waterboarding disrupted “maybe dozens of attacks”
New details emerged Tuesday about the CIA’s waterboarding of a top al-Qaida figure as the agency’s director, Gen. Michael Hayden, prepared for questioning by congressional panels about the destruction of CIA videotapes of terror suspect interrogations.
According to a former CIA agent, waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah, a major al-Qaida figure, got him to talk in less than 35 seconds, a technique he asserted had the approval of high-ranking U.S. officials. He said he thought the technique, which critics say is torture, probably disrupted “dozens” of planned al-Qaida attacks.
The former agent, John Kiriakou, a leader of the team that captured Zubaydah, did not explain how he knew who approved the interrogation technique but said such approval comes from top officials.
“This isn’t something done willy nilly. This isn’t something where an agency officer just wakes up in the morning and decides he’s going to carry out an enhanced technique on a prisoner,” he said Tuesday on NBC’s “Today” show. “This was a policy made at the White House, with concurrence from the National Security Council and Justice Department.”
Each time CIA agents wished to use waterboarding or any other harsh interrogation technique, they had to present a “well-laid out, well-thought out reason” to top government officials, Kiriakou said. In Zubaydah’s case, Kiriakou said the waterboarding had immediate effect.
“The next day, he told his interrogator that Allah had visited him in his cell during the night and told him to cooperate,” Kiriakou said in an interview first broadcast Monday evening on ABC News’ World News. “From that day on, he answered every question. The threat information he provided disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks.”