Jose Rodriguez, the former CIA official who led U.S. counterterrorism operations after the 9/11 attacks, says he's glad the nation's premier intelligence agency is finally getting the credit it deserves for finding and aiding in the killing of Osama bin Laden.
Speaking with Fox News' Sean Hannity Monday, Rodriguez said he appreciated the fact the Navy Seal Team 6 member who helped kill bin Laden gave due credit to the agency, and particularly the CIA analyst who aided in the operation, in his book "No Easy Day" written under the pseudonym Mark Owen.
"I am glad that Mark Owen gave credit to the CIA and to everybody, targeting analysts in particular. It was an incredible effort by the CIA," Rodriguez told Hannity.
But Rodriguez, as he has in the past, took issue with what he described as the Obama administration's abandonment of the interrogation tactics the CIA used that in the end made it possible for the Navy Seals to take out the al-Qaida leader.
He warned that without a strong interrogation program, "the intelligence community would have its hands tied behind its back" in the event of another "mass casualty attack" similar to the September 11 terrorism strikes on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
"We are going to regret it," he said, noting, "We basically don't have an interrogation program now."
Rodriguez, the author of his own book "Hard Measures: How Aggressive CIA Actions After 9/11 Saved American Lives," said it took "10 years of effort to find Osama bin Laden" and that by the time President Barack Obama assumed office in 2008 "we were already hot on the trail of bin Laden, thanks to information obtained from our black [interrogation] sites."
He said Obama deserves his share of credit for continuing to pursue the al-Qaida leader, "but to spike the ball and assume sole responsibility and credit [in his re-election campaign] for killing bin Laden, I think, it's not right."
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