CIA chief defends agency against Senate report’s torture charges
In a rare news conference at CIA HQ in Langley, CIA Director John Brennan Thursday maintained that the agency “did a lot of things right” at a time after the September 11 attacks when there were “no easy answers” and more al Qaeda attacks were feared. He said some of the interrogation methods after 9/ll were “abhorrent” and that some officers acted beyond their authority. But the overall interrogation program yielded information that was useful and saved lives, he said. This was in answer to the Senate Intelligence committee’s report, which asserted that brutal methods like waterboarding and sleep deprivation were ineffective. Asked if the information could have been obtained by other methods, Brennan said this was “unknowable.”
While the CIA director was speaking, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein was rejecting his arguments on Twitter.