Admin: Memo report benefit outweighs cost

WASHINGTON, April 23 (UPI) -- The benefit of releasing U.S. Justice Department memos on interrogation techniques outweighs the cost to U.S. national security, the White House said Thursday.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney and other critics of the Obama administration have said the release of the documents has threatened the nation's safety. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters, "(If) you look at the totality of the impact of this on our national security" the benefit outweighs "the cost to our national security."

Gibbs said the "existence of and the use of these techniques became a recruitment tool and a rallying cry for terrorists all over the globe."

"And, as I mentioned ... the use of these techniques makes it harder to protect our own troops, and that that is the -- those are the reasons in total why this makes our country less safe," he said.

Cheney has asked for the public release of government documents he says will prove the harsh CIA interrogation techniques -- regarded by many as torture but defended by others as short of torture -- proved effective in preventing attacks. Gibbs said "virtually every intelligence official who objectively looked at this" would say some information derived through such methods was helpful and some was "made up."

"Nobody could ever likely tell you that any information derived couldn't also have been derived from another means," he said.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday he approved the release of memos. Gates, a former CIA director, said during a visit to Camp Lejeune, N.C., he believed the memos would become public whether released openly or not, The Washington Post reported.