Ex-CIA Agent: Waterboarding Necessary, Pussy Terrorist Cracked in 35 Seconds

http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/waterboard_CIA_agent/2007/12/10/56054.html

Ex-CIA Agent: Waterboarding Was Necessary, Torture

Monday, December 10, 2007

A retired CIA agent confirmed in a US interview that interrogators used a

simulated drowning technique on an al-Qaeda suspect and admitted that the

disputed method is a form torture.

In an ABC News interview aired Monday, retired agent John Kiriakou, who led

a CIA team that captured and interrogated al-Qaeda suspect Abu Zubaydah,

said using the "waterboarding" technique was necessary and yielded crucial

information.

Kiriakou said the method broke Zubaydah - one of the first top al-Qaeda

suspects captured after the September 11, 2001 attacks - in less than 35

seconds, according to ABC.

"The next day, he told his interrogator that Allah had visited him in his

cell during the night and told him to cooperate," Kiriakou told ABC News.

"From that day on, he answered every question," he added. "The threat

information he provided disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of

attacks."

The technique involves pouring water on the covered face of a restrained

prisoner.

Although Kiriakou admitted that waterboarding was used, he did not entirely

approve of it: "We're Americans, and we're better than this. And we

shouldn't be doing this kind of thing."

But he also said that in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, there

was a sense of urgency in getting information on terrorist groups.

"What happens if we don't waterboard a person, and we don't get that nugget

of information, and there's an attack," Kiriakou said. "I would have trouble

forgiving myself."

Kiriakou's comments come amid a growing scandal over the CIA's destruction

in 2005 of videotapes made in 2002 of interrogations of Zubaydah and Abd

al-Rahim al-Nashiri, another top al-Qaeda operative, as first reported by

The New York Times.

The videotapes reportedly showed harsh interrogation techniques used on the

suspects.

Kiriakou said he was unaware that the Zubaydah interrogation was being

secretly recorded by the CIA and that the tapes were subsequently destroyed.

CIA director Michael Hayden, who was not leading the agency when the tapes

were destroyed, has said that getting rid of the tapes was necessary to

protect the identity of CIA agents.

The White House has stopped short of denying any involvement in the affair.

The Justice Department and the CIA's internal watchdog said they had opened

a preliminary inquiry.