Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
You remember John Kiriakou, don't you? He's the former CIA agent who told ABC News in 2007 that waterboarding was incredibly effective, that within 30 seconds it had made Abu Zubaydah crack and begin giving up information that prevented dozens of terrorist attacks. It was obvious he was lying from the moment it came out that they had waterboarded Zubaydah 83 times -- if it worked immediately, why the need to continue? -- but now he has admitted to being pretty much completely full of shit.
Kiriakou, a 15-year veteran of the agency's intelligence analysis and operations directorates, electrified the hand-wringing national debate over torture in December 2007 when he told ABC's Brian Ross and Richard Esposito in a much ballyhooed, exclusive interview that senior al Qaeda commando Abu Zubaydah cracked after only one application of the face cloth and water."From that day on, he answered every question," Kiriakou said. "The threat information he provided disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks."
No matter that Kiriakou wearily said he shared the anguish of millions of Americans, not to mention the rest of the world, over the CIA's application of the medieval confession technique.
The point was that it worked. And the pro-torture camp was quick to pick up on Kiriakou's claim.
"It works, is the bottom line," conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh exclaimed on his radio show the day after Kiriakou's ABC interview. "Thirty to 35 seconds, and it works."
Except it doesn't. And Kiriakou lied:
Now comes John Kiriakou, again, with a wholly different story. On the next-to-last page of a new memoir, The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA's War on Terror (written with Michael Ruby), Kiriakou now rather off handedly admits that he basically made it all up."What I told Brian Ross in late 2007 was wrong on a couple counts," he writes. "I suggested that Abu Zubaydah had lasted only thirty or thirty-five seconds during his waterboarding before he begged his interrogators to stop; after that, I said he opened up and gave the agency actionable intelligence."
But never mind, he says now.
"I wasn't there when the interrogation took place; instead, I relied on what I'd heard and read inside the agency at the time."
In a word, it was hearsay, water-cooler talk.
"Now we know," Kiriakou goes on, "that Zubaydah was waterboarded eighty-three times in a single month, raising questions about how much useful information he actually supplied."
Indeed. But after his one-paragraph confession, Kiriakou adds that he didn't have any first hand knowledge of anything relating to CIA torture routines, and still doesn't. And he claims that the disinformation he helped spread was a CIA dirty trick: "In retrospect, it was a valuable lesson in how the CIA uses the fine arts of deception even among its own."
Sorry pal, you don't get off that easy. You went on TV and deliberately made an incredibly bold claim that you had no way of knowing was true. Don't blame this one on anyone but yourself for having the dishonesty to do that.
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*chuckle*
This amounts to, "I lied and really don't know what I'm talking about, but trust the CIA because they're so good at lying they should be trusted and even though I don't know what I'm talking about they fooled me so obviously they're good at lying and should be trusted."
That's the frustrating thing about our media and political scene today. When he made his false statements about torture those who opposed torture could (and did) point out the logical inconsistencies in his claims but were generally ignored while the ditto heads bobbed up and down while Limbaugh spread the lie. Now, two years later, the truth comes out, he was as full of shit as his opponents argued and the ditto heads will bob up and down as Limbaugh spreads a new lie and ignores this reality.
I have some serious concerns about the Obama administration, the Democrats, and politics in general, but as long as Limbaugh, Beck, O'Reilly, Hannity, and those of their ilk continue to drive the Republican party, the only safe options are to keep Republicans out of power, or work on that Mars colony...
Posted by: dogmeatib | January 29, 2010 9:27 AM
People are tortured simply to see them suffer. Why the perpetrators of Bush sanctioned torture (including Bush himself) are not being brought to justice for committing these crimes is absolutely appalling.
That Hannity broke his word about being waterboarded proves that he is a coward and blowhard.
Posted by: Reverend Rodney | January 29, 2010 9:59 AM
From the story:
"It works, is the bottom line," conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh exclaimed on his radio show the day after Kiriakou's ABC interview. "Thirty to 35 seconds, and it works."
I'm sure Rush will be updating his listeners any time now.
Posted by: Taz | January 29, 2010 10:01 AM
So John was lying his ass off? Paraphrasing Iago from Disney's Aladdin:
"Oh there's a big surprise! That's an incredible - I think I'm going to have a heart attack and die of not surprise!"
