WASHINGTON — Outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta yesterday became the highest-ranking Obama administration official to admit that the United States used torture to help find Osama bin Laden.
Panetta was responding to a question on the movie “Zero Dark Thirty,” which depicts prisoners being waterboarded by US agents in an effort to find out where bin Laden is hiding.
“Some of it came from some of the tactics that were used at that time, interrogation tactics that were used,” Panetta told Chuck Todd on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“The real story was that in order to put the puzzle of intelligence together that led us to bin Laden, there were a lot of pieces out there that were a part of that puzzle.”
“The fact is we put together most of that intelligence without having to resort to that,” Panetta said. “I think we would’ve gotten bin Laden without that.”