Obama says he has 'full confidence' in CIA Director John Brennan. Obama: 'We tortured some folks'

President Barack Obama couldn’t have been more blunt in acknowledging that the U.S. crossed a moral line in its treatment of war-on-terror prisoners.

“We tortured some folks,” Obama said during a White House news conference Friday. “When we engaged in some of these enhanced interrogation techniques, techniques that I believe and I think any fair-minded person would believe were torture, we crossed a line. And that needs to be understood and accepted.”


While the president has used the word “torture” before, it was the most explicit he’s been on the point since taking office. His remarks were also a clear sign of support for the Senate Intelligence Committee’s effort to chronicle and analyze the use of waterboarding and other methods the Bush administration instituted in the war on terror.

( Also on POLITICO: Twitter: Obama was too "folks"-y)

Many civil liberties and human rights groups were jittery that Obama would seek a middle ground between the Senate investigators on one hand and former CIA personnel and Bush administration officials who’ve sought to defend the CIA’s efforts by picking apart the Senate report.

White House officials have stoked those fears in recent weeks by stressing that the CIA would have a chance to offer a rebuttal to the Senate report and by helping to broker a deal for former agency officials to get an advance look at the document.

However, there was little sign Friday of a split-the-difference strategy from the president.

( Also on POLITICO: Obama blasts GOP on immigration)

“The character of our country has to be measured in part, not by what we do when things are easy, but what we do when things are hard,” Obama said.

Although the president’s moral verdict on the Bush-era interrogation tactics was unmistakable, he did express some sympathy for the officials who ordered them in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks.

”In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, we did some things that were wrong — we did a whole lot of things that were right, but we did some things that were contrary to our values,” Obama said. “I understand why it happened. It’s important when we look back to recall how afraid people were.”

( Also on POLITICO:Obama: Hamas must release soldier)

“People did not know whether more attacks were imminent. And there was enormous pressure on our law enforcement and our national security teams to try to deal with this. It’s important for us not to feel too sanctimonious in retrospect about the tough job that those folks had. A lot of those folks were working hard under enormous pressure and are real patriots,” the president said.

“But, having said all that, we did some things that were wrong. And that’s what that report reflects,” Obama added.

Obama also rallied to the side of CIA Director John Brennan, who was a senior official at the spy agency during the Bush era but was not in the decision-making chain about the interrogation practices. Brennan has had a stormy relationship with some in Congress and came under fire again this week after an inspector general report concluded that CIA staffers wrongly examined computer files and e-mails on a computer system Senate staffers were using to prepare the interrogation report.

Brennan apologized to Senate Intelligence Committee leaders this week, but two Democrats on the panel called Thursday for him to resign due to his handling of the episode.

“I have full confidence in John Brennan,” Obama said of the CIA chief who served as Obama’s top White House counterterrorism adviser during his first term.

The president noted Brennan’s apology and said “some very poor judgment was shown” by the CIA personnel who pried into the Senate files in what CIA officials have described as an attempt to investigate a possible security breach.

While Brennan was dismissive in his public comments about the episode when it was disclosed earlier this year, the president said Brennan had moved to get to the bottom of the incident. “Keep in mind: John Brennan called for that IG report,” Obama said.

During his first campaign for the White House, Obama often blasted the Bush administration for its interrogation tactics, which he called both “torture” and “deplorable.” Soon after taking office, Obama signed an executive order banning many of the controversial techniques.

However, the president has seemed less enthusiastic about exposing the details of the CIA program or holding people accountable for the tactics he has denounced as torture.

In 2009, he briefly entertained and then dismissed Sen. Patrick Leahy’s idea for a bipartisan commission to examine the interrogation practices.

Attorney General Eric Holder conducted a review of more than 100 alleged prisoner abuse and torture cases previously considered and dropped by prosecutors during the Bush era. Ultimately, Holder approved full investigations of two of those cases, but no charges were ever filed.

The probes were constrained from the outset by promises from Holder and the White House that no personnel would be prosecuted for actions they took which complied with legal opinions in which the Justice Department approved many of the techniques, including waterboarding and slamming prisoners into walls.

Obama was prompted to discuss the issue Friday after a reporter asked him about the status of the long-awaited declassification of portions of the intelligence committee report on the CIA’s Rendition, Detention and Interrogation program. The president said that process was now complete and the document had been returned to the Senate.

“The committee this afternoon received the redacted executive summary of our study on the CIA detention and interrogation program,” Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein said in a statement.

“A preliminary review of the report indicates there have been significant redactions. We need additional time to understand the basis for these redactions and determine their justification.

“Therefore the report will be held until further notice and released when that process is completed.”

"More than 85% of the Committee Report has been declassified, and half of the redactions are in footnotes," said Director of National Intelligence James Clapper in a statement.

"The redactions were the result of an extensive and unprecedented interagency process, headed up by my office, to protect sensitive classified information. We are confident that the declassified document delivered to the Committee will provide the public with a full view of the Committee’s report on the detention and interrogation program, and we look forward to a constructive dialogue with the Committee."

Obama has been familiar with the substance of the Senate report since at least May 2013, when he, Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and Brennan were photographed in a White House hallway with the CIA chief toting a copy of the agency’s response to the inquiry. The declassified executive summary and findings of the report are expected to be released as soon as next week.