John Kiriakou
Encyclopedia
John Kiriakou is a former CIA officer, commentator, and author notable as the first official within the U.S. government to openly admit to the use of waterboarding
as an interrogation technique.
In December 2007 Kiriakou gave an interview to ABC News where he was described as participating in the capture and questioning of Abu Zubaydah
. According to Kiriakou, it had taken only a single brief waterboarding to cause Abu Zubaydah's to change to answering his interrogator's questions, and provide valuable intelligence:
Kiriakou did however acknowledge that even the relatively mild form of waterboarding he described constituted a form of torture and expressed reservations about whether the value of the information was worth the damage done to the USA's reputation.
Kiriakou's accounts of Abu Zubaydah's waterboarding, and the relatively mild nature of it, were widely repeated, and paraphrased, and he became a regular guest expert on news and public affairs shows, on the topics of interrogation, and counter-terrorism.
Eventually it became known that Abu Zubaydah had in fact been waterboarded at least 83 times, and that little or no useful extra information may have been gained by "harsh methods".
On the second to last page of his 2010 memoir entitled "The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA's War on Terror"
Kiriakou acknowledged that he was not present during Abu Zubaydah's interrogations, and had no first-hand knowledge of Abu Zubaydah's waterboardings:
Waterboarding
Waterboarding is a form of torture in which water is poured over the face of an immobilized captive, thus causing the individual to experience the sensation of drowning...
as an interrogation technique.
In December 2007 Kiriakou gave an interview to ABC News where he was described as participating in the capture and questioning of Abu Zubaydah
Abu Zubaydah
Abu Zubaydah is a Saudi Arabian citizen, sentenced to death in Jordan and currently held in U.S. custody in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.Not neutral: Arrested in Pakistan in March 2002, he has been in US custody for more than eight years, four-and-a-half of them spent incommunicado in solitary confinement...
. According to Kiriakou, it had taken only a single brief waterboarding to cause Abu Zubaydah's to change to answering his interrogator's questions, and provide valuable intelligence:
- "...He was able to withstand the waterboarding for quite some time. And by that I mean probably 30, 35 seconds... and a short time afterwards, in the next day or so, he told his interrogator that Allah had visit him in his cell during the night and told him to cooperate"
Kiriakou did however acknowledge that even the relatively mild form of waterboarding he described constituted a form of torture and expressed reservations about whether the value of the information was worth the damage done to the USA's reputation.
Kiriakou's accounts of Abu Zubaydah's waterboarding, and the relatively mild nature of it, were widely repeated, and paraphrased, and he became a regular guest expert on news and public affairs shows, on the topics of interrogation, and counter-terrorism.
Eventually it became known that Abu Zubaydah had in fact been waterboarded at least 83 times, and that little or no useful extra information may have been gained by "harsh methods".
On the second to last page of his 2010 memoir entitled "The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA's War on Terror"
Kiriakou acknowledged that he was not present during Abu Zubaydah's interrogations, and had no first-hand knowledge of Abu Zubaydah's waterboardings:
- "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."