CIA Director John Brennan took an extraordinary step Thursday to contain the roiling controversy over his agency’s past use of aggressive interrogation techniques: inviting journalists and cameras to the spy agency’s secretive headquarters and conducting a full-scale press conference that was carried on live television around the world. 
 
 But he struck a largely defensive tone, praising the integrity of the agency’s workforce while conceding that some of its personnel used techniques that “had not been authorized, were abhorrent and rightly should be repudiated by all.” 
 
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 Brennan threaded a needle on the effectiveness of tactics that many view as torture, such as waterboarding. He insisted that detainees subjected to what the agency calls “enhanced interrogation techniques” gave up “useful and valuable” information, but conceded that it can’t be said whether the harsh treatment yielded that information. 
 
 That is “unknown and unknowable,” he said. 
 
 Asked if torture helped draw out information that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden, Brennan demurred, saying only that individuals who were subjected to the techniques “provided information that was useful and was used” in the hunt for the Al Qaeda leader. 
 
 (Also on POLITICO: John Brennan's zigzag on torture) 
 
 Brennan’s news conference came two days after the release of a Senate Intelligence Committee report blasted the Central Intelligence Agency for abusing detainees and severely mismanaging its interrogation program in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. 
 
 According to agency officials, Brennan spoke to the CIA’s work force on Wednesday, trying to quell concern about the Senate report’s impact on the agency’s personnel, their reputations and morale. Thursday’s press conference was clearly intended as an effort to convey a similar message of support to a wider audience. 
 
 Projecting an image of solidarity, about 30 senior agency officials sat directly in front of the director as he spoke. They also served as a buffer of sorts between Brennan and a larger number of reporters who traveled to the Langley, Va. complex to question the director about the report that rocked the agency this week and the conduct it details, including tactics President Barack Obama has banned and described this week as “brutal.” 
 
 Brennan began his appearance with a 20-minute speech that opened with a dramatic description of the 9/11 attacks and attempted to invoke the sense of fear in which the harsh interrogation program was devised. 
 
 Regardless of one’s views on enhanced interrogation techniques, “our nation and, in particular, this agency did a lot of things right during this difficult time to keep this country safe and secure,” he said. 
 
 The “overwhelming majority” of the agency’s workforce “carried out their responsibilities faithfully,” he argued. “They did what they were asked to do in the service of our nation.” 
 
 (POLITICO Magazine: Michael Hayden is not sorry) 
 
 Brennan also said that the agency’s people have been “touched by the outpouring of support” from outsiders as the CIA came under withering criticism in recent days. 
 
 Despite his clear desire to elicit sympathy for CIA personnel, he conceded that some officers had gone too far in their interrogations and that the agency didn’t do enough to supervise them. 
 
 “In many ways this was uncharted territory for the CIA and we were not prepared,” he said. “We fell short when it came to holding some officers accountable for their mistakes,” Brennan said. 
 
 Throughout his remarks, Brennan described his agency’s conduct as enhanced interrogation techniques or EITs, and not as “torture” — the term that Obama has used. Pressed on his avoidance of that characterization, Brennan said he “will leave to others how they might want to label” the CIA’s practices. 
 
 He also declined to say whether he supported the release of the Senate summary report on the interrogation techniques, but indicated that he believes too much been revealed. 
 
 “I think there is more than enough transparency that has happened over the last couple of days,” he said, in what seemed to be an exasperated and heartfelt aside. “I think it’s over the top.” 
 
 At another point, the director made plain his distaste for the events of the past few days. 
 
 “There is a lot of exaggeration, misrepresentation of the facts, and therefore I think certain agendas are being pursued,” he said while discussing international reaction to the report. “I certainly wish that this would not be happening.” 
 
 Brennan’s appearance represented the first on-camera response by a current Obama administration official to some of the central claims in the Senate report: namely that the CIA misled Congress, the White House and the public about the program, and that the interrogations were not effective in producing intelligence that saved lives by heading off terrorist plots. 
 
 While the CIA’s written response to the Senate report disputed those conclusions, the White House and the president have repeatedly refused to say whether they agree with the Senate panel on those points or with the spy agency. 
 
 Brennan seemed most exercised Thursday about the Senate panel’s suggestion that agency personnel repeatedly and likely intentionally gave false information to their overseers about the interrogation effort. 
 
 Meanwhile, Senate Intelligence panel Chairman Dianne Feinstein’s staff ran a real-time fact-check of Brennan’s remarks through her Twitter account, @SenFeinstein, adding the hashtag #ReadTheReport. 
 
 “We gave the committee our full support” as it started its study in 2009, Brennan said. But, he noted, Feinstein’s staff did not interview CIA staff. “It was unusual,” he said. 
 
