kill the entire Al Qaeda leadership that attacked us on 9/11. We were able to protect the homeland. We were able to save lives, and that is the bottom line."