Trent Franks Quotes
If we have to do enhanced interrogation on terrorists, then I can live with that.
Franks, Trent. Interview on CIA Interrogation. CNN, Cable News Network, 2014.
Bush claimed he did not remember the conversation. His incoming National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, was also briefed about bin Laden by the Clinton anti-terrorism director, Richard Clarke. The Bush Administration ignored the warnings until bin Laden struck on 9-11
The President and Vice President wanted places to interrogate suspected terrorists where they did not have to obey American law, where the press could be kept away from the prisoners, and there would be no way that a prisoner could get the assistance of attorneys and American Judges could not have any jurisdiction. A number of the prisoners had been picked up by mistake, or were accused by people who had scores to settle, and if the CIA had made a mistake, the public could not find out. Further, they wanted to torture certain prisoners and wanted places where they could use their “enhanced interrogation”—see {637536}--without the public finding out.
The German Green party was traditionally a left wing party, very concerned with civil rights and generally opposed to repressive use of police and military. However, faced with terrorism, the party would consider what under circumstances other than terror would have been unthinkable.
36 days later, September 11, he did strike. See {617467} for some of the specific contents. The memo was kept secret by the Bush administration until public pressure as a result of the 9-11 Commission hearings forced the declassification and release. At that point it became clear that there was no reason that the memo could not have been released much earlier except that it was embarrassing. See {637530} and {637533} for two other Bin Laden Warnings that Bush and his team ignored.
In the War on Terror, some CIA officers had gotten a George W, Bush Administration green light to torture some captured terrorists using a torture technique known as “water boarding”—a practice for which American military personnel were court marshaled and convicted in the Philippine War. The torture sessions had been videotaped, a normal procedure with CIA interrogations. The fact of the torture had leaked and a national scandal ensued with Americans on both sides of the question. President Bush and his Vice President publicly stated that the United States does not torture. Rodriguez then ordered the tapes destroyed. Later he gave his reasons after the Obama Administration decided not to investigate the matter or determine which, if any, CIA officials might have broken the law, by wither doing the torturing or destroying evidence—“obstructing justice.”
Trent Franks is a former American politician and businessman who served as the U.S. Representative for Arizona's 8th congressional district from 2003 to 2017 (numbered as the 2nd district from 2003 to 2013). He is a member of the Republican Party. Congressman Franks served on the Judiciary and Armed Services Committees and was Vice Chairman of the Strategic (Nuclear) Forces Subcommittee, and Chairman of the House Subcommittee on the U.S. Constitution.
