CIA Hayden defends CIA's use of rectal rehydration

Former CIA director Michael Hayden on Thursday defended the agency’s use of rectal rehydration, calling it a “medical procedure.”

The back and forth with CNN’s Jake Tapper was in reference to the Senate’s report released this week that describes interrogation techniques the CIA employed in the years after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.


When Tapper began talking about specific torture methods and mentioned the use of rectal rehydration, Hayden interrupted the host, saying, “Stop, that was a medical procedure that was done because of detainee health.”

Hayden said officials saw dehydrated detainees and had “limited options” and that using an intravenous needle would be “dangerous with a non-cooperative detainee.”

( From POLITICO Magazine: Michael Hayden is not sorry)

Tapper retorted, “But puréeing hummus and pine nuts?”

“Jake, I’m not a doctor and neither are you, but what I am told is this is one of the ways that the body is rehydrated, these were medical procedures,” Hayden said.

“You’re really defending rectal rehydration?” Tapper asked.

Hayden responded, “What I’m defending is history.”

According to Hayden, rectal rehydration was only performed five times and “each time for the health of the detainee, not part of the interrogation program, not designed to soften him up for any questioning.”

Instead, he blamed Senate Democrats for exaggerating the use of the technique.

( Also on POLITICO: Feinstein fact-checks Brennan on Twitter)

“The committee, the Democrats on the committee, have used one half-ass unwarranted comment in one email to justify the story that you have now bought, hook, line and sinker, that we use this to abuse other human beings,” Hayden said.

Hayden repeatedly stood by his assertion that rectal rehydration was “not a method of interrogation.”

“I don’t even know what to say,” Tapper said, adding, “I’m just dumbfounded.”