Bush Administration Blocked Waterboarding Critic

ABC News: Daniel Levin, then [2004] acting assistant attorney general, went to a military base near Washington and underwent [waterboarding] to inform his analysis of different interrogation techniques.

Watch the video here.

After the experience, Levin told White House officials that even though he knew he wouldn't die, he found the experience terrifying and thought that it clearly simulated drowning. Levin then began writing a memo forming the administration's legal position on torture.

...Sources said he was forced out of the Justice Department when Gonzales became attorney general.

From Keith Olbermann:

Study after study for generation after generation, sir, has confirmed that torture gets people to talk, torture gets people to plead, torture gets people to break, but torture does not get them to tell the truth.
Of course, Mr. Bush, this isn’t a problem if you don’t care if the terrorist plots they tell you about, are the truth or just something to stop the tormentors from drowning them.
If, say, a President simply needed a constant supply of terrorist threats to keep a country scared…

...Now if that’s what this is all about — you tortured not because you’re so stupid you think torture produces confession — but you tortured because you’re smart enough to know it produces really authentic-sounding fiction — well, then you’re going to need all the lawyers you can find because that crime wouldn’t just mean impeachment, would it, sir?
That crime would mean George W. Bush is going to prison.

...in the seven years of your nightmare presidency, this whole string of events has been transformed from its beginning as the most neglectful protection ever, of the lives and safety of the American people into the most efficient and cynical exploitation of tragedy for political gain in this country’s history.

Here's the entire Special Comment: