A Spook's Slippery Tale of Waterboarding Al Qaeda

By James Gordon Meek

Last week, the debate over waterboarding terrorists took a slippery turn when an obscure ex-CIA officer named John Kiriakou went public to disclose that the interrogation technique many consider torture was used to allegedly break the first Al Qaeda lieutenant nabbed after 9/11. Kiriakou’s remarkable media blitz began on network evening news broadcasts on Dec. 10 and continued the next day on morning shows and cable nets as he recounted how Al Qaeda associate Abu Zubaydah was broken within 30 seconds of being waterboarded after his 2002 capture in Pakistan.

But Kiriakou’s outpouring of details about one of the most highly classified programs in the U.S. government - possibly intended to nail a book deal - may get him into hot water. Informed sources flatly denied the accuracy of one news report that CIA and Justice Department officials last week decided against investigating Kiriakou for the unauthorized disclosure of classified information.

The publicity generated by the ex-operative, who a CNN anchor called the “man of the hour,” may have been intended to drum up interest in a book manuscript by Kiriakou awaiting clearance by the CIA’s publications review board, several sources told the New York Daily News' Mouth of the Potomac Blog.

The 14-year CIA veteran said he questioned Zubaydah in Arabic in his hospital bed, where the terrorist recovered after getting shot when he was captured. He also has said he refused to participate in waterboarding Zubaydah.

But we've learned that Kiriakou wasn’t involved in Zubaydah’s actual interrogation - or was even nearby when he got waterboarded - though he legitimately claims he participated in nabbing the Al Qaeda facilitator. CIA leaders are indeed furious that one of their own went public for the first time to discuss Zubaydah’s grilling, and a criminal referral by the agency to the Justice Department - similar to the one that ultimately led to Scooter Libby’s prosecution in the Valerie Plame leak case - is definitely not off the table, sources said.

A woman who answered the phone at a number in Virginia listed for Kiriakou and his wife told me the retired spy will not talk to reporters anymore. “He’s taking a pause from talking to the press right now,” she said.

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