Since its inception, and as ordained in the Constitution, the federal government has had a duty to defend and protect its citizens.

From the time of George Washington, intelligence has been a central component in the effort to safeguard the nation and the American people. While the results of intelligence gathering are sometimes released (usually after appropriate time has lapsed), it is very rare for "sources and methods" to be released because of the advantage such knowledge gives to adversaries. Thus, it was both surprising and distressing that President Obama recently released formerly classified documents regarding interrogation techniques (methods he said we would no longer employ). That will surely weaken our intelligence capabilities and ultimately cost our security because enemies will know exactly what our interrogators will and will not do.

The documents are four Justice Department memos, in which the Department's Office of Legal Counsel provided legal guidance for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) regarding its enhanced interrogation program. Simply put, the Justice Department studied the law and provided the CIA counsel as to what the law allowed for interrogation of captured terrorists.

In addition to opinions on the legality of interrogation procedures, these memos describe in detail the specific procedures used in the interrogation program. By making this information public, we have provided critical information to those who would do us harm.

Indeed, security concerns led five previous CIA directors, as well as current Director Leon Panetta, to oppose the release of these memos. As former CIA director General Michael Hayden recently wrote, "What we have described for our enemies ... are the outer limits that any American would ever go to in terms of interrogating an al Qaeda terrorist."

Al Qaeda already uses the publicly available Army Field Manual to prepare and train its terrorists for possible detention and interrogation. Now, with the release of this new information, al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations are better able to build their defenses and equip their members - they now know the full extent of American interrogation practices.

With terrorists now better equipped to handle interrogations, intelligence gathering will yield fewer results, and weakened intelligence will put our military and civilians at increased risk.

Before instituting these techniques in 2002, the United States suffered tragic and catastrophic losses. Prior to 2002, the United States witnessed the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, attacks on our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and the bombing of the USS Cole - and then came the attacks of September 11. It was deemed important for us to know what might be next; and several experts, including former Vice President Cheney, have said what we learned prevented subsequent attacks.

And since then, the homeland has been safe from attack. In fact, one of the recently released memos (May 30, 2005) notes, "the CIA believes ‘the intelligence acquired from these interrogations has been a key reason why al Qaeda has failed to launch a spectacular attack in the West since 11 September 2001.'"

After the CIA instituted new interrogation techniques in 2002, terrorists Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah, and Ramzi bin al Shibh (all implicated in the September 11 attacks) each gave critical information leading to the discovery of al Qaeda cells and the foiling of subsequent terror plots in Europe and Los Angeles. More than 6,000 intelligence reports were written based on the information derived from detainees.

President Obama's release of these memos will please his liberal partisans, but will have a chilling effect on intelligence efforts and cannot help but do harm to our national security. The precedent has been set: legal guidance from one Administration could get you in trouble in the next. Yet, tough legal questions rarely have "right" or "wrong" answers. If they did, you wouldn't see the nine "best" lawyers in the country - the U.S. Supreme Court Justices - disagreeing 5-4 on issue after issue before the court.

Those who work to protect the nation - like those who conducted the CIA program and gave the guidance for it - shouldn't have to worry about prosecution for legal advice they give or for carrying out directives that were based on that advice.