CIA Director Says Intel From Waterboarding Led to Bin Laden Raid

On the role of interrogation:

BRIAN WILLIAMS, "NBC NIGHTLY NEWS": Can you confirm that it was as a result of waterboarding that we learned what we needed to learn to go after bin Laden?

LEON PANETTA, CIA DIRECTOR: Brian, in the intelligence business you work from a lot of sources of information and that was true here ... It's a little difficult to say it was due just to one source of information that we got ... I think some of the detainees clearly were, you know, they used these enhanced interrogation techniques against some of these detainees. But I'm also saying that, you know, the debate about whether we would have gotten the same information through other approaches I think is always going to be an open question.

WILLIAMS: So finer point, one final time, enhanced interrogation techniques -- which has always been kind of a handy euphemism in these post-9/11 years -- that includes waterboarding?

PANETTA: That's correct.

KATIE COURIC, "CBS EVENING NEWS": One of President Obama's first acts was to outlaw enhanced interrogation techniques. Now, some of these were used on detainees who provided information that led to bin Laden's whereabouts. Given that, do you think that the use of these techniques should, in fact, be reevaluated?

PANETTA: No, I really don't. You know, I think what we had here were a lot of streams of intelligence that came together. And I think it's probably going too far to say it all ties to just one source of information that-- we received. We were looking at a lotta lines of-- information, going back a long way.

COURIC: Having said that, some valuable information did, in fact, come from enhanced interrogation techniques.

PANETTA: Obviously, there was some valuable information that were derived through those kinds of interrogations. But I guess the question that everybody will always debate is whether or not those approaches had to be used in order to get the same information. And that, frankly, is an open question. Read more at cbsnews.com.