While studiously avoiding the word “torture,” CIA Director John Brennan told reporters on Thursday that the aggressive interrogation program yielded information that helped the agency find Osama bin Laden. He also called the Senate Intelligence Committee’s damning report on CIA abuses “flawed” by partisanship, as well as “exaggerations and misrepresentations.”
Brennan’s comments are certain to pour oil on the already raging debate over what constitutes torture, how effective it is and who authorized what in the chaotic days and months after the 9/11 attacks. They also put the Obama administration squarely in the crossfire between Democrats defending the committee’s handiwork and Republicans and former CIA chiefs trashing it.
The culmination of a six-year investigation, the committee Democrats’ report was intended to provide a moment of moral reckoning for America. Instead, it has underscored Washington’s inability to rise above partisan truths and forge a common view on how to defend the country from terrorist attacks.
As an exercise in political accountability, a comprehensive report on the CIA’s detention and interrogation of terrorist suspects after 9/11 is overdue. In its otherwise commendable zeal to avert further terrorist attacks, the agency sometimes overstepped the bounds of decency.
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