He declined to define the techniques as torture, as President Barack Obama and the Senate Intelligence Committee chairwoman have done, refraining from even using the word in his 40 minutes of remarks and answers. Obama banned harsh interrogations by the United States Government when he took office.
He also appeared to draw a distinction between interrogation methods, such as waterboarding, that were approved by the Justice Department at the time, and those that were not, including death threats and beatings.
"I certainly agree that there were times when CIA officers exceeded the policy guidance that was given and the authorised techniques that were approved and determined to be lawful," he said. "They went outside of the bounds ... I will leave to others to how they might want to label those activities. But for me, it was something that is certainly regrettable."
But Brennan defended the overall detention of 119 suspects as having produced valuable intelligence that, among other things, helped the CIA find and kill al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
A 500-page Senate Intelligence Committee report released on Wednesday exhaustively cites CIA records to dispute that contention. The report points out that the CIA justified the torture - what the report called an extraordinary departure from American practices and values - as necessary to produce unique and otherwise unobtainable intelligence. Those are not terms Brennan used yesterday to describe the intelligence derived from the programme.
The report makes clear that agency officials for years told the White House, the Justice Department and Congress that the techniques themselves had elicited crucial information that thwarted dangerous plots.
Yet the report argues that torture failed to produce intelligence that the CIA couldn't have obtained, or didn't already have, elsewhere.
Although the harshest interrogations were carried out in 2002 and 2003, the programme continued until December 2007, Brennan acknowledged. All told, 39 detainees were subject to very harsh measures.
Former CIA officials, including George Tenet, who signed off on the interrogations as director, have argued that the techniques themselves were effective and justified.
Brennan's more nuanced position puts him in harmony with an anti-torture White House while attempting to mollify the many CIA officers involved in the programme who still work for him.
Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, the Intelligence Committee chairwoman whose staff wrote the report, conducted a live-tweeting point-by-point rebuttal of Brennan's news conference, at one point saying the CIA director's stance was inconsistent with the original justification for the brutal interrogations.
Tweet by tweet
As CIA director John Brennan held a news conference challenging findings in the Senate torture report, Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, head of the Senate Intelligence Committee which produced the study, challenged his comments on Twitter. Some of the points and counterpoints:
He said: "There was useful intelligence - very useful, valuable intelligence that was obtained from individuals who had been at some point subjected to the EITs [enhanced interrogation techniques]. Whether that could have been obtained without the use of those EITs is something, again, that is unknowable."
She tweeted: "Brennan: 'unknowable' if we could have gotten the intel other ways. Study shows it IS knowable: CIA had info before torture." And: "No evidence that terror attacks were stopped, terrorists captured or lives saved through use of EITs."
He said: "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 [Osama] bin Laden."
She tweeted: "Critical intelligence that led to bin Laden was unrelated to EITs." And: "Study definitively proves EITs did not lead to bin Laden."
He said: "Over time, enhanced interrogation techniques, EITs, which the Department of Justice determined at the time to be lawful and which were duly authorised by the Bush Administration, were introduced as a method of interrogation."
She tweeted: "Covert authority did not include authorisation to use coercive interrogation techniques."
He said: "I wish the committee took the opportunity to ask CIA officers involved in the programme at the time, 'What were you thinking? What did you consider? What was the calculus that you used as far as going forward on it?' ... It's lamentable that the committee did not avail itself of the opportunity to be able to interact with CIA personnel."
She tweeted: "100+ interview reports, oral and written testimony, CIA's response and numerous CIA meetings all contributed to study."
- AP
