Ex-CIA man John Kiriakou on Abu Zubaydah, torture, and 'The Reluctant Spy'

Alex Kingsbury

Ex-CIA Spy Recounts Torture, Tension Hunting Al Qaeda Terrorists

One of the most useful tools that the CIA used to track al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah was a large sheet of butcher paper taped to an office wall, on which agents charted out his known associates. Imagine their frustration when, right after they'd captured Zubaydah in 2002, FBI agents sealed his cellphone in an evidence bag. Tempers flared when the phone rang and the FBI wouldn't let the CIA see who was calling. That's just one of the startling anecdotes in John Kiriakou's The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA's War on Terror, which chronicles his 14 years working for the nation's spy service. Kiriakou recently spoke with U.S. News about a career in the shadows, torture, and Zubaydah's phone. Excerpts:

What stopped you from answering that call when the phone started ringing?

When the phone started ringing, I went head-to-head with the FBI agent. She said if I tore open the bag that it would compromise the chain of evidence and that the case would be compromised. The CIA was there to bust down the door, capture the bad guy, and take their computers to get the next guy. The FBI doesn't think like that; the agent thought that she was doing the right thing. Meanwhile, we thought that if Zubaydah's an al Qaeda leader, then the people calling him must also be al Qaeda. I should have opened the bag, snatched the phone, and taken the call. But I should add that that incident was one of the only problems I ever had in the field working with the bureau. They are very smart and professional.

How did you end up in Pakistan on the trail of Abu Zubaydah?

When they offered me the chance to learn Arabic, I jumped at it. It was the early 1990s, and there were only five or six of us from CIA in the Arabic language school. After 9/11, I was one of the few dozen people in the building who spoke Arabic. Even now, after all these years and all these terrorist attacks, CIA still doesn't have an appropriate language capability. You can count on one hand or so the number of agency people who speak Pashto. How can you expect a CIA officer to recruit a tribal chieftain in Waziristan when they cannot even speak to each other?

There's lots of detail in the book, like the fact that you positively identified Zubaydah with a picture of his ear. Did the CIA demand many redactions?

The first time I submitted the book to the CIA review panel, they redacted every single word. The CIA requires that former employees not mention relationships with foreign governments or expose sources, methods, or locations. This book doesn't. But it turns out that I still had some enemies at CIA. After Obama won the election and there were changes in the top level of CIA, I resubmitted the book, and a week later, it was cleared.

The blogs chatter that you are not a former employee but part of an agency disinformation campaign, particularly on waterboarding.

Yes, let's clear that up. I stopped working for CIA in 2004. I don't currently have any top-secret clearances. And despite what they saw in the blogosphere, I'm not part of some CIA disinformation campaign or anything. Not everyone is involved in a conspiracy.

You defended the use of waterboarding in the case of Zubaydah, yet your original description of his treatment on ABC News in 2007 was far different from what we now know happened.

I specifically said to ABC News that I never tortured anyone, that I was opposed to torture, and that I was opposed to the use of enhanced techniques. I never witnessed waterboarding, and I said so to ABC News. I only learned about the waterboarding from colleagues at CIA who were receiving the cables from the field. My friend in the CIA told me that Zubaydah had been legally waterboarded and that he'd broken after 30 seconds. I said, "Awesome." Now we know that Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in a single month, raising questions about how much useful information he actually supplied. In retrospect, it was a valuable lesson in how the CIA uses the arts of deception even among its own.

Is waterboarding torture?

Of course it is. I think it's wrong to have done waterboarding multiple times and wrong to have done it on multiple prisoners. By the time KSM [al Qaeda operative Khalid Shaikh Mohammed] was captured, the CIA should have had sources in place so that we didn't need to collect the information through torture. But in the case of Abu Zubaydah, it worked. True, it didn't work in the case of KSM and [9/11 suspect] Ramzi Binalshibh. Those guys told their interrogators what they wanted to hear. But in the case of Abu Zubaydah, it worked.

How can we believe your contention that waterboarding worked?

I don't understand why the Bush administration and the Obama administration won't release the information that was gained from Abu Zubaydah's interrogation. It gives me heartburn to be on the same side as Dick Cheney, but the information that was received from the waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah stopped an attack and saved lives. I believe it saved American lives. You'll have to trust me.

Can you understand why many people won't?

I'm sure that I won't convince people. But it is not my job to convince people. At CIA, successes often go unheralded, while failures go on to win Pulitzer prizes.

Are the American people capable of having a rational debate about waterboarding?

No. People have already made up their minds, right or wrong. And there is too much bad information out there for people to have a rational debate about it.

How much did your family know about your work?

I never told them who I worked for. With my kids, it only really came up once. I had seven cellphones plugged into the wall in my office, and my son, 6 years old at the time, asked me why I had so many. A few weeks later, he saw me taking off my gun and locking it up in my office safe. He came over and whispered, "Are you a detective?" I said, "Yeah, something like that."

What prompted you to write this book?

I'm an overweight, middle-aged guy with a moderate educational background, and I don't always come out looking great even in my own book. I punched out a Greek pastry chef after a traffic accident; I had problems with my personal life; I had problems with my bosses. But in the end, I happened to be at the center of some very interesting and exciting situations. The book is intended as an honest account of the CIA through the eyes of a former analyst and operative whose experiences suggest that America's spy service often does a better job than the critics think.

Available at Amazon.com:

The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA's War on Terror

The Political Fix: Changing the Game of American Democracy, from the Grassroots to the White House

NEWS & CURRENT EVENTS ...

Ex-CIA man John Kiriakou on Abu Zubaydah, torture, and 'The Reluctant Spy' | Alex Kingsbury