During the May 11 edition of Fox News' On the Record, Fox News contributor Karl Rove falsely claimed that “the director of National Intelligence under President Obama acknowledges that these [harsh interrogation] techniques yielded vast amounts of information that allowed us to stop these attacks.” Rove added, “And if you do that -- if you stop using these techniques ... it makes the world a less safe place for America and our allies.” In fact, while Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair wrote in an April 16 letter that "[h]igh value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qa'ida organization that was attacking this country," Blair did not claim that information gleaned from harsh interrogations prevented any specific attacks, and he explicitly rejected Rove's claim that ceasing to use those techniques “makes the world a less safe place for America and our allies.” Indeed, in an April 21 statement, Blair said the use of the techniques was not in the country's best interest: “The bottom line is these techniques have hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security.”

As Media Matters for America has documented, Fox News contributor and Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol has also falsely suggested that Blair supports the use of harsh interrogation methods.

From the May 11 edition of Fox News' On the Record with Greta Van Susteren:

GRETA VAN SUSTEREN (host): All right, switch gears. The former vice president, Dick Cheney, over the weekend and the last couple weeks, has been talking about how under the new administration that -- and I don't mean to put words in his mouth, but I guess I'm going to do so now -- is that we're at greater risk under the new administration than the old administration. How do we know that?

ROVE: Because he understands intimately the kinds of changes that have been made and how these are going to affect our ability to collect actionable intelligence that allows us to break up these plots before they are launched. And I frankly agree with the vice president on this.

I think Vice President Cheney has made a reasoned, thoughtful series of observations about how doing things -- well, let me give you just one example. Taking, for example, the memoranda about the enhanced interrogation techniques and making them public has been a value to our enemy. They have -- it has served, frankly, I think, as a recruiting tool.

They can now take these memoranda and go to prospective recruits and say this is the worst that the enemy, the United States, would ever do to you, and they've even foresworn these things. We can help you prepare you to deal with these things, but even the enemy is so weak they're not going to use these techniques on you. And it's given them a tool to make them more attractive to recruit people, and -- you know, this kind of thing is harmful to us over the long haul.

I mean, if the enemy thinks that we're going to deal with them toughly and severely, and they've got to know -- they've got to know that these methods have yielded an enormous amount of intelligence, which has allowed us to break up their networks. I mean, even the director of National Intelligence under President Obama acknowledges that these techniques yielded vast amounts of information that allowed us to stop these attacks.

And if you do that -- if you stop using these techniques, and -- it gives -- it makes the world a less safe place for America and our allies.