CIA Director John Brennan Defends Agency After Torture Report

The Central Intelligence Agency(WASHINGTON) — Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan on Thursday addressed the revelations contained in a comprehensive report released this week about the agency’s use of enhanced interrogation methods from 2002 to 2009.

The report, written over five years by the Democratic members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, accused the CIA of using unauthorized interrogation techniques to extract information from detainees, including using power drills, mock executions, forced-feeding and threats against their families.

In his opening remarks at an unusual live news conference Thursday afternoon, Brennan said the United States looked to the CIA to provide guidance on how to deal with al Qaeda in the chaotic days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

“As has been the case throughout its then-54 year history, CIA was looked to for answers,” he said. “Not only to the questions on the threats we faced but also to questions about what we were going to do to stop future attacks.”

Brennan said that the agency was ill-prepared for the task it was given, calling the interrogation program “uncharted territory” and adding that the agency had little experience housing and interrogating detainees.

[ CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL TRANSCRIPT OF BRENNAN’S SPEECH ]

The study asserted the torture methods did not yield information from detainees that could not have been acquired in other ways, and that the CIA misled the Bush administration about what exactly the enhanced interrogation program was.

Brennan said the question of whether enhanced interrogation techniques led to actionable intelligence was “unknowable.”

“Let me be clear: We have not concluded that it was the EITs within that program that allowed us to obtain useful information from the detainees subjected to them,” he said.

He called some of those techniques “abhorrent.”

Brennan also revealed his belief that “the use of coercive methods has a strong prospect for resulting in false information because if somebody’s been subjected to coercive techniques, they may say something to have those techniques stopped.”

Most of the Republican members of the Senate Intelligence Committee signed on to a minority report that disputed many of the majority’s conclusions, saying that enhanced interrogation techniques did, in fact, lead to actionable intelligence in key terrorism cases like the capture of the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Brennan would not say whether he agreed with the Obama administration’s decision to make a summary of the full Senate report public. When pressed to share his belief in the interest of transparency, Brennan responded that the level of transparency in the past few days has been “over the top.”

Brennan’s defense Thursday was a reversal from comments he made at his confirmation hearing in 2013 after reading a version of the report that had not yet been released to the public. At the time, he questioned the efficacy of the CIA’s torture methods.

“Reading this report from the Committee raises serious questions about the information that I was given at the time, and the impression I had at the time,” he said. “Now I have to determine, based on that information, as well as what CIA says, what the truth is.”

Brennan, who has had a long CIA career, acknowledged on Thursday that as deputy executive director of the agency at the time the interrogation techniques were implemented, he was aware of the program and had “some visibility” into its specifics. But, he also made clear he did not have any management oversight responsibilities related to the program.

In defending the CIA’s interrogation program, Brennan has joined former CIA directors George Tenet, Porter Goss and Michael Hayden, who wrote a 2,500-word rebuttal in the Wall Street Journal this week.

Throughout the news conference, Brennan portrayed the CIA as a group of professionals who tried to meet a difficult task as best they could, with little guidance from the White House or Pentagon. Brennan said the Senate committee should have interviewed CIA officers who worked in these programs because, he said, simply reviewing documents was not enough.

“I wish the committee took the opportunity to ask CIA officers who were involved in the program at the time, ‘what were you thinking? What did you consider?’” Brennan said. “This was a workforce that was trying to do the right thing.”

Brennan defended the use of interrogation overall — not enhanced techniques specifically — when saying that some detainees who had been subjected to torture provided useful information related to the hunt for Osama bin Laden. However, he clarified that he did not know whether there was a direct correlation between that information and the use of EITs.

With his agency facing intense scrutiny, Brennan emphasized that the CIA “is determined to look forward.”

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