Today, President Obama nominated CIA retiree and current deputy national security advisor John Brennan (standing to Obama’s left in the White House photo, above) to head the CIA. What does the CIA’s former chief torturer, Jose Rodriguez, have to say about his former colleague? From his memoir, Hard Measures:

“The Obama administration seemed to have a political stake in declaring the actions of the past evil and their own actions necessary and correct. My former CIA colleague John Brennan is now deputy national security advisor and assistant to the president. Back in 2007, however, he was out of government and a consultant for CBS News. In November of that year he told CBS anchor Harry Smith that enhanced interrogation techniques had borne fruit. Brennan said: “There have been a lot of information that has come out from these interrogation procedures that the Agency has in fact used against the real hard-core terrorists. It has saved lives. And let’s not forget, these are hardened terrorists who have been responsible for 9/11, who have shown no remorse at all for the deaths of three thousand innocents.” Brennan went on in his CBS interview to defend Michael Mukasey, who at the time was undergoing confirmation hearings as the Bush administration’s attorney general, for refusing to call waterboarding “torture.” Had Mukasey done so, Brennan explained, those “who authorized and actually used this type of procedure may be subject to some type of judicial action.” He was right, but he is “singing a different tune today.”

(Excerpt From: Jose A. Rodriguez Jr. & Bill Harlow. “Hard Measures.” Threshold Editions. iBooks. This material may be protected by copyright. Check out this book on the iBookstore: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/hard-measures/id455700446?mt=11)

As we now know, Brennan was wrong about the effectiveness of the CIA’s torture program, just as Rodriguez is morally and professionally bankrupt for continuing to propagate that lie. But he is right about Brennan: he is singing a different tune…now.

And what does it say about a president who is so willing to nominate someone ready, willing and able to publicly rewrite their own–and the nation’s–experience in using tactics also used by the likes of Saddam Hussein, Hosni Mubarak, and the Assads? Obama voters: is this the “change you can believe in”?