Obama Says America is Safer, not Weaker
President Obama, blasted by President Bush’s former CIA director for releasing four memos outlining U.S. interrogation techniques, said Monday that the United States has to be above torture. “What makes the United States special … is precisely the fact that we are willing to uphold our values and our ideals even when it’s hard, not just when it’s easy, even when we are afraid and under threat, not just when it’s expedient to do so,” he said during a tour of the CIA headquarters. On Sunday, Michael Hayden, who headed the agency from 2003 to 2009, said that Obama had made America less safe by letting enemies of the United States see the limits of our interrogation methods. Obama countered that America will be stronger as a result. He cited the “exceptional circumstances that surrounded these memos, particularly the fact that so much of the information was [already] public. … The covert nature of the information had been compromised.” He also noted that he put an end to the controversial interrogation techniques described in the memos because the United States “is stronger and more secure” when it can deploy both power and the “power of our values, including the rule of law.”

Ex-CIA Chief Blasts Obama

Former CIA Director Michael Hayden is the second high-profile Bush administration official to accuse President Obama of making America less secure. Hayden, who served under Bush from 2006 to 2009, said that Obama has exposed the United States to potential terrorist attacks from al-Qaeda by releasing four memos detailing U.S. interrogation techniques. “What we have described for our enemies in the midst of a war are the outer limits that any American would ever go to in terms of interrogating an al-Qaeda terrorist. That’s very valuable information,” Hayden said during an appearance on Fox News Sunday. Read more.