CIA Agent lied about torture

(noon. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

In December 2007, the Washington Post reported on the first CIA agent to openly admit the government used torture. John Kiriakou says that the CIA used waterboarding on Abu Zubaydah, and that it worked.

Recall that it was later reported that Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times.

Kiriakou said:

“It was like flipping a switch,” said Kiriakou, the first former CIA employee directly involved in the questioning of “high-value” al-Qaeda detainees to speak publicly.

In an interview, Kiriakou said he did not witness Abu Zubaida’s waterboarding but was part of the interrogation team that questioned him in a hospital in Pakistan for weeks after his capture in that country in the spring of 2002.

He added:

The waterboarding lasted about 35 seconds before Abu Zubaida broke down, according to Kiriakou, who said he was given a detailed description of the incident by fellow team members. The next day, Abu Zubaida told his captors he would tell them whatever they wanted, Kiriakou said.

“He said that Allah had come to him in his cell and told him to cooperate, because it would make things easier for his brothers,” Kiriakou said.

God wanted him to co-operate so his brothers wouldn’t be tortured as well. Man the CIA is good.

Except

“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.”

[…]

But after his one-paragraph confession, Kiriakou adds that he didn’t have any first hand knowledge of anything relating to CIA torture routines, and still doesn’t.

So one of the main arguments trotted out to claim that torture works was a lie. This isn’t surprising given all the lies from the previous administration. This guy was all over ABC News and other places “admitting” his story to anyone who’d listen and telling us that torture worked. Waterboarding saved lives.

It was just another campaign to make us believe lies the government wanted us to buy.