CIA Director Michael Hayden said publicly for the first time Tuesday that his agency had used the harsh interrogation technique known as "waterboarding" on three Al-Qaida suspects, and he testified that depriving the agency of coercive methods would "increase the danger to America."
Hayden said the agency used simulated drowning to extract critical information in 2002 and 2003 from Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged Sept. 11 mastermind; Abu Zubaydah, an Al-Qaida operative tied to the Sept. 11 plot, and Abd al-Rashim al-Nashiri, a Saudi suspected of a key role in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen.
Hayden said the CIA stopped using waterboarding nearly five years ago but made a vigorous case for "enhanced" interrogation techniques.
Information provided by Mohammed and Zubaydah accounted for 25 percent of the human intelligence reports circulated by the CIA on Al-Qaida in the five years after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, he said.
Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., called on Attorney General Michael Mukasey to have the Justice Department investigate whether laws were violated in the waterboarding cases acknowledged by Hayden.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
