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CIA chief: ‘Unknowable’ whether ordinary interrogation would bring same intel gains CIA chief: ‘Unknowable’ whether ordinary interrogation would bring same intel gains
(about 2 hours later)
CIA Director John Brennan said Thursday that valuable information was obtained from detainees subjected to harsh interrogation techniques, but it remains “unknowable” whether conventional questioning alone could have led to the same intelligence gains. CIA Director John Brennan on Thursday moved to defend an agency battered by a devastating report released this week on the use of harsh interrogation techniques while acknowledging what he called “abhorrent” methods that were “outside of the bounds” of approved policy.
In his first public comments since Tuesday’s release of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the CIA detention program, Brennan also defended the use of so-called “enhanced” techniques as the “right” response at a time when the agency believed al-Qaeda was possibly preparing another wave of terrorism in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. In rare televised remarks from the agency’s marble lobby before two dozen senior CIA leaders, Brennan said that valuable information was obtained from detainees subjected to the measures, which included waterboarding and “rectal rehydration.” But, he said, it remains “unknowable” whether conventional questioning alone could have yielded the same intelligence gains.
Brennan also directly challenged some of the reports main conclusions. “Let me be clear,” he said in his first public comments since Tuesday’s release of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the CIA detention program. “The cause-and-effect relationship between the use of [harsh tactics] and useful information subsequently provided by the detainee is, in my view, unknowable.”
He insisted the CIA did not attempt to mislead lawmakers or other officials. He also said important intelligence — including details crucial in the hunt for Osama bin Laden — was gained from detainees who faced use of the “enhanced” interrogations methods such as waterboarding or stress positions. Brennan defended the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” as the “right” response at a time when the agency believed al-Qaeda was intent on preparing another wave of terrorism in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
But he acknowledged it was impossible to know whether the information was gained from those techniques or more standard interrogation methods. He also acknowledged the agency made mistakes, saying its officers were “unprepared” to conduct such a program and in a “limited number” of cases used techniques that were not authorized and “rightly should be repudiated by all.”
“The cause and effect relationship between [the enhanced methods] and useful information provided by the detainee is, in my view, unknowable,” Brennan said at CIA headquarters. He admitted the agency “fell short” in failing to hold some officers accountable for their mistakes. But he strongly denied that the agency had “repeatedly, systemically and intentionally” misled top U.S. officials about the program.
He also noted “mistakes” by CIA agents as the detention program was expanded rapidly during the years after the 9/11 attacks. Some CIA went “outside the bounds’’ with acts Brennan described as “abhorrent’’ without giving further details. The 528-page document described in searing detail techniques aimed at obtaining information from several dozen detainees held in secret CIA prisons around the world. They included sleep deprivation, slams against cell walls, simulated drowning and stuffing detainees into coffin-sized boxes.
Brennan added that he stands behind President Obama’s decision to oppose the use of techniques that some critics have described as rights abuses. The Senate document, an executive summary of a still-classified report that exceeds 6,000 pages, concluded that such techniques were not effective in cases in which the CIA claimed otherwise, including in the hunt for al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
“There were no answers’’ after the Sept. 11 attacks, he said. While he asserted that the efficacy of such tactics was unknowable, Brennan also continued to take issue with the Senate report’s central conclusion, saying it was “a point on which we disagree.”
The CIA “did a lot of things right during this difficult time to keep this country strong and secure,” said Brennan, who took over the CIA in March 2013 and previously served as a top White House counterterrorism adviser. “Detainees who were subjected to EITs at some point during the confinement subsequently provided information that our experts found to be useful and valuable in our counterterrorism efforts,” Brennan said, using the acronym for enhanced interrogation techniques. “For someone to say that there was no intelligence of value . . . that came from those detainees once they were subjected to EITs, I think . . . lacks any foundation at all.”
On Monday, Brennan issued a statement that the CIA program after 9/11 helped “capture terrorists, and save lives.” Adam Goldman contributed to this report.
Brennan, however, acknowledged unspecified “mistakes” by the agency, particularly during the initiative phases of the detentions and interrogations. He said followed through with “remedial measures over the years to address institutional deficiencies,” but gave no further details.
Some Senate Republicans and several of Brennan’s predecessors also have joined in criticizing the report, including George Tenet, the agency’s director on Sept. 11, 2001. Tenet said the interrogation program “saved thousands of Americans lives” while the country faced a “ticking time bomb every day.”