CIA Director John Brennan took an extraordinary step Thursday to contain the roiling controversy over his agency’s past use of aggressive interrogation techniques: inviting journalists and cameras to the spy agency’s secretive headquarters and conducting a full-scale press conference that was carried on live television around the world. 
 
 But he struck a largely defensive tone, praising the integrity of the agency’s workforce while conceding that some of its personnel used techniques that “had not been authorized, were abhorrent and rightly should be repudiated by all.” 
 
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 Brennan threaded a needle on the effectiveness of tactics that many view as torture, such as waterboarding. He insisted that detainees subjected to what the agency calls “enhanced interrogation techniques” gave up “useful and valuable” information, but conceded that it can’t be said whether the harsh treatment yielded that information. 
 
 That is “unknown and unknowable,” he said. 
 
 Asked if torture helped draw out information that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden, Brennan demurred, saying only that individuals who were subjected to the techniques “provided information that was useful and was used” in the hunt for the Al Qaeda leader. 
 
 (Also on POLITICO: John Brennan's zigzag on torture) 
 
 Brennan’s news conference came two days after the release of a Senate Intelligence Committee report blasted the Central Intelligence Agency for abusing detainees and severely mismanaging its interrogation program in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. 
 
 According to agency officials, Brennan spoke to the CIA’s work force on Wednesday, trying to quell concern about the Senate report’s impact on the agency’s personnel, their reputations and morale. Thursday’s press conference was clearly intended as an effort to convey a similar message of support to a wider audience. 
 
 Projecting an image of solidarity, about 30 senior agency officials sat directly in front of the director as he spoke. They also served as a buffer of sorts between Brennan and a larger number of reporters who traveled to the Langley, Va. complex to question the director about the report that rocked the agency this week and the conduct it details, including tactics President Barack Obama has banned and described this week as “brutal.” 
 
 Brennan began his appearance with a 20-minute speech that opened with a dramatic description of the 9/11 attacks and attempted to invoke the sense of fear in which the harsh interrogation program was devised. 
 
 Regardless of one’s views on enhanced interrogation techniques, “our nation and, in particular, this agency did a lot of things right during this difficult time to keep this country safe and secure,” he said. 
 
 The “overwhelming majority” of the agency’s workforce “carried out their responsibilities faithfully,” he argued. “They did what they were asked to do in the service of our nation.” 
 
 (POLITICO Magazine: Michael Hayden is not sorry) 
 
 Brennan also said that the agency’s people have been “touched by the outpouring of support” from outsiders as the CIA came under withering criticism in recent days. 
 
 Despite his clear desire to elicit sympathy for CIA personnel, he conceded that some officers had gone too far in their interrogations and that the agency didn’t do enough to supervise them. 
 
 “In many ways this was uncharted territory for the CIA and we were not prepared,” he said. “We fell short when it came to holding some officers accountable for their mistakes,” Brennan said. 
 
 Throughout his remarks, Brennan described his agency’s conduct as enhanced interrogation techniques or EITs, and not as “torture” — the term that Obama has used. Pressed on his avoidance of that characterization, Brennan said he “will leave to others how they might want to label” the CIA’s practices. 
 
 He also declined to say whether he supported the release of the Senate summary report on the interrogation techniques, but indicated that he believes too much been revealed. 
 
 “I think there is more than enough transparency that has happened over the last couple of days,” he said, in what seemed to be an exasperated and heartfelt aside. “I think it’s over the top.” 
 
 At another point, the director made plain his distaste for the events of the past few days. 
 
 “There is a lot of exaggeration, misrepresentation of the facts, and therefore I think certain agendas are being pursued,” he said while discussing international reaction to the report. “I certainly wish that this would not be happening.” 
 
 Brennan’s appearance represented the first on-camera response by a current Obama administration official to some of the central claims in the Senate report: namely that the CIA misled Congress, the White House and the public about the program, and that the interrogations were not effective in producing intelligence that saved lives by heading off terrorist plots. 
 
 While the CIA’s written response to the Senate report disputed those conclusions, the White House and the president have repeatedly refused to say whether they agree with the Senate panel on those points or with the spy agency. 
 
