Action Sports with Leigh Roche

President Barack Obama couldn’t be more blunt in acknowledging that the U.S. crossed a moral line in its treatment of war-on-terror prisoners.

“We tortured some folks,” Obama said during a White House news conference Friday. “Any fair-minded person would call it torture.”

While the president has used the word “torture” before, it was the most explicit he’s been on the point since taking office. His remarks were also a clear sign of support for the Senate Intelligence Committee’s effort to chronicle and analyze the used of waterboarding and methods the Bush Administration dubbed “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

Many civil liberties and human rights groups were jittery that Obama would seek a middle ground between the Senate investigators on one hand and former CIA personnel and Bush administration officials who’ve sought to defend the CIA’s efforts by picking apart the Senate report.

White House officials have stoked those fears in recent weeks by stressing that the CIA would have a chance to offer a rebuttal to the Senate report and by helping to broker a deal for former agency officials to get an advance look at the document.

However, there was little sign Friday of a split-the-difference strategy from the president.

“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,” Obama said.

Although the president’s moral verdict on the Bush-era interrogation tactics was unmistakable, he did express some sympathy for the officials who ordered them in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks.

”We did some things that were wrong — we did a whole lot of things that were right, but we tortured some folks. We did things that were contrary to our values,” Obama said. “People did not know if more attacks were imminent. There was enormous pressure on our law enforcement and our national security teams….It’s important for us not to feel too sanctimonious in retrospect. Having said all that, we did some things that were wrong. That’s what the report reflects.”

Obama also rallied to the side of CIA Director John Brennan, who was a senior official at the spy agency during the Bush era but was not in the decision-making chain about the interrogation practices. Brennan has had a stormy relationship with some in Congress and came under fire again this week after an inspector general report concluded that CIA staffers wrongly examined computer files and e-mails on a computer system Senate staffers were using to prepare the interrogation report.

Brennan apologized to Senate Intelligence Committee leaders this week, but two Democrats on the panel called Thursday for him to resign due to his handling of the episode.

“I have full confidence in John Brennan,” Obama said of the CIA chief who served as Obama’s top White House counterterrorism adviser during his first term.

The president noted Brennan’s apology and said “some very poor judgment was shown” by the CIA personnel who pried into the Senate files in what CIA officials have described as an attempt to investigate a possible security breach.

While Brennan was dismissive in his public comments about the episode when it was disclosed earlier this year, the president said Brennan had moved to get to the bottom of the incident. “Keep in mind: John Brennan called for that IG report,” Obama said.

Prompted to discuss the issue question about the report, Obama began his remarks on the subject by saying the administration has completed the long-awaited declassification of portions of the intelligence committee report on the CIA’s Rendition, Detention and Interrogation program.

The report is expected to be released as soon as next week....