CIA boss John Brennan defends post-9/11 strategy

CIA Director John Brennan has defended the agency's post-9/11 interrogation methods but admitted some techniques were "harsh" and "abhorrent".  Speaking at CIA headquarters, he said some officers acted beyond their authority but most did their duty.

A scathing Senate report two days earlier said "brutal" methods like waterboarding were ineffective.

"Our reviews indicate that the detention and interrogation programme produced useful intelligence that helped the United States thwart attack plans, capture terrorists and save lives," Brennan told a rare CIA news conference in Virginia.  "The cause-and-effect relationship between the use of EITs and useful information subsequently provided by the detainee is, in my view, unknowable."

While he was speaking, Senator Dianne Feinstein, who heads the committee that produced the report, was rejecting his arguments on Twitter.  One tweet said: "Brennan: 'unknowable' if we could have gotten the intel other ways. Study shows it IS knowable: CIA had info before torture. #ReadTheReport".

Mr Brennan was a senior CIA official in 2002 when the detention and interrogation programme was put in place.  An outgoing Democratic Senator, Mark Udall, has called on Mr Brennan to quit, citing interference from the CIA in preparing the report.  A summary of the larger classified report says that the CIA carried out "brutal" and "ineffective" interrogations of al-Qaeda suspects in the years after the 9/11 attacks on the US and misled other officials about what it was doing.

Mr Brennan described the actions of some CIA agents as "harsh" and "abhorrent" but would not say if it constituted torture. He added an overwhelming number of CIA agents followed legal advice from the justice department that authorised some of the brutal methods.

"They did what they were asked to do in the service of their nation."   Read More at BBC
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CIA chief John Brennan admits agency used 'abhorrent techniques' on terror suspects