'Abhorrent' techniques used by CIA

The chief of the US spy agency acknowledged on Thursday that some officers of the Central Intelligence Agency used brutal interrogation techniques on terrorist suspects, and there was no proof that useful information was acquired as a result.

John Brennan, in a televised news conference held at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, acknowledged "unauthorized" and "abhorrent" practices by some officers, saying it was "unknowable" whether the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques produced key intelligence.

"We fell short when it came to holding some officers accountable for their mistakes," he said, adding that the use of coercive methods has a strong likelihood of yielding false information because "if somebody is being subjected to a course of techniques, they say something to have those techniques stopped".

"There have been a lot of studies done over the years about the value of different types of interrogation methods and whether or not coercive methods can lead to useful information that couldn't otherwise be obtained," Brennan said.

But Brennan asserted the CIA "did a lot of things right" in a time when there were no easy answers, and that officers were acting under the guidance of the administration of then-US president George W. Bush, which provided a legal rationale for the harsh techniques.

Brennan defended, overall, the detention of 119 suspects as having produced valuable intelligence that, among other things, helped the CIA kill al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, though that claim has been disputed.

The CIA was put in sharper focus following the release on Tuesday of a US Senate Intelligence Committee report in which details were offered about the agency's brutal interrogation methods over the years after the Sept 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the US mainland.

Among the methods were waterboarding, sexual threats and sleep deprivation. The revelations have sparked outrage and demands for justice around the world.

The UN's Special Rapporteur on Torture, Juan Mendez, said the use of torture in the US "war on terror" has damaged the country's moral high ground and set back the global fight against the practice.

(China Daily 12/13/2014 page12)