Posted on 12/12/2007 6:37:32 AM PST by UKrepublican
'Waterboarding broke al Qaeda captive in 35 seconds,' says former CIA agent defending torture
Use of the interrogation technique known as "waterboarding" was approved by the White House and gets results, a former CIA agent admitted yesterday.
The technique - which simulates drowning - was used against Al Qaeda captives with success, John Kiriakou told a U.S. TV network.
The one-time CIA interrogator is the first to speak out about the "torture" methods that have earned President George Bush's administration worldwide condemnation.
The White House has denied torture is used on terror suspects, but Mr Kiriakou said waterboarding "broke" one stubbornly silent Al Qaeda recruiter after just 35 seconds.
Waterboarding involves wrapping plastic or fabric around a detainee's face then pouring water over the top until it is forced up the nose and down the throat to simulate drowning.
Suspects are told they will die if they do not talk.
And although the technique is supposed to be low-risk, critics say it can result in long-lasting psychological damage, injury to the lungs and even, in extreme cases, death.
Mr Kiriakou told the ABC network that he had fought an "intellectual battle" in his mind over the use of waterboarding, and had concluded that it is justified as it saves lives by preventing terror attacks. "This isn't something done willy-nilly," he added. "This was a policy made at the White House, with concurrence from the National Security Council and Justice Department."
Mr Kiriakou told how waterboarding was used on Zayn Abu Zubaida, the first high-ranking Al Qaeda member captured after the September 11 attacks in 2001.
Abu Zubaida was seized in a gun battle in Pakistan in the spring of 2002. For weeks he refused to talk and remained ideologically zealous, defiant and unco-operative. Then he was flown to a secret CIA prison - believed to be in Afghanistan - and strapped to a board with his feet in the air.
Cellophane was wrapped around the Al Qaeda man's face and water was forced up his nose and into his throat to make him think he was drowning.
The suspect lasted only 35 seconds before he broke.
"It was like flipping a switch," said Mr Kiriakou.
"From that day on, he answered every question. The threat information he provided disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks.
"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.
"I struggle with it.
"At the time, I felt that waterboarding was something that we needed to do."
Mr Kiriakou said he did not interrogate Abu Zubaida, but learned the details from colleagues.
His account came as the U.S. Congress began questioning CIA director Michael Hayden yesterday about why the agency destroyed at least two videotapes of controversial interrogations.
Many senators believe it was done to hide evidence of illegal torture that could have been used against CIA agents in a war crimes tribunal.
General Hayden, speaking to the closed-doors Congress hearing yesterday was expected to say that CIA lawyers ruled that the interrogations were legal and the tapes were destroyed in 2005 to protect the identities of CIA employees who appear on them.
The torture scandal is likely to become a major issue in next year's presidential election.
Abu Zubaida - who says he was coerced into making false confessions - was eventually moved to the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he is now held in solitary confinement.
He is likely to be tried next year on terrorism charges and the CIA expects that he will spend the rest of his life in custody.
Mr Kiriakou, a 14-year veteran of the CIA who worked in both the analysis and operations divisions, left in 2004 and works as a consultant for a private Washington-based firm.
It prevented the reinforcement of the Eastern front by at least 35 divisions of German assets, allowing the Soviets to overrun the German East, and forcing the Germans to redeploy those forces less efficiently, weakening their Western front - this shortened the war considerably.
Because of Dresden, far more Willies, Joes, Tommys and Ivans were still alive at the end of the war than would have otherwise been the case.
>>It was not “torture” and if congress thought it was they had an obligation to speak out when they first learned about it, in ‘02!<<
You know it possible for both congress and the President to both be wrong at the same time. I can even think of some examples... :)
An overarching attitude of self-righteous moral preening isn't actually an argument.
Go back and read your own posts.
You are a keyboard coward.
I’m sure your daughters are very nice, but I’m already married.
You are on the same thread and can read everything I post.
Even though you refuse to answer simple questions that expose you.
Does your wife wear a burqa?
To be self-righteous, wouldn’t I have to be making reference to myself?
