Did Torture Work?

Ross: "An exaggeration?"

Kiriakou: "No. And we-- we really ran down everything that he said. Obviously, there are other sources to-- to corroborate-- things. And this is one way that you're able to vet the people that you're speaking with. And to the best of my recollection, he never led us down the wrong path."

(By contrast, Suskind reported that Zubaydah "named countless targets inside the U.S. to stop the pain, all of them immaterial.")

Kiriakou's current view on waterboarding: "I think that-- water boarding is probably something that we shouldn't be in the business of doing."

Ross: "Why do you say that now?

Kiriakou: "Because we're Americans, and we're better than that."

Kiriakou told CBS News that he and at least one other CIA officer refused to use water boarding and the other newly authorized interrogation tactics. "That job, he said, was turned over to retired commandos under contract to the CIA."

Via Thinkprogress I see Kiriakou was on NBC's Today Show this morning with Matt Lauer. Lauer asked Kiriakou where the permission was given to carry out torture.

Lauer: "Was the White House involved in that decision?"

Kiriakou: "Absolutely. This isn't something done willy nilly. It's not something that 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 the Justice Department."

Lauer then played a clip from a September 2006 interview he did with Bush, in which the president said: "I told our people get information without torture, and was assured by our Justice Department that we were not torturing."

Kiriakou's response: "I disagree."