CIA: Officers used 'abhorrent' techniques

CIA director John Brennan made his first comments on Thursday, two days after the US Senate Intelligence Committee made public a report on the agency's interrogation techniques.

The 500-page document said the CIA's treatment of al Qaeda terrorism suspects in secret prisons was more brutal than policymakers were led to believe and that some cases amounted to torture.

In addition to waterboarding, the report found that tactics included slamming detainees against walls, confining them to small boxes, keeping them isolated for prolonged periods and threatening them with death.

Speaking at the CIA headquarters in Virginia, the agency director admitted that the actions of some officers were regrettable, and that certain interrogation practices were unauthorized.

"The agency failed to establish quickly the operational guidelines needed to govern the entire effort," he said. "In a limited number of cases, agency officers used interrogation techniques that had not been authorized, were abhorrent and rightly should be repudiated by all, and we fell short when it came to holding some officers accountable for their mistakes."

He also said the agency had been ill prepared to detain and interrogate terrorism suspects.

"We were not prepared," Brennan told the news conference. "We had little experience housing detainees and precious few of our officers were trained interrogators."

However, the intelligence chief stated that the "overwhelming majority of officers involved in the program at the CIA carried out their responsibilities faithfully and in accordance with the legal and policy guidance they were provided."

Denies misleading public and policymakers

Brennan strongly denied the CIA had misled the US president and the public with its program, which was carried out under the Bush administration in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks in September 2001.

He opened Thursday's news conference by recounting the horrors of 9/11, the CIA's determination to prevent another such assault and the fact that agency officers were the first to fight and early to die in the Afghanistan war.

He asserted that the agency "did a lot of things right" in a time when there were "no easy answers."

Interrogation techniques open to question

The CIA chief also said that it was "unknowable" whether so-called enhanced interrogations had yielded positive results.

"I have already stated that our reviews indicate that the detention and interrogation program produced useful intelligence that helped the United States thwart attack plans, capture terrorists and save lives."

However, he expanded on the issue saying: "We have not concluded that it was the use of EITs [enhanced interrogation techniques] within that program that allowed us to obtain useful information from detainees subjected to them. The cause-and-effect relationship between the use of EITs and useful information subsequently provided by the detainee is, in my view, unknowable."

Reaction to 'torture report'

After the release of the interrogation report on Tuesday, a spokesman for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said it was the start of a process of accountability.

Stephane Dujarric reaffirmed Ban's stance on torture saying, "the prohibition against torture is absolute."

Under international law, the US - which ratified the UN Convention Against Torture in 1994 - now has an obligation to ensure accountability, Dujarric said.

"What is laid out in the convention is very clear. And, those states that have signed up to the convention need to follow up on what is in the convention," he added.

International human rights groups also condemned the practices detailed in the interrogation report.

lw/mg (AP, AFP, Reuters, dpa)