Top US officials gave nod to waterboarding

Kiriakou did not explain how he knew who approved the interrogation technique, but said such approval comes from top officials.

Waterboarding is a harsh technique that involves strapping down a prisoner, covering his mouth with plastic or cloth and pouring water over his face. The prisoner begins to inhale water, causing the sensation of drowning.

“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 on Tuesday on NBC television’s Today show.

At the White House, press secretary Dana Perino said the Central Intelligence Agency interrogation programme approved by the President is safe, tough, effective and legal. But she said that Hayden will not “talk about techniques and explain to the enemy what we are doing” during two days of questioning before closed sessions of the Senate and House intelligence panels.

“It’s no secret that the President approved a lawful programme in order to interrogate hardened terrorists,” Perino said. “We do not torture. We also know that this programme has saved lives by disrupting terrorist attacks.”

Kiriakou said that each time CIA agents wished to use waterboarding or any other harsh technique, they had to present a “well-laid out, well-thought out reason” to top Government officials. In Zubaydah’s case, he 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. “From that day on, he answered every question.”

Zubaydah, the first high-value detainee taken by the CIA in 2002, is now being held with other detainees at the US base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He told his interrogators about alleged September 11 accomplice Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, and the two men’s confessions also led to the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, whom the US Government said was the mastermind behind 9/11.

Kiriakou said he did not know the interrogation was being recorded by the CIA and did not know the tapes subsequently were destroyed.

“Like a lot of Americans, I’m involved in this internal, intellectual battle with myself weighing the idea that waterboarding may be torture versus the quality of information that we often get after using the waterboarding technique,” Kiriakou, now retired from the CIA, said.

He added: “What happens if we don’t waterboard a person and we don’t get that nugget of information and there’s an attack. I would have trouble forgiving myself… At the time, I felt that waterboarding was something that we needed to do.”