After Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) appeared to explain the value of so-called “enhanced interrogation” tactics to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) this week, McCain’s daughter Meghan stepped in.
“My father doesn’t need torture explained to him,” Meghan McCain tweeted at Cheney on Thursday. The senator, who fought in the Vietnam War, was held in solitary confinement and tortured while imprisoned in Hanoi for more than five years.
The senator had tweeted earlier in the week in response to news that President Donald Trump had nominated CIA deputy director Gina Haspel to lead the agency. Haspel was reportedly involved in a controversial CIA program in the early 2000s that involved torturing detainees. She allegedly was also involved in destroying evidence of such interrogation techniques.
McCain called the United States’ use of torture against detainees “one of the darkest chapters in American history.”
Cheney responded to McCain by defending the CIA’s use of “enhanced interrogation” and saying it had “saved lives, prevented attacks.”
Cheney’s father, Dick Cheney, was the vice president under George W. Bush. The Bush administration used the enhanced interrogation program to fight al Qaeda after the 9/11 attacks.
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