That irritating sting you feel is your conscience.
>>He said no he would not waterboard even if it saved his own family and the lives of everyone in the city he lives in.<<
Do me a favor and show the quote on that please - that doesn’t sound like him. Not to mention he’s been here almost 10 years so he deserves at least basic courtesy.
Which is worse, Waterboarding or an IED bomb?? Frankly, if he is a terrorist Waterboard him while you Ring his Chimes.
Pray for W and Our Victorious Troops
I’ll tell you one thing. I know how it feels to be set upon by a mob of cowards. And not on line either.
The whole torture debate is focusing on the wrong issue. It’s not whether mild forms such as this are okay or not okay, it’s the degree of certainty that the subject is guilty of heinous crimes and able to provide information that will prevent some future heinous crimes. It’s not acceptable to inflict lasting psychological harm on someone we mistakenly believed to be a terrorist, but in many cases we know exactly who we’re dealing with and what sort of horrors could be prevented by extracting the information they’re witholding — in such cases, the last thing we should be worrying about is whether we’re being too mean to the guy.
Indeed - for example, implicitly ascribing to oneself magisterial authority to interpret documents like Gaudium Et Spes.
That irritating sting you feel is your conscience.
So, in other words, you're not going to address the substance of my posts, but continue to invent imaginary mental states to ascribe to me.
I'm sorry you can't do the work.
It’s in several of his posts on this thread. I have to get to work and don’t have time to go back over them.
Just look for the smoketree posts.
I asked several times in the effort to extend courtesy.
Got the same answer or no answer if the question was too difficult.
Then why can’t you answer simple questions as to your culture and why you would sacrifice millions of your countrymen in order to not inconvenience one savage?
On a good day my culture’s Christian. I’m not exactly unknown around here. Ask wideawake.
If you don’t have time to produce cites to prove you’re not a liar, you’re too busy to be on this thread.
I think you read a little too deeply between the lines.
WATERBOARDING CHRISTMAS SONG - http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1938465/posts
That is the Law.
I don't see brutal Dhimmi-hood anywhere on the list.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Brigadier Clive Candy: I often thought, a fellow like me dies - special knowledge, all to waste. Well, am I dead? Does my knowledge count for nothing, eh? Experience? Skill? You tell me!
Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff: It is a different knowledge they need now, Clive. The enemy is different, so you have to be different, too.
Brigadier Clive Candy: Are you mad? I know what war is!
Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff: I don't agree.
Brigadier Clive Candy: You...!
Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff: It is a different knowledge they need now, Clive. The enemy is different, so you have to be different, too.
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Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff: I read your broadcast up to the point where you describe the collapse of France. You commented on Nazi methods--foul fighting, bombing refugees, machine-gunning hospitals, lifeboats, lightships, bailed-out pilots--by saying that you despised them, that you would be ashamed to fight on their side and that you would sooner accept defeat than victory if it could only be won by those methods.
Brigadier Clive Candy: So I would!
Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff: Clive! If you let yourself be defeated by them, just because you are too fair to hit back the same way they hit at you, there won't be any methods *but* Nazi methods! If you preach the Rules of the Game while they use every foul and filthy trick against you, they will laugh at you! They'll think you're weak, decadent! I thought so myself in 1919!
Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff: [he pats Clive's shoulder] You mustn't mind me, an old alien, saying all this. But who can describe hydrophobia better than one who has been bitten - and is now immune.
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Brigadier Clive Candy: I heard all that in the last war! They fought foul then - and who won it?
Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff: I don't think you won it. We lost it -but you lost something, too. You forgot to learn the moral. Because victory was yours, you failed to learn your lesson twenty years ago and now you have to pay the school fees again. Some of you will learn quicker than the others, some of you will never learn it - because you've been educated to be a gentleman and a sportsman, in peace and in war. But Clive! [tenderly]
Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff: Dear old Clive - this is not a gentleman's war. This time you're fighting for your very existence against the most devilish idea ever created by a human brain - Nazism. And if you lose, there won't be a return match next year... perhaps not even for a hundred years.
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Memorable quotes for
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)
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