Bush on torture: Waterboarding helped prevent attacks on London

In Decision Points, George Bush describes waterboarding as 'highly effective', saying it provided 'large amounts of information'
George Bush
George Bush signing the USA Patriot and Terrorism Prevention Reauthorisation act in 2006, which renewed the 2001 USA Patriot act. Photograph: Ron Edmonds/AP

Even before the fighting began after 9/11, the Bush administration decided it needed new powers to use against the enemy and, some Americans would say, US citizens. The USA Patriot act became law in October 2001, sweeping away limits on the sharing of intelligence between agencies such as the FBI and CIA and giving the government considerably more intrusive powers to spy on Americans.

In the book Bush says the use of waterboarding on three suspects helped prevent attacks on Heathrow airport, Canary Wharf and a number of US targets at home and abroad.

Bush said it didn't go down well with his wife. "As a former librarian, Laura didn't like the idea of federal agents snooping around libraries," he writes. "I didn't either. But the intelligence community had serious concerns about terrorists using library computers to communicate." The former president said the intrusive legislation helped break up potential terror cells across the country.

Then came the prison at Guantánamo. Bush says the administration considered bringing alleged terrorists to the US, but "holding captured terrorists on American soil could activate constitutional protections they would not otherwise receive, such as the right to remain silent. That would make it much more difficult to get urgently needed intelligence," he writes.

He paints Guantánamo as a relative paradise, with prisoners well fed, kept in "clean and safe shelter" with access to DVDs and a library. He says the "humane treatment" of detainees at Guantánamo met the requirements of the Geneva conventions, even though terrorists are not entitled to such protections.The former president says those protections did not prevent what he describes as "enhanced interrogation techniques", which he insists are not torture. On waterboarding: "No doubt the procedure was tough, but medical experts assured the CIA that it did no lasting harm," he writes. "I knew an interrogation programme this sensitive and controversial would one day become public. When it did, we would open ourselves up to criticism that America had compromised our moral values. I would have preferred that we get the information another way. But the choice between security and values was real."

Bush describes waterboarding as "highly effective", saying it provided "large amounts of information".