Book review: Hard Measures

THE retired top CIA officer who ordered the destruction of videos showing waterboarding says he was tired of waiting for bureaucracy to make a decision that protected American lives.

THE retired top CIA officer who ordered the destruction of videos showing waterboarding says in his new book that he was tired of waiting for Washington's bureaucracy to make a decision that protected American lives.

Jose Rodriguez, who oversaw the CIA's controversial and once-secret interrogation and detention program, also lashes out at President Barack Obama's administration for calling waterboarding "torture".

"I cannot tell you how disgusted my former colleagues and I felt to hear ourselves labelled 'torturers' by the President of the United States," Rodriguez writes.

The chapter about the interrogation videos adds few new details but the book represents Rodriguez's first public comment on the matter since the tape destruction was revealed in 2007.

Critics accused Rodriguez of covering up torture and preventing the public from ever seeing the brutality of the CIA's interrogations.

Supporters hailed him as a hero who acted in the best interest of the country in the face of years of bureaucratic hand-wringing.

The tapes were filmed in a secret CIA prison in Thailand.

Rodriguez writes critically of Obama's counter-terrorism policies today. With no way to capture and interrogate terrorists, Rodriguez says, the CIA relies far too much on drones.

Unmanned aerial attacks alienate America's foreign partners and make it impossible to question people in the know, he says.

Hard Measures
Jose A. Rodriguez Jr
Simon and Schuster, $37.99