The president attributed to "exceptional circumstances" his decision to allow the publication of secret reports

The U.S. president, Barack Obama, spoke Monday of "exceptional circumstances" to defend the publication last Thursday of four secret reports detailing some of the torture that the CIA used during interrogations between 2002 and 2005, under the Bush administration.

Coinciding with his first visit to the CIA headquarters in Langley (Virginia), Obama said that Washington decided to publish the reports at the request of a court, and stated that it would have been very difficult to organize an effective legal defense without disclosing them, adding that much of the information contained in them was already public.