US:A former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer who led the capture of alleged al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah has confirmed that Mr Zubaydah was subjected to waterboarding, a form of controlled drowning, and claimed that the action was approved at the highest levels of the US government.
John Kiriakou told ABC News that the technique, which human rights activists describe as torture, was effective and that Mr Zubaydah co-operated with interrogators from that day on.
"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. This was a policy made at the White House, with concurrence from the National Security Council and Justice Department," he said.
The CIA admitted last week that it destroyed videotapes documenting the interrogation of at least two terrorism suspects, although the agency declined to say if either suspect was waterboarded. The Palestinian-born Mr Zubaydah, who is alleged to have been a close associate of Osama bin Laden, was captured in Pakistan in 2002 and transferred to a secret CIA prison, possibly in Thailand, before being moved to Guantánamo Bay, where he remains today.
Mr Kiriakou said that the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques", which included slaps to the face and body and sleep deprivation for up to 48 hours, as well as waterboarding, were carefully directed from CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
"It wasn't up to individual interrogators to decide, 'Well, I'm gonna slap him.' Or, 'I'm going to shake him.' Or, 'I'm gonna make him stay up for 48 hours.' Each one of these steps, even though they're minor steps, like the intentional shake, or the open-handed belly slap, each one of these had to have the approval of the deputy director for operations," Mr Kiriakou said.
"The cable traffic back and forth was extremely specific. And the bottom line was these were very unusual authorities that the agency got after 9/11. No one wanted to mess them up. No one wanted to get in trouble by going overboard. So it was extremely deliberate." Mr Kiriakou said that, although he had misgivings about the use of such interrogation techniques, waterboarding Mr Zubaydah helped the CIA to secure information that foiled numerous terrorist plots. He said, however, that he now believed that the use of waterboarding was no longer necessary or justified.
"At the time, I felt that waterboarding was something that we needed to do. And as time has passed, and as September 11th has, you know, has moved farther and farther back into history, I think I've changed my mind."
Mr Kiriakou said that Mr Zubaydah survived the technique, which induces a feeling of drowning, for 35 seconds, more than three times as long as most US operatives trained in waterboarding had themselves endured.
The former CIA officer said he had not been aware that the interrogation of Mr Zubaydah had been videotaped, and he said the sight of someone being waterboarded is one most American would prefer not to see.