 Brennan seemed most exercised Thursday about the Senate panel’s suggestion that agency personnel repeatedly and likely intentionally gave false information to their overseers about the interrogation effort. 
 
 Meanwhile, Senate Intelligence panel Chairman Dianne Feinstein’s staff ran a real-time fact-check of Brennan’s remarks through her Twitter account, @SenFeinstein, adding the hashtag #ReadTheReport. 
 
 “We gave the committee our full support” as it started its study in 2009, Brennan said. But, he noted, Feinstein’s staff did not interview CIA staff. “It was unusual,” he said. 
 
 While the report is “flawed,” much of it is “consistent with our own internal findings,” Brennan said. 
 
 White House news secretary Josh Earnest would not say whether Brennan — who was at the White House on Thursday morning for the President’s Daily Briefing — had discussed the rare press conference with the president. 
 
 “This is a decision that Director Brennan made,” Earnest said. “It’s one that he should make.” 
 
 Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) and other critics of the techniques have called for Brennan’s resignation, but none of the 11 reporters who questioned him over roughly 25 minutes asked about the status of his job or whether he is the best person to lead the agency at this time due to the fact he was also in CIA leadership during the post-9/11 years. The White House has repeatedly said that Obama has full confidence in Brennan. 
 
 Brennan did say, in response to a question, that he was aware of aspects of the interrogation program at the time it took place. 
 
 “I was not in the chain of command; I did not have authority over the implementation of that program or the management oversight of it,” he added. 
 
 The CIA director did not answer a portion of a question about whether he “expressed reservations” about the interrogation effort while it was underway. He told the Senate Intelligence Committee in a 2013 questionnaire that he “had significant concerns and personal objections” to some of the techniques and shared those thoughts with others at the agency. 
 
 By speaking out now, Brennan appeared to be making a decisive bid to extinguish the public firestorm that engulfed the spy agency this week. Debate over the interrogation program in the media seems certain to continue at a fairly intense level at least through the Sunday television talk shows, one of which will feature former Vice President Dick Cheney defending the use of techniques like waterboarding and confining suspects in small spaces. 
 
 The CIA, Obama and his close aides have made abundantly clear that they’re eager to put this particular flurry of news coverage behind them. The decision to have Brennan speak out definitively and at length on the subject Thursday could diminish media interest in dogging him about the subject at any future public speeches or interviews. ||||| Tweet with a location 
 
 You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more ||||| Washington (CNN) -- CIA Director John Brennan on Thursday defended harsh interrogation techniques as providing "useful" information to authorities, including in the raid that led to the death of Osama bin Laden. But he said it is "unknowable" what information could specifically be attributed to those techniques. 
 
 "It is our considered view that the detainees who were subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques provided information that was useful and was used in the ultimate operation to go against Bin Laden," Brennan said. 
 
 Brennan's comments, in a rare news conference, come two days after a Senate panel released a blockbuster 528-page report detailing "enhanced interrogation techniques" -- including mock executions, "rectal rehydration," sleep deprivation and beatings -- in interrogations in the mid-2000s. 
 
 He admitted that some CIA officers' actions were "not authorized, were abhorrent and rightly should be repudiated by all. And we fell short in holding some officers accountable for their mistakes." 
 
 Brennan acknowledged that the agency sometimes exceeded its legal authority during interrogations of terrorism suspects. 
 
 RELATED: CIA feared for future of interrogation program, report shows 
 
 He said detainees who faced "enhanced interrogation techniques" did provide some information that provided useful -- as well as other information that didn't. He said whether those interrogations had anything to do with that information is "unknowable." 
 
 "Let me be clear: We have not concluded that it was the EITs within that program that allowed us to obtain useful information from the detainees subjected to them," he said. 
 
 But he staunchly defended the agency during the 45-minute news conference, adding: "CIA officers' actions that did comport with the law and policy should neither be criticized nor conflated with the actions of the few who did not follow the guidance issued." 
 
 Brennan opened his remarks with a vivid depiction of the events of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and described the atmosphere going into fighting terrorism and collecting intelligence in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. 
 
