Former CIA Officer Reveals Waterboarding Was OK'd From Top

Ex-CIA Officer John Kiriakou has not only revealed that waterboarding was used against Terror suspects & that he believed it to be "torture" (See Video Report), but he also says that the technique was OK'd at the highest levels of the government- The White House.

From The Times Online (UK):

The CIA's use of waterboarding to torture terror suspects was approved by the White House, a former agency official claimed yesterday. The accusation comes amid growing uproar over the destruction of videotapes showing the interrogation of al-Qaeda members.

John Kiriakou, the former agent, said that the waterboarding of Abu Zubaida — the first senior al-Qaeda operative captured after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 — broke him in less than 35 seconds, and “probably saved lives”.

The harsh interrogation technique, which critics — and Mr Kiriakou — say is torture, was approved at the highest levels of the US Government, said Mr Kiriakou, who led the team that captured Zubaida.

Referring to the waterboarding of Zubaida — a technique that simulates drowning — Mr Kiriakou told the NBC TV station: “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.

“This was a policy made at the White House, with concurrence from the National Security Council and the Justice Department.”

But why has he come forward now? Is Kiriakou being used to "soften the blow" so to speak, for information that was going to eventually come to light anyway? And just how valuable was the information which was extracted using this technique?

Slate examines Kiriakou's "coming out":

At the Carpetbagger Report, Steve Benen breaks down Kiriakou's disclosure: "As a matter of crass politics, Kiriakou's assessment seems to offer a little something for everyone. For the right, Kiriakou is saying that torture produced intelligence that saved lives and thwarted possible attacks. For the left, Kiriakou is conceding that the Bush administration authorized and utilized torture (i.e., committed a felony), and he now believes the U.S. should stop using these 'enhanced interrogation techniques.'

"Kiriakou is now the first official to acknowledge the use of waterboarding on any detainee in CIA custody," says Spencer Ackerman of TPM Muckraker. "But his account of Abu Zubaydah's intelligence value contradicts Ron Suskind's 2006 book The One Percent Doctrine, which reported that Abu Zubaydah was borderline retarded and didn't have more than minor, tactical information about al-Qaeda." Washington Monthly's Political Animal Kevin Drum also points out the Suskind/Kiriakou discrepancy.

Meanwhile CIA Chief Michael Hayden was called into a closed door hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee today to answer questions about the debacle. And more hearings are planned.


But are the members of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees being honest or are they just doing this for window dressing? Hayden says that the Committees were notified about the tapes and about the enhanced interrogation techniques in secret briefings. Now they are claiming that they were never told. This may be a case where they are making a choice between their political careers and sacrificing officers at the CIA. And to a politician in Washington D.C.... that's an easy choice. If they have to, they are going to throw Hayden (who wasn't even there at the time of the secret briefings) and other Intelligence officials to the Wolves.

I'm not yet convinced that this case will even come to that for either side. Unless an Independent Counsel is requested, it is unlikely that we will see any serious charges brought as a result of this case. Neither Democrats nor Republicans are calling for and Independent Counsel just yet.