WASHINGTON, 6 December 2005 — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice surprised European critics tough on US tactics in the war on terror yesterday, saying intelligence gathered by the Central Intelligence Agency has saved both US and European lives.

Commenting for the first time to the uproar over reports of secret CIA-run prisons in European democracies, Rice said the United States “will use every lawful weapon to defeat these terrorists.” Reading out a statement at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland before leaving on a trip to Europe, Rice said: “We cannot discuss information that would compromise the success of intelligence, law enforcement, and military operations. We expect other nations share this view.” Rice refused to answer the principal question of whether the United States has CIA-operated secret prisons there.

President Bush has consistently denied that the US engages in torture in the war against terrorists, but former CIA political analyst Kathleen Christison disagrees:

“It seems clear the US does torture, and has tortured. Bush says we don’t torture, but I think that’s a lie, and I think Rice is also lying, and her denial is patently ridiculous.

“You don’t get the information you’re seeking when you torture someone because they will tell you anything to stop the torture,” said Christison, who worked16 years at the CIA. Even more importantly, she said, was “the moral issue.”

“The very idea that the US would torture for any reason, including to get intelligence, is morally outrageous.”

But Christison said the CIA is not only to blame.

“The CIA does what it does under the direction, and with the knowledge, of — if not the president himself, then people who are acting in the president’s name. I don’t exonerate the CIA, but the buck stops with [Vice President] Richard Cheney and probably with George Bush himself.”

By suggesting that the US worked with the co-operation of European nations, the US may now force European governments to explain to their people whether they violated national or international laws, which could make Rice’s stops in Europe even more difficult.

“It is up to those governments and their citizens to decide if they wish to work with us,” Rice said, “and decide how much sensitive information they can make public.”

US officials have signaled that Rice — during her trip to Berlin, Bucharest, Romania, Kiev and Brussels — will privately urge the Europeans to back off of the issue.

Rice is also expected to formally respond to an official request by British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, on behalf of European Union governments, that the White House answer the allegations about alleged human rights violations engineered by Washington.

Last month, US papers reported the CIA had set up a network of eight secret detention centers in Eastern Europe and other regions to use for the interrogation of terrorist suspects. The CIA is also alleged to have made secret flights through Britain, The Netherlands, France, Sweden, Denmark, Ireland and other EU countries.

A probe by an international human rights group believes the CIA flights possibly transporting such detainees made stops in Poland, Romania and other countries. Poland is a member of the European Union, and Romania is expected to become a member in 2007. If such clandestine jails do exist, they would be blatant violations of EU treaties extolling the value of liberty and human rights.

The International Covenants on Human Rights ban any arbitrary arrests or detentions, and says holding people in jails kept secret from the general public is an act of inhumanity intolerable anywhere in the world.

This rule is especially true for the EU, where countries have repeatedly declared the critical importance of human rights and humanitarian issues in the wake of its citizens’ profound soul-searching about the Nazi camps of World War II.