AP, Washington :
CIA Director John Brennan is acknowledging that agency officers did “abhorrent” things to captive terror suspects, and he says he can’t prove the harsh treatment made the prisoners cooperate. But he defends the overall post-9/11 interrogation program for stopping attacks and saving lives.
That is the carefully balanced case that Brennan attempted to make Thursday during an unprecedented televised news conference at CIA headquarters, something no one on the CIA public affairs staff could remember ever happening at the secretive agency’s Virginia campus.
At the heart of Brennan’s remarks was an exquisitely nuanced argument: That while today’s CIA takes no position on whether the brutal interrogation tactics themselves led detainees to cooperate, there is no doubt that detainees subjected to the treatment offered “useful and valuable” information afterward.
Brennan said it was “unknown and unknowable” whether the harsh treatment yielded crucial intelligence that could have been gained in any other way.
He declined to define the techniques as torture, as President Barack Obama and the Senate Intelligence Committee chairwoman have done, refraining from even using the word in his 40 minutes of remarks and answers. Obama banned harsh interrogations by the U.S. government when he took office.
He also appeared to draw a distinction between interrogation methods, such as waterboarding, that were approved by the Justice Department at the time, and those that were not, including “rectal feeding,” death threats and beatings. He did not discuss the techniques by name.
“I certainly agree that there were times when CIA officers exceeded the policy guidance that was given and the authorized techniques that were approved and determined to be lawful,” he said. “They went outside of the bounds. … I will leave to others to how they might want to label those activities. But for me, it was something that is certainly regrettable.”
CIA Director John Brennan is acknowledging that agency officers did “abhorrent” things to captive terror suspects, and he says he can’t prove the harsh treatment made the prisoners cooperate. But he defends the overall post-9/11 interrogation program for stopping attacks and saving lives.
That is the carefully balanced case that Brennan attempted to make Thursday during an unprecedented televised news conference at CIA headquarters, something no one on the CIA public affairs staff could remember ever happening at the secretive agency’s Virginia campus.
At the heart of Brennan’s remarks was an exquisitely nuanced argument: That while today’s CIA takes no position on whether the brutal interrogation tactics themselves led detainees to cooperate, there is no doubt that detainees subjected to the treatment offered “useful and valuable” information afterward.
Brennan said it was “unknown and unknowable” whether the harsh treatment yielded crucial intelligence that could have been gained in any other way.
He declined to define the techniques as torture, as President Barack Obama and the Senate Intelligence Committee chairwoman have done, refraining from even using the word in his 40 minutes of remarks and answers. Obama banned harsh interrogations by the U.S. government when he took office.
He also appeared to draw a distinction between interrogation methods, such as waterboarding, that were approved by the Justice Department at the time, and those that were not, including “rectal feeding,” death threats and beatings. He did not discuss the techniques by name.
“I certainly agree that there were times when CIA officers exceeded the policy guidance that was given and the authorized techniques that were approved and determined to be lawful,” he said. “They went outside of the bounds. … I will leave to others to how they might want to label those activities. But for me, it was something that is certainly regrettable.”
