To the best of our knowledge, based on a look, none of it came as a result of harsh interrogation practices," says Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), chair of the Senate Intelligence committee. "We're going to find out all that there is to find out about it, but at the present time, I think it was good intelligence — a piece here, a piece there, put together."
Abusive interrogations ended more than five years ago, secret CIA prisons are no longer in use, and the Obama administration has promised not to revive them. At the White House on Tuesday, presidential spokesman Jay Carney forcefully challenged the idea that the successful tracking of bin Laden's courier shows that it may be time to rethink interrogation and detention policies. "Reporting from detainees was just a slice of the information that's been gathered by incredibly diligent professionals over the years," he says. "It simply strains credulity to suggest that a piece of information that may or may not have been gathered eight years ago somehow directly led to a successful mission on Sunday."
The man known as Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti was apparently never caught himself. But over the years, more and more information was gathered about him, some of it during the infamous enhanced interrogations in secret CIA prisons. Could he have been the courier who finally led the U.S. to bin Laden's hiding place? It is not clear. But the idea that knowledge of him was gleaned through interrogations has revived the debate about whether brutal interrogations actually yield results. Former Vice President Dick Cheney made that argument Monday, as he did former Bush aide Karl Rove. But others are not convinced that critical information leading to dimmable filament led bulb bulb came from enhanced interrogations.