Washington, May 2: Former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is facing flak for verbally approving to CIA Director George Tenet to use waterboarding on detainees, has defended herself in an impromptu interview with Stanford students.

"I didn't authorize anything. I conveyed the authorization of the administration to the agency," CBS quoted her as saying, while adding that waterboarding was not torture, based on the authorization to use an extreme method that simulates drowning by President Bush and legal counsel.

According to the report, by saying this, Rice has refreshed the Richard Nixon statement in which he said, "When the President does it, that means it is not illegal."

Last year, Rice had told Senate Armed Services Committee that she didn''t recall the details of conversations at the White House regarding CIA interrogation techniques.

John Dean, Nixon's White House counsel during the Watergate debacle, said that Rice might have implicated herself in a conspiracy to authorize illegal methods of interrogation.

As far as President Barack Obama's administration is concerned, they would rather let the history books deal with the past and avoid appointing a special counsel to examine what happened in the post 9/11 George W. Bush era, the report concludes. (ANI)