White House spokesman Josh Earnest reaffirmed President Obama’s support for CIA Director John Brennan Thursday in the wake of the Senate’s scathing report on the agency’s extreme interrogation practices.
Earnest described Brennan as a “dedicated professional who has dedicated his time in public service to protecting the United States of America.”
“That makes him a patriot and that makes him someone who has the full confidence of the president,” he added. Obama “wakes up every morning pleased to count him as one of the people who has been a senior member of his national security team … and he continues to rely on his advice to this day.”
When it comes to senior CIA officials who played a role in the interrogation program during the Bush administration, Earnest said those individuals are no longer supporting a program of “enhanced interrogation techniques.”
“If they didn’t agree with that policy, they wouldn’t support the president,” he said.
After Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., released the report Tuesday morning, a number of Democrats and human rights groups have called for Brennan’s resignation, and argued that senior CIA officials who participated in the extreme interrogation program should be purged from the Obama administration.
Brennan, who is set to hold a rare press conference at the CIA’s headquarters Thursday laying out the agency’s response to the Senate report, has acknowledged that the agency made mistakes in carrying out its “enhanced interrogation” program on terrorism suspects in the months and years after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
But he has insisted that the early interrogations produced valuable intelligence that helped save American lives.
The Senate report argues that the extreme interrogations did not produce actionable intelligence that U.S. officials could not or did not obtain by other means.
The White House has declined to take a position on whether the harsh interrogation methods helped save American lives.
“It is unknowable whether or not specific information obtained through the use of an enhanced interrogation technique could have been obtained through technique that complies with the Army Field Manual,” Earnest told reporters Thursday.
The Army Field Manual has provided information about all procedures for soldiers to use in the field, and the latest version includes a 177-page manual describing how military interrogators should conduct interrogations to conform with U.S. and international law.
More important than debating whether the extreme interrogations produced actionable intelligence, Earnest argued, is Obama’s belief that it undermines the moral authority of the United States of America.
“Regardless on which side of the debate you’re on,” he said. “I think everyone agrees that the moral authority of America is one of the most powerful tools that keeps our country safe.”
Because Obama believed the CIA’s extreme practices undermined America’s moral authority around the world, Earnest said he took “demonstrable steps” to prohibit the practice on his second day in office.
“He initiated the kinds of reforms that provided greater oversight, clarity and clear guidelines” for interrogations, he said, to make them “consistent with our values and consistent in a way that upholds our moral authority.”
