Foreign Policy reports: At an unusual news conference at the CIA’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia, spy chief John Brennan disavowed the agency’s former system for detaining and brutally interrogating terror suspects in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and said some of the methods used were “abhorrent,” but he refused to join President Barack Obama in admitting that they had crossed the line into “torture.”

Asked repeatedly whether waterboarding suspects or threatening them with mock executions led to actionable intelligence, Brennan insisted that the agency couldn’t conclusively say that harsh interrogations produced information that could otherwise not have been obtained.

“The cause-and-effect relationship between the application of those EITs [enhanced interrogation techniques] and ultimate provision of that information” from detainees “is unknown and unknowable,” Brennan said in response to a question. “But for someone to say that there was no intelligence of value, of use, that came from those detainees once they were subjected to EITs, I think that lacks any foundation at all.” [Continue reading…]