Deputy National Security Advisor John Brennan appeared on Morning Joe this morning and countered the claim that has been widely spread since Osama Bin Laden's death on Sunday: namely that waterboarding resulted in intelligence that lead U.S. forces straight to Osama's door.

From today's big NYT story on how Osama's capture came about:

"It wasn’t until after 2002, when the agency began rounding up Qaeda operatives — and subjecting them to hours of brutal interrogation sessions in secret overseas prisons — that they finally began filling in the gaps about the foot soldiers, couriers and money men Bin Laden relied on.

Prisoners in American custody told stories of a trusted courier. When the Americans ran the man’s pseudonym past two top-level detainees — the chief planner of the Sept. 11 attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed; and Al Qaeda’s operational chief, Abu Faraj al-Libi — the men claimed never to have heard his name. That raised suspicions among interrogators that the two detainees were lying and that the courier probably was an important figure."

It was a claim that was repeated earlier this morning by Rudy Giuliani, who told the Morning Joe crew that Bin Laden's capture justified the controversial interrogation techniques approved and that people would probably be very uncomfortable if they knew what had gone into getting this intelligence.

Not so, says Brennan. When directly asked by Mika whether waterboarding was involved he responded:

Not to my knowledge. The information that was collected over the course of nine years or so came from many different sources: human sources, technical sources, as well as sources that detainees provided. It was something as a result of the painstaking work that the analysts did. They pieced it all together that lead us to the compound last year and resulted in the very successful operation Sunday.

Emphasis mine because that phrasing allows for some grey area (in an ever-shifting story) and one wonders if the Obama administration is perhaps splitting some hairs here (the waterboarding that lead to this specific information reportedly occurred in 2007 under Bush's watch).

As the excitement over Bin Laden's death dies down this will likely be the where most eyes turn not the least because it gives Bush supporters something to gloat over. Additionally, Obama campaigned against waterboarding in 2008, and he will likely be called on by elements of the right to speak in more detail about whether this was a successful method that should be continued. Video below.

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