 While the report is “flawed,” much of it is “consistent with our own internal findings,” Brennan said. 
 
 White House news secretary Josh Earnest would not say whether Brennan — who was at the White House on Thursday morning for the President’s Daily Briefing — had discussed the rare press conference with the president. 
 
 “This is a decision that Director Brennan made,” Earnest said. “It’s one that he should make.” 
 
 Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) and other critics of the techniques have called for Brennan’s resignation, but none of the 11 reporters who questioned him over roughly 25 minutes asked about the status of his job or whether he is the best person to lead the agency at this time due to the fact he was also in CIA leadership during the post-9/11 years. The White House has repeatedly said that Obama has full confidence in Brennan. 
 
 Brennan did say, in response to a question, that he was aware of aspects of the interrogation program at the time it took place. 
 
 “I was not in the chain of command; I did not have authority over the implementation of that program or the management oversight of it,” he added. 
 
 The CIA director did not answer a portion of a question about whether he “expressed reservations” about the interrogation effort while it was underway. He told the Senate Intelligence Committee in a 2013 questionnaire that he “had significant concerns and personal objections” to some of the techniques and shared those thoughts with others at the agency. 
 
 By speaking out now, Brennan appeared to be making a decisive bid to extinguish the public firestorm that engulfed the spy agency this week. Debate over the interrogation program in the media seems certain to continue at a fairly intense level at least through the Sunday television talk shows, one of which will feature former Vice President Dick Cheney defending the use of techniques like waterboarding and confining suspects in small spaces. 
 
 The CIA, Obama and his close aides have made abundantly clear that they’re eager to put this particular flurry of news coverage behind them. The decision to have Brennan speak out definitively and at length on the subject Thursday could diminish media interest in dogging him about the subject at any future public speeches or interviews. ||||| The Senate Intelligence Committee voted Thursday to make public a long-awaited report that concludes that the CIA’s use of brutal interrogation measures did not produce valuable intelligence and that the agency repeatedly misled government officials about the severity and success of the program. 
 
 The decision, opposed by three Republicans on the panel, means that the findings will be sent to the White House and the CIA, putting the agency in the awkward position of having to declassify a document that delivers a scathing verdict on one of the most controversial periods in its history. 
 
 “The purpose of this review was to uncover the facts behind this secret program, and the results were shocking,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the committee’s chairman, said in a statement Thursday. “The report exposes brutality that stands in stark contrast to our values as a nation. It chronicles a stain on our history that must never again be allowed to happen.” 
 
 U.S. officials said it could be months before the executive summary of the panel’s inquiry is released to the public. But Thursday’s vote marked the formal end of a four-year Senate investigation of the CIA’s use of waterboarding and other harsh tactics against terrorism suspects in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. 
 
 President Obama has signaled his support for the public release of the findings and an executive summary, a 481-page section at the front of a classified report that in its complete form runs to more than 6,200 pages and includes detailed accounts of the CIA’s treatment of dozens of detainees. 
 
 The agency will work “expeditiously” to declassify the document, CIA spokesman Dean Boyd said. He said the agency has acknowledged the “shortcomings” of the interrogation program. “At the same time,” he added, “we owe it to the men and women directed to carry out this program to try and ensure that any historical account of it is accurate.” 
 
 The report’s arrival at agency headquarters creates a significant dilemma for CIA Director John Brennan, who must determine how far to go in defending the agency without further damaging his relationship with Congress. 
 
 Any suspense over the committee vote ended earlier this week, when Maine’s two senators on the intelligence panel — Republican Susan Collins and independent Angus King — signaled that they would side with Democrats and vote in favor of declassification. 
 
 In an interview, King said the document convinced him that what the CIA had done was torture. “I don’t have any doubts on that fact,” he said. “It’s a pretty hard read. It’s very disappointing.” 
 
 The report, based on a review of millions of internal CIA records, found scant evidence that the use of “enhanced” interrogation techniques generated meaningful intelligence. It accuses agency officials of overstating the significance of alleged terrorist plots and prisoners, and exaggerating the effectiveness of the program by claiming credit for information detainees surrendered before they were subjected to duress. 
 
 For years, the agency made inaccurate statements to the president, the National Security Council and Congress, King said. “That’s one of the most disturbing parts of this — the institutional failure.” 
 
 Many Republicans and former CIA officials dispute those broad conclusions. 
 
 At least six Republicans on the committee, including ranking Republican Saxby Chambliss (Ga.), were expected to submit dissenting views that raised objections to its findings and methodology, according to a progress report on the investigation included in a recent intelligence spending bill. 
 
