McMullin did not know about the torture, says Kelsey Koenen Witt, a spokesperson for McMullin’s campaign.
“Though he was aware of ‘black sites’ where some captured terrorists were held, he never visited any of the installations and was unaware of the enhanced interrogation program,” Koenen Witt writes in an email. “He was never involved in the program and was never read into it.”
That’s subtly different from how McMullin explained things when he was running for president six years ago. Then, in an interview with Buzzfeed, McMullin said he was “aware of” the CIA’s torture program, though he similarly denied being involved.
“I was aware of it by virtue of where I was,” he said. “I was serving in a place that was the kind of place where people entered that program from that place, but I never participated in it, I never went to a black site, never met with a detainee.”
The shifting explanation is at once subtle and telling.
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