U.S. President Barack Obama’s bluntly criticized the CIA’s treatment of terror suspects in the aftermath of the 9/11 bombings in statements made during a White House news conference yesterday. “We tortured some folks,” he conceded in some of the most expansive remarks on the CIA’s rendition and detention program that came on the eve of the release of a widely anticipated Senate report to criticize the CIA for brutal abuse of terror suspects in a covert program.

Mr. Obama said that the U.S. had “crossed the line” in its reaction to the threat of further attacks by al-Qaida, adding that he believed that U.S. intelligence officials were working under extraordinary stress and fear.

“When we engaged in some of these enhanced interrogation techniques, techniques that I believe and any fair-minded person would believe were torture, we crossed the line. And that needs to be understood and accepted,” he said in the most explicit statements he has made so far.

“The character of our country has to be measured in part, not by what we do when things are easy, but what we do when things are hard,” said Mr. Obama. His condemnation of former U.S. president George Bush’s “war on terror” in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks was clear, however he did express clear support for the Senate Intelligence Committee.

“People did not know whether more attacks were imminent. And there was enormous pressure on our law enforcement and our national security teams to try to deal with this. It’s important for us not to feel too sanctimonious in retrospect about the tough job that those folks had. A lot of those folks were working hard under enormous pressure and are real patriots,” he said.

His statements also showed support for CIA Director John Brennan, the senior official at the spy agency during former U.S. president George Bush’s administration as he was not in the decision-making field about the interrogation practices.

See a video excerpt from the news conference: