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Feb. 5, 2008 – 1:53 p.m.

CIA Director Confirms Waterboarding of Al

Qaeda Suspects
Democratic senators clashed with intelligence officials Tuesday over interrogation
techniques, questioning the need for harsh tactics, as the nation’s top intelligence
chiefs defended their legality and said they wanted to keep the authority to use
them.
At a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, CIA Director Gen. Michael V. Hayden
acknowledged publicly for the first time that waterboarding, or simulated drowning,
had been used on three al Qaeda suspects — Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the
suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Abu Zubaydah and
Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri — because officials feared more attacks on the United States
were imminent at the time and did not know enough about how al Qaeda worked.
Hayden said the technique, the use of which has drawn harsh criticism, has not been
used in almost five years because the agency has more knowledge to bring to bear in
questioning detainees.
Legislation authorizing fiscal 2008 intelligence programs would bar the CIA from
employing any techniques, including waterboarding, not authorized by the
September 2006 Army Field Manual on Human Intelligence Collector Operations. The
bill has been placed on hold by Sen. Lindsey Graham , R-S.C., over objections to the
provision.
Hayden said it would “make no sense” to apply the manual’s restrictions to the CIA.
“Who’s doing it is different,” he said. “Who they’re doing it to is also different.”
The CIA program involves fewer than 100 detainees, he said, and “fewer than one-
third have had any of what we call the enhanced interrogation techniques used
against them.”
Senators disputed Hayden’s suggestion that the CIA needs to retain the option of
using coercive techniques, such as waterboarding, which many lawmakers want to
outlaw.
But Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell backed him up, saying
waterboarding could be legal under certain circumstances.
“The question, is waterboarding a legal technique?” McConnell said. “And everything
I know, based on the appropriate authority to make that judgment, it is a legal
technique used in a specific set of circumstances. You have to know the
circumstances to be able to make the judgment.”