LANGLEY, VA --CIA Director, John O. Brennan held a rare press conference today where he attempted to defend CIA torture post 9/11.
Brennan, contradicting former CIA Directors, said, "It is unknowable whether useful intelligence was ever obtained from 'enhanced interrogation' techniques."
When a reporter asked why the CIA engaged in torture, if it didn't know if it was useful, Brennan responded, "Well I'll quote Donald Rumsfeld, 'As we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know.'"
Another reporter pointed out that the agency used painful restraints, imposed punitive "anal feeding" or "anal rehydration," and forced detainees with broken leg bones to stand shackled against walls in addition to waterboarding, throwing detainees against walls and so on and on." "Isn't that torture?" asked the reporter.
"Well, our own CIA lawyers initially said it was but then we deferred to the Bush-Cheney lawyers who said these techniques are legal. I personally don't know if it was torture. I'll just leave that to the lawyers. As is well-known, all of them are straight talking, morally upright American patriots."
This reporter asked Brennan why, in the past, he had said that interrogators who used "harsh techniques" betrayed American values and ideals but in recent statements calls them "heroes?" "Is that not a contradiction?" asked this reporter.
Brennan responded, "Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. Besides, President Obama says the same thing. He's always saying what patriots the torturers were patriots.
Next, Brennan interrupted a reporter's question with the statement, "The CIA did a great job after 9/11 even though we used brutal and abhorrent techniques, were ill-prepared for the intelligence gathering task, and were grossly incompetent in the area of administrative oversight."
Reporter Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone said to Brennan, "After reading the Senate Intelligence Report on the CIA there is definitely an unmistakable obsession with nudity in CIA interrogations and as you read on, you start to sense a kind of fondness for the many "rectal hydration" procedures that is frankly a little creepy." Taibbi then asked if the "CIA operatives disturbing interest in sex interfered with the effectiveness of its interrogations?"
Brennan did not respond. After the news conference ended, Reporter Taibbi disappeared. Rumor has it that he is in CIA hands being subjected to punitive rectal hydration.
