By Simon Clark
David Petraeus, the former U.S. Army general who resigned as
director of the Central Intelligence Agency in 2012, said he
opposes torture of detainees and hopes the Senate report closes "a
painful chapter" for the U.S.
Mr. Petraeus, who now works for New York-based private-equity
firm KKR & Co., was speaking at a conference for Dutch pension
fund trustees in Rotterdam on Thursday.
"If you want information from a detainee you become his best
friend," he said.
KKR is led by cousins Henry Kravis and George Roberts and
manages $96 billion. It has led some of the world's largest
leveraged takeovers, including consumer goods company RJR Nabisco
and Texas power company Energy Future Holdings Corp. KKR is
expanding into new countries and continents, this year making its
first investment in Africa, buying an Ethiopian rose farm.
Mr. Petraeus, 62, is chairman of the KKR Global Institute, a
unit that advises KKR's executives on geopolitical and
macroeconomic trends. He also oversees environmental, social and
governance considerations in KKR's investments. He is among former
politicians and military officers who have worked for
private-equity firms after leaving public office. Former U.S.
general Wesley Clark is a senior adviser at Blackstone Group.
The former four-star general led U.S. forces in Iraq and
Afghanistan in a military career that spanned more than three
decades. He resigned as director of the CIA after little more than
a year in the post in November 2012, after the Federal Bureau of
Investigation uncovered an extramarital affair with his biographer,
Paula Broadwell.
A Senate investigation into the CIA's detention and
interrogation of terrorist suspects after the Sept. 11, 2001
attacks was published on Tuesday. It concluded that the CIA's
techniques weren't effective and that the program was "far more
brutal" than the agency had acknowledged. A group of former CIA
directors including George Tenet, but not including Mr. Petraeus,
responded to the Senate report by writing that interrogations
yielded information that saved lives
Write to Simon Clark at simon.clark@wsj.com
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