John Brennan, President Obama’s pick to head the CIA, defended the administration’s controversial counterterrorism policies during his Senate confirmation hearing Thursday. Brennan attempted to justify the administration’s use of drone strikes and backtracked on his earlier assertion that waterboarding yielded useful information. He also denied he played a central role in the agency’s torture of suspected terrorists and suggested he was misled as a CIA senior official over the value of information obtained through so-called “enhanced interrogation” tactics. This is part of Brennan’s defense of drones.

John Brennan: “I think there is a misimpression on the part of some American people, who believe that we take strikes to punish terrorists for past transgressions. Nothing could be further from the truth. We only take such actions as a last resort to save lives when there’s no other alternative to taking an action that’s going to mitigate that threat.”