BENTON HARBOR, Mich. -- Enhanced interrogation techniques authorized by the Bush administration for use on prisoners may have been controversial, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Thursday night, but they were legal.
President George W. Bush told Rice and others to do everything to protect the United States, she said, but not if it was against the law.
"We were determined that what we would do was legal" said Rice, addressing the Economic Club of Southwestern Michigan. "I know the president. The president would not ask anybody to do anything illegal."
In one of her first public speaking appearances since leaving office Jan. 20, Rice said at Lake Michigan College's Upton Hall that her responsibility regarding interrogation techniques was to take directions from the head of the Central Intelligence Agency on how they should be used.
In response to a question on the administration's use of waterboarding, a simulated drowning technique some consider to be torture, Rice said she asked Attorney General John Ashcroft to personally confirm that it was in fact in line with American treaties and conventions.
"I'm not a lawyer. I have to rely on the opinions of the attorney general and (the Department of) Justice," said Rice, who also served as Bush's national security adviser during his first term as president.
Rice's comments came a week after U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee documents were released stating that Rice approved the use of waterboarding in May 2002. The policy wasn't certified though, according to an Associated Press report on the document, until Ashcroft deemed the techniques to be lawful.
Vice President Dick Cheney, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and other senior Bush officials said the procedure was legal in mid-2003, according to the document.
"People may disagree with what we did," Rice said. "But I hope there will be an acknowledgment that people of good faith were preventing another Sept. 11."
Economic club officials previously had said that Rice would only be taking pre-screened questions submitted by members. That policy changed by the time of the event, however, and Rice took questions directly from the audience.
Rice, a former political science professor and provost at Stanford University, returned to the school in March to teach and contribute to a think tank based there.
She is the fifth lecturer in the club's annual speaker series, which has included former Bush Chief of Staff Karl Rove and former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee. The events are open only to club members and select media.
Bush himself will address the group on May 28, in what may be his first domestic address since leaving office.
In her prepared remarks, Rice said it is essential that the United States remains the world's major economic driving force. No other nation can fill the role the U.S. has had for several decades, she said, and the country must regain the confidence and determination it once held so dear.
"If Americans believe we cannot compete," Rice said, "we will not protect, we will turn inward, we will not lead."
Club officials said Rice and Bush will not comment on the actions of President Barack Obama's administration for six months, to allow the new leadership to establish itself without critique from its predecessors.
Rice did make one passing reference to the new commander-in-chief, however, to illustrate her point that the scope of history is long, not short.
"A country that elected an African-American as president of the United States is a country that has reason for optimism," she said. "What seems impossible one day, seems inevitable another."