Obama Pledges Support for CIA

Buck up, guys: The president made a stop at CIA headquarters today to boost morale, his first trip to Langley since the bombshell release of memos depicting horrific interrogation techniques employed by agency operatives. Obama defended the release of the memos, maintaining that much of the information they contained was already public. He said he had and would continue to fight to "protect the integrity of classified information," including the identity of CIA officers. Ending torture will make America safer, he said, because what makes America special is "the fact that we are willing to uphold our values and our ideals even when it's hard, not just when it's easy; even when we are afraid and under threat, not just when it's expedient to do so." Acknowledging potential mistakes, he added, is "how we learn."