story we ve been following all week. the cia director admitting his mick takes but defending his agency in an unusual news conference on thursday. yeah, john brennan never used the word torture when discussing the harsh interrogation tactics used on detainees, but his comments on the program s effect iness are now similar to the white house stance as michelle kaczynski tells us. reporter: the cia director defended his agency in an unprecedented press conference. the program produced useful intelligence that helped the united states thwart, attack plans, capture terrorists and save lives. but with a strong caveat, now better lined with what the white house is saying. let me be clear, we have not concluded that it was the yut of eits within within that program that allowed us to gather useful
activities. the agency failed to establish quickly the operational guidelines needed to govern the entire effort. 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. brennan conceded he cannot say for sure the methods obtained useful information. 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. but let me be clear. we have not concluded that it was the use of eits 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
see the whole video. heart pounding stuff. just another vacation for me. not at all. thank you again for joining us, the cia director rarely holds a news knks, but he had a lot to say thursday about the u.s. is not report on cia interrogation tactics. one word he did not use is torture, but as we are about to say. he appears to be falling in line with how the white house views the program. the cia director defended his agency, an unprecedented press conference. the detention and interrogation program produced useful intelligence that helped the united states stop plans, capture terrorists and save lives. but with a strong note on those enhanced techniques, now better aligned with what the house has been saying. let me be clear, we have not concluded that it was the use of
with the cia s first detainee, al qaeda operative abu zubaydah, who was waterboarded 83 times. the report says that in one session, zubaydah became completely unresponsive with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth. the cia pushback was quick. director john brennan saying the harsh interrogations helped thwart attack plans, capture terrorists and save lives. as for the claims that osama bin laden was tracked down based on information gained from enhanced interrogations, the senate committee says that s false. in an interview with bret baier on fox news channel, former vice president dick cheney once again defended the interrogation program. i think that what needed to be done was done. i think we were perfectly justified in doing it, and i d do it again in a minute. reporter: three former directors of the cia wrote in the wall street journal the senate report was flat out wrong and a partisan attack. karen travers, abc news, washington. let s get to the wet and wild weath
do here as this sound bite makes clear. i don t think that you can know what it feels like to know that america has gone through the worst attack on the continental united states in its history, and you re uncertain as to what s coming next. so there were a lot of people who did a lot of things right and worked very hard to keep us safe, but i think that any fair minded person looking at this would say that some terrible mistakes were made in allowing these kinds of practices to take place. mr. obama s own cia chief, john brennan, says he does not believe the senate report. quote, our review indicates that interrogations of detainees on whom coerced interrogation was used did produce intelligence that helped thwart attack plans, capture terrorists and save