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Title: CIA Man Retracts Claim on Waterboarding
Source:
Foriegn Policy
URL Source: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articl ... etracts_claim_on_waterboarding
Published: Jan 27, 2010
Author: Jeff Stein
Post Date: 2010-01-27 11:20:40 by go65
Keywords: None
Views: 7125
Comments: 18
Well, it's official now: John Kiriakou, the former CIA operative who affirmed claims that waterboarding quickly unloosed the tongues of hard-core terrorists, says he didn't know what he was talking about. Kiriakou, a 15-year veteran of the agency's intelligence analysis and operations directorates, electrified the hand-wringing national debate over torture in December 2007 when he told ABC's Brian Ross and Richard Esposito in a much ballyhooed, exclusive interview that senior al Qaeda commando Abu Zubaydah cracked after only one application of the face cloth and water. "From that day on, he answered every question," Kiriakou said. "The threat information he provided disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks." No matter that Kiriakou wearily said he shared the anguish of millions of Americans, not to mention the rest of the world, over the CIA's application of the medieval confession technique. The point was that it worked. And the pro-torture camp was quick to pick up on Kiriakou's claim. "It works, is the bottom line," conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh exclaimed on his radio show the day after Kiriakou's ABC interview. "Thirty to 35 seconds, and it works." A cascade of similar acclamations followed, muffling -- to this day -- the later revelation that Zubaydah had in fact been waterboarded at least 83 times. Had Kiriakou left out something the first time? Now comes John Kiriakou, again, with a wholly different story. On the next-to-last page of a new memoir, The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA's War on Terror (written with Michael Ruby), Kiriakou now rather off handedly admits that he basically made it all up. "What I told Brian Ross in late 2007 was wrong on a couple counts," he writes. "I suggested that Abu Zubaydah had lasted only thirty or thirty-five seconds during his waterboarding before he begged his interrogators to stop; after that, I said he opened up and gave the agency actionable intelligence." But never mind, he says now. "I wasn't there when the interrogation took place; instead, I relied on what I'd heard and read inside the agency at the time."
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Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 5.
#1. To: go65 (#0)
Waterboarding works.
What's your definition of "works"?
The subject cooperates.
Who wouldn't cooperate when being tortured? Heck, I'm sure you would admit to being Barack Obama's biggest supporter if you were waterboarded. However, most interrogation experts argue that torture doesn't work, which is one of the big reasons Bush halted it in 2006.
#8. To: go65 (#5)
That assertion is simply not true, I know its a liberal religious sort of thing...but the historical facts disprove that quaint notion, conclusively.
btw, I appreciate you and I can debate this, without ranting about Rush's sex life..(how that has anything to do with this...)
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#3. To: Badeye (#1)
Waterboarding works.
#4. To: go65 (#3)
#5. To: Badeye (#4)
The subject cooperates.
Replies to Comment # 5. Who wouldn't cooperate when being tortured?
#13. To: go65 (#5)
#15. To: go65 (#5)
End Trace Mode for Comment # 5.
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