 "There were no easy answers, and whatever your views are on [enhanced interrogation techniques], our nation and in particular this agency did a lot of things right during this difficult time to keep this country strong and secured," Brennan said. 
 
 RELATED: Who is John Brennan? 
 
 Brennan praised those who worked with him but he added the agency was "unprepared to conduct a detention and interrogation program, and our officers inadequately developed and monitored its initial activities." 
 
 Brennan never used the word "torture" to describe the CIA's tactics. And he deflected a question about whether, in the interest of transparency, he supported the Senate Intelligence Committee's decision to release its report. 
 
 "I think there's been more than enough transparency that's happened over the last couple days," he said. "I think it's over the top." 
 
 Brennan said it's "lamentable" that the Senate panel didn't conduct interviews with CIA agents -- a contrast, he said, with its handling of a report on Iraq's lack of weapons of mass destruction, which included interviews with more than 200 officers. 
 
 His strongest criticism of the report was with its contention that the CIA misled the public and government officials -- including then-President George W. Bush. That, Brennan said, is untrue -- a stance former Vice President Dick Cheney backed up in an interview with Fox News on Wednesday night. 
 
 Still, he didn't fault the report's finding that the CIA's tactics were harsh and, at times, went beyond the legal authority Bush's Justice Department said the agency had. 
 
 "Many aspects of their conclusions are sound and consistent with our own prior findings," Brennan said. "Over the years, internal agency reviews, including numerous investigations by our office of the inspector general, found fault in the CIA's running of the program. We have acknowledged these mistakes." 
 
 Brennan was the CIA's deputy executive director while the tactics were being used. He said he had "some visibility" into what was happening, but that he wasn't in the chain of command for that program, and didn't say whether he had made any effort to push for changes at the time. 
 
 He also noted that the program for using "enhanced interrogation techniques" was ended in 2007. 
 
 "In light of the fact that these techniques were banned seven years ago, however, my fervent hope is that we can put aside this debate and move on to issues that are relevant to our current national security challenges," Brennan said. 
 
 Meanwhile, one of Brennan's sharpest critics, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the chairwoman of the committee behind the report, live-tweeted along with the press conference and sharply rebutted several points throughout his press conference. 
 
 This story was updated to include additional information ||||| WASHINGTON (AP) — The head of the Senate Intelligence Committee is launching a barrage of tweets against CIA complaints about the report on Bush-era interrogation techniques. 
 
 CIA Director John Brennan is holding a news conference to lay out objections to the committee's report. At the same time, Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein's office is tweeting a series of messages defending the accuracy of the study. 
 
 Feinstein's office began tweeting even before Brennan began speaking. 
 
 One tweet says "every fact" in the committee's report was based on CIA records, cables or other evidence. 
 
 The committee's report concludes the CIA engaged in brutal interrogation techniques and misled the White House and the public about what it was doing.
– CIA Director John Brennan offered up a spirited defense of his agency's torture program today, saying that "our nation and, in particular, this agency did a lot of things right during this difficult time to keep this country safe and secured" in the aftermath of 9/11, and that most agents "carried out their responsibilities faithfully," obtained "useful and valuable" information, and "did what they were asked to do in the service of our nation." He acknowledged that techniques were used that "had not been authorized, were abhorrent, and rightly should be repudiated by all," notes Politico, and that "we fell short when it came to holding some officers accountable for their mistakes." Speaking at a rare press conference, Brennan took questions, including one about whether more information would be forthcoming, notes CNN. "I think there's been more than enough transparency that's happened over the last couple days. I think it's over the top," responded the nation's top spy. Brennan bashed the "flawed" report for the "unusual" choice of not talking to CIA agents, but said that ultimately many "conclusions are sound and consistent with our own prior findings." The AP notes that Senate Intelligence Committee chair Sen. Dianne Feinstein's office began a lively and real-time Twitter fact-check defending the report's accuracy, using #ReadTheReport. Read one: "Brennan: 'unknowable' if we could have gotten the intel other ways. Study shows it IS knowable: CIA had info before torture. #ReadTheReport"