Former CIA Director Michael Hayden said:
So the point I would make to folks who say, "I don't want you doing this, and it doesn't work anyway," I would point out, "Whoa. Stop. The front half of that sentence, you can say; that's yours, you own that, 'I don't want you doing it.' The back half of that sentence is not yours. That's mine. And the fact is it did work. So here is the sentence you have to give. 'Even though it may have worked, I still don't want you doing it.' That requires courage. That requires you going out to the American people and saying, 'We're looking at a tradeoff here folks, and I want you to understand the tradeoff.'" I can live with that tradeoff. I can live with the person who makes that tradeoff. Either way. That's an honorable position. But I felt duty-bound to be true to the facts.[89]
Former CIA operative John Kiriakou in 2007 told CNN's "American Morning" that the torture of Al Qaeda's Abu Zubayda indirectly lead to the arrest of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed:[87]
The former agent, who said he participated in the Abu Zubayda interrogation but not his waterboarding, said the CIA decided to waterboard the al Qaeda operative only after he was "wholly uncooperative" for weeks and refused to answer questions. All that changed -- and Zubayda reportedly had a divine revelation -- after 30 to 35 seconds of waterboarding, Kiriakou said he learned from the CIA agents who performed the technique. The terror suspect, who is being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, reportedly gave up information that indirectly led to the 2003 raid in Pakistan yielding the arrest of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, an alleged planner of the September 11, 2001, attacks, Kiriakou said. The CIA was unaware of Mohammed's stature before the Abu Zubayda interrogation, the former agent said.[88]
A lot of people are resorting to half-truths to deny the program's usefulness in finding Bin Laden. They say the information was obtained using standard interrogation techniques. That's true; Once a terrorist's will was broken via EIT, the information was obtained using normal methods.
Another half-truth is that "It is also important to note that some detainees who were subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques attempted to provide false or misleading information about the facilitator/courier." That misses the point. When one key terrorist denied knowing Bin Laden's courier, the interrogators already knew that he was aware. His denial showed them that this particular courier was important, i.e. worth denying.
Remember, these interrogations were not actually conducted by CIA agents, but by contractors who had a vested interest (financial gain) in claiming that they could do what government investigators could not.
Abu Zubayda is already well discussed in the references I provided you, and you should go and read them to correct your personal ignorance on the issue.
And just remember, your fellow neo-cons are just as responsible for bankrupting this country as is Obama. Indeed, they showed him the way.
PPS the Kuwaiti courier who led us to Obama was known to the FBI, long before the CIA water boarded him. The long delays were because the CIA refused to listen to the FBI.
That you choose to side with the intellectually lazy slobs who think you beat the truth out of people tells lots about you, Dilbert, if your screen name did not already.