 Chambliss said he thought the program provided valuable intelligence and called the committee’s inquiry a “waste of time.” Still, he said, the public has a right to see the summary and minority views. “We need to get this behind us,” he said. 
 
 The report was assembled entirely by Democrats. Republicans abandoned the investigation shortly after it began in 2009, citing concerns that it would be shaped by political considerations as well as plans not to interview CIA officials who were being scrutinized. 
 
 The agency submitted a long response last year to an earlier draft of the Senate report that officials said identified numerous errors and contested many of the committee’s conclusions. Current and former CIA officials said the agency is weighing whether to update that response and release it to the public with the Senate report. 
 
 A former CIA official said there is an expectation among many inside the agency that Brennan will issue “a competing assessment” that critiques the committee’s findings. “There are a lot of people who worked for this program for years in good faith who still believe that it was effective,” the former official said. 
 
 But others warned that staunchly defending a program that Obama described as torture and dismantled four years ago carries political risks for the CIA. 
 
 If Brennan goes too far in rejecting the Senate report, “he’ll have torn his relationship with the oversight committees and he won’t get very many brownie points in the high regions of this government,” said Fred Hitz, a former CIA inspector general. “He may make a certain hard core of agency employees feel that he’s standing behind them, but there’s more at stake here.” 
 
 Although a fierce critic of the CIA’s interrogation program, Feinstein has been an ally to the agency on other fronts. She is such an ardent defender of its armed drone operations, for example, that she has fought against the Obama administration’s efforts to shift the authority for lethal drone operations to the Defense Department. ||||| America 
 
 Report Says CIA Misled Congress, White House On Interrogation Program 
 
 i itoggle caption Reuters/Landov Reuters/Landov 
 
 The CIA "provided inaccurate information to the White House, Congress, the Justice Department, the CIA inspector general, the media and the American public" about the "brutal" interrogation techniques it used on terrorism suspects, a long-held Senate intelligence committee report finds. 
 
 The report provides the most comprehensive public accounting of the interrogation techniques used by the Central Intelligence Agency after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. 
 
 It looked at more than 6 million pages of CIA material over the course of more than three years, and it came to two major conclusions: The CIA misrepresented the interrogation techniques it was using at secret prisons abroad, and it also overstated the techniques' efficacy. The report details the techniques used on detainees and found that those interrogations led to no useful intelligence. 
 
 The report does not use the word torture, and it doesn't weigh the legality of the program. But Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the Democratic chairwoman of the intelligence committee, writes in the report that it is her "personal conclusion that, under any common meaning of the term, CIA detainees were tortured." 
 
 The CIA rejects those criticisms, saying the Senate report is wrong. 
 
 In a statement, Director John Brennan admitted to some "shortcomings" and said the CIA had implemented some "remedial measures." 
 
 "Our review indicates that interrogations of detainees on whom EITs were used did produce intelligence that helped thwart attack plans, capture terrorists and save lives," Brennan said. "The intelligence gained from the program was critical to our understanding of al-Qaida and continues to inform our counterterrorism efforts to this day." 
 
 What's in it is so sensitive and controversial that the report's release has sparked public spats between the CIA and Senate lawmakers. 
 
 It all came to a dramatic head on the floor of the Senate in March. Feinstein accused the CIA of trying to thwart her committee's work by deleting files and later by illegally spying on Senate computers. The CIA — which eventually apologized to the Senate — had accused Feinstein and her committee of improperly removing classified documents from a government network. 
 
 Today, the Senate made public a 500-page executive summary of the report, which still remains classified. 
 
 Announcing its release, Feinstein said the report found a program that is a "stain on our values and our history." But she said it is important to release this report because it will show the world that "America is big enough to admit when it is wrong." 
 
 The release of this report is important, she said, because the U.S. needs to "face an ugly truth and say never again." 
 
 We'll use this space to post the document and share what we learn as we learn it. To see the latest, refresh this page. 
 
 Updated at 4:46 p.m. ET Ex-CIA Official On NPR 
 
 Former Deputy CIA Director John McLaughlin tells NPR's Audie Cornish that "every charge in here is off-base." 
 
 "We may have made a few terrorists uncomfortable for a short period of time in order to get information that we felt was essential to protecting the United States," he said. 
 
 You can listen to the full interview on All Things Considered. 
 
 Update at 1:37 p.m. ET. Former CIA Directors Reject Findings: 
 
 Writing in the Wall Street Journal, former CIA Directors George Tenet, Porter Goss and Michael Hayden, and former CIA Deputy Directors John McLaughlin, Albert Calland and Stephen Kappes defended the CIA. 
 
