'Like other career CIA officers, Carle points to Cheney as epitomizing what went wrong. He said it took a shockingly few number of individuals to recalibrate a nation’s moral compass for the worse.

“A fish rots from the head down. Some people say we were winging it. The agency [CIA] does not wing it. You cannot even sneeze in the field without authorization. The authorization for this came from the White House. None of this would have happened had not an infinitesimally small number of neo-cons decided they had to be tough guys after 9/11.”

Carle says James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, the two psychologists hired to justify the torture methods euphemistically referred to as Enhanced Interrogation Techniques, or EITs, were quacks, pushing unproven theories.

“Everybody [in the CIA] knew these guys were frauds. They had never done intelligence work. They had never done interrogations,” he said. “Our government paid them $81 million and they gave the agency the cover the White House thought it needed.”' (via Steven Hassan)