Waterboarding useful but torture - former U.S. agent

By Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Waterboarding saved lives in the war against al Qaeda but is torture and should not be used, an ex-CIA interrogator said on Tuesday as lawmakers demanded answers about the agency's destruction of videotapes showing the interrogation technique.

Former CIA interrogator John Kiriakou told U.S. news media that suspected al Qaeda lieutenant Abu Zubaida agreed to cooperate after being subjected to the simulated drowning technique for less than a minute by CIA officials in 2002.

"It was like flipping a switch," he told the Washington Post.

He said the session yielded valuable information and probably helped prevent attacks, but he now believes waterboarding is torture and "Americans are better than that."

Many countries, U.S. lawmakers and human rights groups have denounced waterboarding as torture. Reports of its use, as well as harsh treatment of captives in Iraq and Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay, have damaged the U.S. image around the world.

Kiriakou, who now works in the private sector, told his story to several media outlets as the CIA faced criticism for destroying a videotape of the interrogation, along with another showing the questioning of a second suspected al Qaeda member.

A judge had ordered the tapes to be preserved as possible evidence in a lawsuit filed by prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay naval base on Cuba, where the United States holds captured terrorism suspects.