 They say this report is critically flawed. Specifically, they say the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques led to important intelligence and helped in the hunt for Osama bin Laden. 
 
 They write: 
 
 "There is no doubt that information provided by the totality of detainees in CIA custody, those who were subjected to interrogation and those who were not, was essential to bringing bin Laden to justice. The CIA never would have focused on the individual who turned out to be bin Laden's personal courier without the detention and interrogation program. "Specifically, information developed in the interrogation program piqued the CIA's interest in the courier, placing him at the top of the list of leads to bin Laden. A detainee subjected to interrogation provided the most specific information on the courier. Additionally, KSM and Abu Faraj al-Libi—both subjected to interrogation—lied about the courier at a time when both were providing honest answers to a large number of other critical questions. Since other detainees had already linked the courier to KSM and Abu Faraj, their dissembling about him had great significance. "So the bottom line is this: The interrogation program formed an essential part of the foundation from which the CIA and the U.S. military mounted the bin Laden operation." 
 
 Update at 12:22 p.m. ET. Minority View: 
 
 The committee's Republican minorities view the report as flawed, saying it is biased and does not take into account the context in which these programs were formed, and because the committee did not talk to key witnesses. 
 
 Here's a small excerpt from their report (pdf): 
 
 "With respect to the standard of objectivity, we were disappointed to find that the updated Study still contains evidence of strongly held biases. John Brennan emphasized this point prior to his confirmation as the Director of the CIA, when he told Vice Chairman Chambliss that, based on his reading of the originally approved Executive Summary and the Findings and Conclusions, the Study was 'not objective' and was a 'prosecutor's brief,' written with an eye toward finding problems. "We agree with Director Brennan's assessments. We also agree with the criticism he relayed from Intelligence Community officials that it was written with a 'bent on the part of the authors' with 'political motivations.'" 
 
 Update at 12:14 p.m. ET. Detainees Were Tortured: 
 
 The report does not use the word torture and it doesn't weigh the legality of the program. 
 
 But Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the chairwoman of the Senate intelligence committee, writes in the report that it is her "personal conclusion that, under any common meaning of the term, CIA detainees were tortured." 
 
 Update at 11:45 a.m. ET. 'Contrary To Our Values': 
 
 In a statement, President Obama said his predecessors were making decisions after an unprecedented attack on the United States. The U.S., he said, did many things right. 
 
 But what this committee finds today is "contrary to our values." 
 
 "Moreover, these techniques did significant damage to America's standing in the world and made it harder to pursue our interests with allies and partners," Obama said. "That is why I will continue to use my authority as President to make sure we never resort to those methods again." 
 
 Update at 11:27 a.m. ET. No New Charges: 
 
 A Justice Department official says they will bring no new charges in response to the report. 
 
 The Justice Department launched two criminal investigations in 2009 and decided against bringing new charges. 
 
 "Those investigators have reviewed the committee's full report and did not find any new information that they had not previously considered in reaching their determination," the official said. 
 
 Update at 11:25 a.m. ET. CIA Rejects Conclusions: 
 
 In a statement, Director John Brennan admitted to some "shortcomings" and said the CIA had implemented some "remedial measures." 
 
 He said that while the CIA agrees with some of the committee's findings, it diverges with the committee's two main findings: The CIA says the program was effective and it did not mislead other parts of the government about its enhanced interrogations. 
 
 "Our review indicates that interrogations of detainees on whom EITs were used did produce intelligence that helped thwart attack plans, capture terrorists, and save lives," Brennan said. "The intelligence gained from the program was critical to our understanding of al-Qaida and continues to inform our counterterrorism efforts to this day." 
 
 Update at 11:22 a.m. ET. Techniques: 
 
 The report itself does not conclude whether these techniques were legal. The report also doesn't use the word torture. But here are some of the techniques described. Fair warning — some are disturbing: 
 
 — At a site called COBALT, CIA officers strayed from the techniques approved by the White House. In November 2002, a detainee died from hypothermia after he was held "partially nude and chained to a concrete floor." 
 
 — Some detainees were kept awake for up to 180 hours, "usually standing or in painful stress positions, at times with their hands shackled above their heads." 
 
 — The CIA told several detainees that they would not leave custody alive. One was told he would only leave in a "coffin-shaped box." 
 
 — Some naked detainees were "hooded and dragged up and down corridors while being slapped and punched." 
 
 — The CIA may have waterboarded more than the three detainees it said it waterboarded. 
 
 — "At least five CIA detainees were subjected to 'rectal feeding' or 'rectal hydration' without documented medical need," Feinstein's office says. We're not sure what that means. 
 
