CIA director taps retired senator for advice

[Solly Mack]

CIA Director Leon Panetta has tapped a retired Republican senator to help guide him through a Senate Intelligence Committee investigation into the agency's Bush-era interrogation and detention practices.

Former Sen. Warren Rudman of New Hampshire will be Panetta's special adviser for the Senate inquiry. Lauded for his bipartisan approach to politics, Rudman co-chaired a well-regarded counterterrorism commission a decade ago that predicted the United States was vulnerable to a terrorist attack on the homeland.

Panetta's announcement comes a day after the leak of a secret 2006 International Committee of the Red Cross report that some of the CIA's 14 most important prisoners_ alleged members of al-Qaida_ had been tortured in secret prisons.

The Senate inquiry aims to determine exactly what was done by the CIA, under what authority, whether the interrogations elicited useful information and what Congress knew at the time. (CIA director taps retired senator for advice)