The CIA’s spymaster has admitted some of the interrogation techniques used by the Agency were “abhorrent”.

But in a rare news conference at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, John Brennan said his officers should not be condemned.

"They did what they were asked to do in the service of our nation," he told reporters.

Mr Brennan was addressing this week's Senate report which detailed the US intelligence agency's abuse of al Qaeda suspects in a network of secret prisons around the world.

He said: "There were no easy answers.

"And whatever your views are on EITs (enhanced interrogation techniques) … the agency did a lot of things right during this difficult time to keep this country safe and secure."

Under the programme, detainees were beaten, repeatedly waterboarded and subjected to medically unnecessary "rectal feeding" and "rectal rehydration".

President Barack Obama, who halted his predecessor George W Bush's programme when he came to office, has said the troubling practices were contrary to American values, while defending America's spies as patriots.

According to the long-delayed US Senate report released on Tuesday, former President Bush only learned details of the interrogation programme in 2006, four years after it started.

But his former Vice President Dick Cheney told Fox News on Wednesday that Mr Bush "was in fact an integral part of the programme and he had to approve it".

"The report's full of crap," Mr Cheney said, while conceding he had not read it.

He also insisted that "enhanced interrogation" led US spies to Osama bin Laden's hideout.

The Senate intelligence committee concluded the CIA deliberately misled Congress and the White House about the value of the intelligence its interrogators were gathering.

China and Iran, whose own human rights records have often been criticised by Washington, denounced the abuses, but so did some close US friends like Germany.