 Update at 11:18 a.m. ET. A Summary: 
 
 From a summary of the report provided by Feinstein's office, there are two main takeaways of the report: 
 
 — In many cases, the CIA misrepresented the efficacy and the techniques used on detainees. This line from Feinstein's office sums it up: "The CIA provided inaccurate information to the White House, Congress, the Justice Department, the CIA inspector general, the media and the American public." 
 
 — These interrogation techniques were not effective. The CIA, the report concludes, misled the rest of the government — including the president — on the efficacy of the program. 
 
 The Senate committee reviewed 20 cases the CIA held up as its most prominent successes. The committee found that in all of those cases, either the information attained had nothing to do with the success or it was acquired from the detainee before the harsh techniques were applied or the information was "already available to the intelligence communities from other sources." 
 
 Update at 8:53 a.m. ET. Some Remedial Reading: 
 
 We're expecting the Senate to issue its report around 11 a.m. ET. That gives you some time for some remedial reading. Here's what we recommend: 
 
 — "CIA misled on interrogation program, Senate report says" (Washington Post): This is a report based on interviews with officials who have read the "torture report." According to the Post, the CIA misled the Bush administration and Congress on the extent and success of the interrogation techniques. 
 
 Here's a key quote: "The CIA described [its program] repeatedly both to the Department of Justice and eventually to Congress as getting unique, otherwise unobtainable intelligence that helped disrupt terrorist plots and save thousands of lives," one U.S. official briefed on the report told the Post. "Was that actually true? The answer is no." 
 
 — "Bush and C.I.A. Ex-Officials Rebut Torture Report" (New York Times): Before the report's release, the Bush administration is staking out a position. Mostly, it appears they will not take the opportunity offered by the report to distance itself from the CIA. 
 
 In an interview with CNN, President George Bush made that clear: "We're fortunate to have men and women who work hard at the C.I.A. serving on our behalf," he said. "These are patriots and whatever the report says, if it diminishes their contributions to our country, it is way off base." 
 
 — Sen. Feinstein Accuses CIA of Searching Congressional Computers (C-Span): Arguably the climax of this whole thing came back in March, when Feinstein delivered a more than 30-minute speech on the floor of the Senate. 
 
 In it, she accused the CIA of trying to thwart her committee's work by deleting files and spying on their computers. 
 
 Update at 8:23 a.m. ET. What We'll Be Looking For: 
 
 The Senate torture report is set up as a series of case studies, looking at how dozens of detainees were treated by the United States. As we sift through the report, we'll be focused on answering five questions: 
 
 — Did these interrogation methods yield any useful intelligence? 
 
 — Was it torture? 
 
 — Was anyone held accountable? 
 
 — Are interrogation methods that went beyond the methods approved by Bush administration lawyers described? 
 
 — Did the CIA mislead the Bush administration about the extent or severity of the methods used? ||||| WASHINGTON (AP) — The head of the Senate Intelligence Committee is launching a barrage of tweets against CIA complaints about the report on Bush-era interrogation techniques. 
 
 CIA Director John Brennan is holding a news conference to lay out objections to the committee's report. At the same time, Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein's office is tweeting a series of messages defending the accuracy of the study. 
 
 Feinstein's office began tweeting even before Brennan began speaking. 
 
 One tweet says "every fact" in the committee's report was based on CIA records, cables or other evidence. 
 
 The committee's report concludes the CIA engaged in brutal interrogation techniques and misled the White House and the public about what it was doing.
– CIA Director John Brennan offered up a spirited defense of his agency's torture program today, saying that "our nation and, in particular, this agency did a lot of things right during this difficult time to keep this country safe and secured" in the aftermath of 9/11, and that most agents "carried out their responsibilities faithfully," obtained "useful and valuable" information, and "did what they were asked to do in the service of our nation." He acknowledged that techniques were used that "had not been authorized, were abhorrent, and rightly should be repudiated by all," notes Politico, and that "we fell short when it came to holding some officers accountable for their mistakes." Speaking at a rare press conference, Brennan took questions, including one about whether more information would be forthcoming, notes CNN. "I think there's been more than enough transparency that's happened over the last couple days. I think it's over the top," responded the nation's top spy. Brennan bashed the "flawed" report for the "unusual" choice of not talking to CIA agents, but said that ultimately many "conclusions are sound and consistent with our own prior findings." The AP notes that Senate Intelligence Committee chair Sen. Dianne Feinstein's office began a lively and real-time Twitter fact-check defending the report's accuracy, using #ReadTheReport. Read one: "Brennan: 'unknowable' if we could have gotten the intel other ways. Study shows it IS knowable: CIA had info before torture. #ReadTheReport"