World's Most Confident War Criminal

This is really unbelievable. Michael Hayden's whole weak excuse for his agency destroying tapes of torture interrogations was that he was looking to protect the identities of those agents involved. And then one of them comes out on national television and admits to it.

A leader of the CIA team that captured the first major al Qaeda figure, Abu Zubaydah, says subjecting him to waterboarding was torture but necessary.

In the first public comment by any CIA officer involved in handling high-value al Qaeda targets, John Kiriakou, now retired, said the technique broke Zubaydah in less than 35 seconds.

"The next day, he told his interrogator that Allah had visited him in his cell during the night and told him to cooperate," said Kiriakou in an interview to be broadcast tonight on ABC News' "World News With Charles Gibson" and "Nightline."

"From that day on, he answered every question," Kiriakou said. "The threat information he provided disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks."

First of all, of course he broke in 35 seconds. You were drowning him. Not simulating drowning, but actually drowning.

Second, the idea that Zubaydah disrupted dozens of attacks can reasonably be called into question. Kevin Drum has led efforts to retrieve the truth about Zubaydah from the memory hole.

"The guy is insane, certifiable, split personality," [Dan] Coleman told a top official at FBI after a few days reviewing the Zubaydah haul....There was almost nothing "operational" in his portfolio. That was handled by the management team. He wasn't one of them...."He was like a travel agent, the guy who booked your flights....He was expendable, you know, the greeter....Joe Louis in the lobby of Caesar's Palace, shaking hands."

....According to CIA sources, he was water-boarded....He was beaten....He was repeatedly threatened....His medication was withheld. He was bombarded with deafening, continuous noise and harsh lights.

....Under this duress, Zubaydah told them that shopping malls were targeted by al Qaeda....Zubaydah said banks — yes, banks — were a priority....And also supermarkets — al Qaeda was planning to blow up crowded supermarkets, several at one time. People would stop shopping. The nation's economy would be crippled. And the water system — a target, too. Nuclear plants, naturally. And apartment buildings.

Thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each flavor of target. Of course, if you multiplied by ten, there still wouldn't be enough public servants in America to surround and secure the supermarkets. Or the banks. But they tried.

This is actually somewhat backed up by Kiriakou's account. He says that dozens of attacks were thwarted. But to believe that you have to believe that Al Qaeda had dozens of attacks ready, when 9/11 took 18 months to plan and years more to gestate.

Whatever the case, what was done to Zubaydah is obviously torture. And this guy Kiriakou is complicit, admitting that they waterboarded him, which has been in violation of international law for decades. He basically incriminated himself on TV. He's even admitting now that waterboarding is torture that shouldn't be used, although he sounds conflicted by it because he believes this mentally ill person accurately described dozens of attacks.

Kiriakou said the feeling in the months after the 9/11 attacks was that interrogators did not have the time to delve into the agency's bag of other interrogation tricks.

"Those tricks of the trade require a great deal of time -- much of the time -- and we didn't have that luxury. We were afraid that there was another major attack coming," he said [...]

Now retired, Kiriakou, who declined to use the enhanced interrogation techniques, says he has come to believe that water boarding is torture but that perhaps the circumstances warranted it.

"Like a lot of Americans, I'm involved in this internal, intellectual battle with myself weighing the idea that waterboarding may be torture versus the quality of information that we often get after using the waterboarding technique," Kiriakou told ABC News. "And I struggle with it." [...]

"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," he told ABC News.

Part of his decision appears to be an ethical one; another part, perhaps, simply pragmatic.

"I think we're chasing them all over the world. I think we've had a great deal of success chasing them...and, as a result, waterboarding, at least right now, is unnecessary," Kirikou said.

Brian Ross: "Did it compromise American principles? Or did it save American lives? Or both?"

John Kiriakou: "I think both. It may have compromised our principles at least in the short term. And I think it's good that we're having a national debate about this. We should be debating this, and Congress should be talking about it because, I think, as a country, we have to decide if this is something that we want to do as a matter of policy. I'm not saying now that we should, but, at the very least, we should be talking about it. It shouldn't be secret. It should be out there as part of the national debate."

Honestly, this is someone who is conflicted because he was witness to madness and he wants to forgive himself. But what you have to ask yourself is, how can it be that Kiriakou feels completely able to come forward and admit to a war crime? It's clear that the CIA destroyed the tapes to avoid prosecution. But I have to say that the destruction is almost irrelevant now. You have a material witness on the record. All the DC-area Staples are probably out of shredders given the gap of several days between the revelation of the tapes and an order for preservation of documents, but again, it doesn't matter. Why is this guy so confident?

Of course, it's because the Bush Administration won't possibly prosecute, no matter who asks for a legal determination of the CIA program. The Democratic leadership and the leadership of the intelligence communities are ethically compromised on the issue as well, having learned of plans to enact torture and meeting them with silence. The US is not a signatory to the International Criminal Court and would do anything in their power to avert prosecution on these grounds.

This is what happens in a country without the rule of law. Torturers can go in front of the cameras and casually admit their guilt. And absolutely nothing will happen to them.

UPDATE: Gerald Posner:

In my 2003 New York Times bestseller, Why America Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9/11, I discussed Abu Zubaydah at length in Chapter 19, "The Interrogation." There I set forth how Zubaydah initially refused to help his American captors. Also, disclosed was how U.S. intelligence established a so-called "fake flag" operation, in which the wounded Zubaydah was transferred to Afghanistan under the ruse that he had actually been turned over to the Saudis. The Saudis had him on a wanted list, and the Americans believed that Zubaydah, fearful of torture and death at the hands of the Saudis, would start talking when confronted by U.S. agents playing the role of Saudi intelligence officers.

Instead, when confronted by his "Saudi" interrogators, Zubaydah showed no fear. Instead, according to the two U.S. intelligence sources that provided me the details, he seemed relieved. The man who had been reluctant to even confirm his identity to his U.S. captors, suddenly talked animatedly. He was happy to see them, he said, because he feared the Americans would kill him. He then asked his interrogators to call a senior member of the Saudi royal family. And Zubaydah provided a private home number and a cell phone number from memory. "He will tell you what to do," Zubaydah assured them

That man was Prince Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdul-Aziz, one of King Fahd's nephews, and the chairman of the largest Saudi publishing empire. Later, American investigators would determine that Prince Ahmed had been in the U.S. on 9/11.

American interrogators used painkillers to induce Zubaydah to talk -- they gave him the meds when he cooperated, and withdrew them when he was quiet. They also utilized a thiopental sodium drip (a so-called truth serum). Several hours after he first fingered Prince Ahmed, his captors challenged the information, and said that since he had disparaged the Saudi royal family, he would be executed. It was at that point that some of the secrets of 9/11 came pouring out. In a short monologue, that one investigator told me was the "Rosetta Stone" of 9/11, Zubaydah laid out details of how he and the al Qaeda hierarchy had been supported at high levels inside the Saudi and Pakistan governments.

He named two other Saudi princes, and also the chief of Pakistan's air force, as his major contacts. Moreover, he stunned his interrogators, by charging that two of the men, the King's nephew, and the Pakistani Air Force chief, knew a major terror operation was planned for America on 9/11.

These three Saudi princes died within a week of one another under highly questionable circumstances, including one who died of "thirst."

UPDATE II: I almost forgot that the CIA was given blanket immunity as part of the Military Commissions Act. This guy is off scot-free. And as I excerpted, Kiriakou declined to use the "enhanced interrogation techniques," i.e. torture. Except he's at the very least an accessory to a war crime, and if he subjected the detainee to extended sleep deprivation, etc., he's complicit.