[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 7]
[Senate]
[Pages 10125-10126]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            MORNING BUSINESS

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                  NOMINATION OF GENERAL DAVID PETRAEUS

  Mr. UDALL of Colorado. Mr. President, I will support the nomination 
of GEN David Petraeus to be Director of the Central Intelligence 
Agency. Over the many years that he has served our country, he has 
proven himself time and again as a man of integrity, who will act in 
the best interests of the nation and--in this new position--the men and 
women of the CIA.
  As one of the finest military leaders of our time, General Petraeus 
has been instrumental in the fight against Islamic extremism, playing 
key roles as Commanding General in Iraq and Afghanistan and as the 
Commander of U.S. Central Command. He has developed great expertise and 
deep knowledge of the threats we still face in South Asia and the 
Middle East. He will now take that expertise and knowledge to the CIA, 
where he will use different tools to face those and many other national 
security challenges around the world.
  Despite my support for the general, I would be remiss if I did not 
add that I am concerned about a statement he made in answer to a 
question I asked during his Senate Intelligence Committee nomination 
hearing on June 23, 2011. General Petraeus has been on the record time 
and again explaining that torture does not fit with American values, 
that it creates new enemies, and perhaps most importantly, that it 
isn't effective. Yet he did not give a simple answer at the hearing 
when I asked him whether he sees torture any differently in a CIA 
context than in a military context.
  Instead, he suggested that there might be a ``special case'' in which 
enhanced interrogation techniques might be an acceptable last resort 
option, for example, in the ``nuclear football'' scenario, where the 
government has in custody an individual who has placed a nuclear device 
under the Empire State Building, and only he has the codes to turn it 
off.
  I understand the general's point that such a scenario--in which there 
is specific knowledge of imminent devastation--would be the exception, 
not the rule, and that it is a hypothetical one that might never occur 
in reality. He is certainly not the first to raise the ticking timebomb 
question in this context, nor is he the first to suggest that 
policymakers consider addressing this question in statute.
  Perhaps it is time for Congress to weigh in definitively on the CIA's 
interrogation techniques. Today, only President Obama's executive 
order--not a law--prohibits the CIA's use of coercive interrogation, so 
it's possible that a new administration might decide to move this 
policy in a different direction. As I told General Petraeus at last 
week's hearing, I look forward to a debate and discussion with him 
about this important issue.
  And as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I look forward 
to working with CIA Director Petraeus on our country's many 
intelligence and national security challenges.

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