During his recent speech and accompanying question and answer session at the Council on Foreign Relations, CIA Director John Brennan made a seemingly rare public admission regarding the way the agency handles detentions and interrogations of terrorism suspects.  Brennan stated the CIA had overcome the recent termination of its enhanced interrogation program by returning to the agency’s historic reliance on foreign liaison partners for the capture and interrogation of members of terrorist organizations.

In an exchange with Fox News’ Megan Kelly, in the waning minutes of his hour-plus-long visit to the CFR, Kelly asked Brennan if the United States was “still capturing terrorists, and if so, where do we keep them?”  The Fox News host also asked Brennan, “how are we interrogating them?”

One would have expected Brennan to demur on this question, which is an admittedly insightful one, and well worth asking, if not one to which you would expect to hear an answer in a public forum.  Nevertheless, Brennan did answer Ms. Kelly’s question, in two parts.

First, Brennan addressed those terrorism suspects who might be captured here in America, by the FBI or other law enforcement agencies.  Brennan pointed out that those suspects would be handled by American law enforcement.  Simple enough, and nothing new there.