There are many things to dislike about the Washington Post's account of John Kiriakou statements on waterboarding, but let's just start with these.
Kiriakou is presented as a participant in -- an authority on -- waterboarding.
A former CIA officer who participated in the capture and questioning of the first al-Qaeda terrorist suspect to be waterboarded said yesterday that the harsh technique provided an intelligence breakthrough that "probably saved lives," but that he now regards the tactic as torture. (1)
It was amazingly effective, as the Post and Kiriakou present it.
He described Abu Zubaida as ideologically zealous, defiant and uncooperative -- until the day in mid-summer when his captors strapped him to a board, wrapped his nose and mouth in cellophane and forced water into his throat in a technique that simulates drowning. (6)
"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. (4)
Magic!
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. (7)
Read on, it's clear he was told about the waterboarding by colleagues. His knowledge is second-hand.
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. (5)
The problem with the Washington Post's account of the interview is that it gives John Kiriakou's account more authority that it might have had if the paragraphs in the article had been arranged sequentially. If there's anything we've learned lately about reading reports in the Post and other papers is: read them back to front. That makes it easier to spot the reaction the Post wants you to have. (The numbers in parentheses give the actual order of the paragraphs in the Post's report.)
John Kiriakou now works in the private sector as a consultant. He has come to think waterboarding is torture. He is presumably free to tell his dramatic story to ABC News having been given CIA clearance. He does so because (even though he thinks waterboarding is torture) he wants to correct "misperceptions about the role played by CIA employees in the early months of the government's anti-terrorism efforts." However, he got out of the room in time. He wasn't exactly complicit in torture. He emerges untainted.
Kiriakou said he made a final appeal to Abu Zubaida shortly before the waterboarding began. "You have one more opportunity to cooperate. My guys are telling me that you're being a jerk," Kiriakou recalled telling Abu Zubaida. His reply, according to Kiriakou: "They're being jerks, too."
Exactly. Kiriakou, the post-CIA private sector consultant, believes he has escaped being a jerk. He wasn't exactly there. He has acquired the glitz of having been part of the inner circle of the practice of torture without having direct responsibility for it. And now, after all the hoo-ha, the good fellow has aligned his view of waterboarding with that of most moral beings.
...He is now convinced that waterboarding is torture, and that "Americans are better than that. Maybe that's inconsistent, but that's how I feel," he said. "It was an ugly little episode that was perhaps necessary at that time. But we've moved beyond that."
Move on. Private sector. No taint, no guilt, no responsibility. A good, prime-time American, Bush-style.
