CIA Director John Brennan said waterboarding will not return. | AP Photo CIA director: We won't waterboard

CIA Director John Brennan shut down one of Donald Trump’s biggest campaign talking points on Sunday, saying his agency would not engage in waterboarding, even if a future president were to order it.

“I will not agree to carry out some of these tactics and techniques I’ve heard banded about because this institution needs to endure,” Brennan said in an interview with NBC News.


He continued, when pressed on the subject, by saying he would “not agree to having any CIA officer carrying out waterboarding again.”

Brennan’s comments come as Trump continues to say on the campaign trail and in interviews with national news organization that laws that prevent the military from waterboarding and torturing enemy combatants make America weak.

“They’re laughing at us right now. I would like to strengthen the laws so that we can better compete,” Trump told CBS’s “Face the Nation” host John Dickerson last month. "You know it’s very tough to beat enemies that don’t have any, that don’t have any restrictions, all right?”

He has also vowed to “bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding,” if elected. (A person who undergoes waterboarding is subjected to having water poured over their mouth or nose, as they are blindfolded or covered with material, in such a way that simulates drowning.)

Brennan was known to be a critic and dissenter of interrogation techniques used during the George W. Bush administration. However, Brennan, at the time of his 2013 confirmation hearings, sided with the agency and defended the CIA, saying the enhanced interrogation techniques “did produce intelligence that helped thwart attack plans, capture terrorists, and save lives.”