During a Thursday press conference, NBC chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell seized the opportunity to lecture CIA Director John Brennan as she rattled over the "torture" techniques detailed in the recently released report by Senate Democrats: "...waterboarding, near drowning, slamming people against the wall, hanging them in stress positions, confining them in small boxes or coffins, threatening them with drills, waving guns around their head as they are blindfolded..."
Finally getting to her actual question, Mitchell wondered: "...what or which of these techniques could be used if, as the director of Central Intelligence, you and another president or this president were faced with an imminent threat? Could there be another covert finding and rulings and advice from the attorney general that would lead you and your successors to say we should do this because there could be some value to prevent an attack on America?"
In part of his response to Mitchell's full three-part question, Brennan condemned some of the press coverage of the report: "I think there is a lot of hyperbole that is now fueling the discussion, the debate, and also then is harmful to continuing our intelligence cooperation. Because there is a lot of exaggeration, misrepresentation of the facts, and therefore, I think, certain agendas are being pursued. And so I certainly wish that this would not be happening."
Here is a full transcript of Mitchell's question and Brennan's response during the December 11 NBC News Special Report:
2:13 PM ET
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ANDREA MITCHELL: Let me follow-up on that, what seems to be a – an inherent conflict. The Agency's position and its defenders has been that in particular one of its signal successes, the takedown of the Osama Bin Laden, could be attributed to the use of what the President and others have called torture – what you prefer to call enhanced interrogation techniques. Do you think the Bin Laden case can be attributed in some part to enhanced interrogation techniques or torture?
And you've acknowledged in your own experience that what the President described as difficulties in relationships with allies has resulted from this chapter in American history. Can you expand on that? How you have experienced difficulties as a result of what has been disclosed?
And finally, if there is some unknowable value to these techniques – to waterboarding, near drowning, slamming people against the wall, hanging them in stress positions, confining them in small boxes or coffins, threatening them with drills, waving guns around their head as they are blindfolded – what or which of these techniques could be used if, as the director of Central Intelligence, you and another president or this president were faced with an imminent threat? Could there be another covert finding and rulings and advice from the attorney general that would lead you and your successors to say we should do this because there could be some value to prevent an attack on America?
JOHN BRENNAN: First question on Bin Laden. It is our considered view that the detainees who were subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques provided information that was useful and was used in the ultimate operation to go against Bin Laden. Again, intelligence information from the individuals who were subjected to EITs [Enhanced Intelligence Techniques] provided information that used in that. Again I am not going to attribute that to the use of the EITs, I'm just going to state as a matter of fact the information that they provided was used.
As far as the relationships with others, that sometimes are complicated, I think we see in the international press right now there is a lot of scrutiny being paid to what different partners did during the that period of time. And I think there is a lot of hyperbole that is now fueling the discussion, the debate, and also then is harmful to continuing our intelligence cooperation. Because there is a lot of exaggeration, misrepresentation of the facts, and therefore, I think, certain agendas are being pursued. And so I certainly wish that this would not be happening.
And then finally, as far as what happens if in the future there is some type of challenge that we face here, the Army Field Manual is the established basis to use for interrogations. We, CIA, are not in the detention program. We are not contemplating at all getting back into the detention program, using any of those EITs. So I defer to the policy makers in future times when there is going to be the need to be able to ensure that this country stays safe if we face a similar type of crisis.
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