In fairness, Brennan, over the last couple of years, as he's become more attached to Obama's campaign, has several times said that waterboarding specifically is wrong, that it is "inconsistent with American values and it's something that should be prohibited." In a 2006 PBS interview, he said that "the dark side has its limits"; that "we're going to look back on this time and regret some of the things that we did, because it is not in keeping with our values"; and, to his credit, he urged that there be much greater openness in debating policies such as eavesdropping and interrogation.
As I noted the other day, Obama is going to have a wide panoply of advisers and, especially now before they're appointed, it's important not to draw unwarranted conclusions or to believe the endless parade of gossip about who is going to be appointed to what positions. Still, Brennan has been and continues to be an extremely important adviser for Obama on intelligence issues. His views on past administration conduct are, in many important instances, clearly disturbing and bear watching.
Frontline interview with Brennan:
One of the things that (the administration does) right away is get lots of legal justifications lined up, from the Bybee memo (the so-called "torture memo") to everything -- would there have been very much difference between what Tenet believed the CIA should do in terms of renditions and all of it? And what we can assume the vice president and the president and others would want the CIA to do? Was Tenet especially more careful, more cautious than they were sounding like they were?I think George had two concerns. One is to make sure that there was that legal justification, as well as protection for CIA officers who are going to be engaged in some of these things, so that they would not be then prosecuted or held liable for actions that were being directed by the administration. So we want to make sure the findings and other things were done probably with the appropriate Department of Justice review.
But at the same time, there is a question about how aggressive you want to be against terrorism in terms of, what does it mean to take the gloves off? There was a real debate within the agency, including today, about what are the minimum standards that you want to stoop to and beyond where you're not going to go, because we don't want to stoop to using the same types of standards that terrorists use. We are in this business, whether it be intelligence or the government, to protect freedom, democracy and liberty, not to violate that.
When it comes to individuals who are determined to destroy our nation, though, we have to make sure that we take every possible measure. It's a tough ethical question, and it's a question that really needs to be aired more publicly. The issue of the reported domestic spying -- these are very healthy debates that need to take place. They can't be stifled, because I think that we as a country and a society have to determine what is it we want to do, whether it be eavesdropping, whether it be taking actions against individuals who are either known or suspected to be terrorists. What length do we want to go to? What measures do we want to use? What tactics do we want to use?
Hopefully, that "dark side" is not going to be something that's going to forever tarnish the image of the United States abroad and that we're going to look back on this time and regret some of the things that we did, because it is not in keeping with our values. ...
Sometimes there are actions that we are forced to take, but there need to be boundaries beyond which we are going to recognize that we're not going to go because we still are Americans, and we are supposed to be representing something to people in this country and overseas. So the dark side has its limits.
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