Posted by: NoAstronomer | January 29, 2010 10:07 AM
Kinda blows a hole in the right's masturbatory "ticking clock" scenario, doesn't it?
Posted by: CHV | January 29, 2010 12:21 PM
The wingnuts are not going to change their mind because of this. You wanna know why? They don't care if waterboarding works or not. The captured terrorist, you see, is an evil person, and therefore he should be repeatedly waterboarded whether he knows anything or not, because he deserves it. Whether he offers up any useful information is incidental.
Posted by: Tommykey | January 29, 2010 12:33 PM
"Kinda blows a hole in the right's masturbatory "ticking clock" scenario, doesn't it?"
Not at all. Just so long as the timer is set for above 720 hours and the 84th waterboarding attempt tells you exactly where the bomb is and how to disable it, and also tells you what information from the 83 previous attempts was unreliable, then torture is obviously the right thing to do. That is, for everyone who's not a weak-kneed liberal terrorist sympathizer.
Posted by: Steve Reuland | January 29, 2010 12:51 PM
Giving Kiriakou the benefit of the doubt for the moment... it's possible that what he was trying to get at is that he was so immersed in a culture of deception that it felt like he was telling the truth by spreading this bold claim.
In any case, without letting him off the hook, his comments paint in vivid colors the extent to which the CIA had become obsessed with information control.
Posted by: James Sweet | January 29, 2010 1:25 PM
Gee, I ought to start up a psychic business; I have so many 'hits' such as:
* Dubbyah's claims that the war in Iraq "will be a matter of days, not weeks; months, not years" was pure bunk and we'll have to dig in for a whole generation if we want to have any lasting impact.
* The various police powers with pretend accountability will be abused by people in all agencies who can claim they are exercising those special powers
* Government agents and agencies (like the TSA) will lie to dupe people into believing that they are not mere sinkholes for money and are doing something substantial to prevent more terrorist attacks (yeah, keep that money rolling, baby!)
* Torture and unlawful detention will become common practice and the people involved will falsely claim that they have obtained useful information which has prevented further attacks (but claim secrecy in the interest of national security and never provide any actual details because there are none)
There are a few more likely scenarios that I'm still waiting on:
* one of those armed monkeys called "air marshalls" will fiddle with his gun too much and cause problems on a flight by discharging his weapon.
* depending on the goals of the terrorists, they may opt for a few 'soft' targets just to show us they're still around.
* If Osama feels like doing more damage with airplanes he'll simply go ahead and do it, but the TSA will say "see, if we weren't around this sort of thing would be happening far more frequently"
What's the tally so far? There have been a few terrorist plans foiled thanks to information provided by the public. No terrorist plans proven to be halted by any actual investigations of the fiscal black hole agencies. A number of poorly executed terrorist plans which failed and in which the terrorists had been caught (while the government points fingers and the TSA continue to lie about them being of great value). Alas, the government still wants us to believe that terrorist attacks would be happening every few hours in the USA unless we have our despotic police powers and pretentious agencies like the TSA.
Posted by: MadScientist | January 29, 2010 4:20 PM
Alas waterboarding was described to Pelosi in briefings but she approved without reading the briefings so it does not count. The inventer does not deserve the same credit as does the syringe vacuuming out cranial contents of fetusae for partial bo\irth abortion. After all the torture technique inventer had no idea of the permanent psychological damage it could and obviously did cause in the pseudo-terrorist who was a victim of it. It seems to have made him psychic as well for he gave up useful information he had no way of knowing being innocent.
Posted by: Laments Dem Virtue | January 29, 2010 4:33 PM
Laments Dem Virtue you seemed to be utterly confused. Here, let me help you out: this is not, in fact, the silly propaganda message board.
Posted by: ema | January 29, 2010 9:52 PM
I must have had that interview mentioned or linked to in about a dozen online debates with pro-torture wingnuts. Now once again we find out the entire thing was a lie, sigh, how can you debate with people who make up their own reality as they go along?
Well at least the next time it comes up I can just dismiss it outright as a blatant lie and move on...
Posted by: ausador | January 29, 2010 11:54 PM