According to a piece by veteran intelligence reporter Jeff Stein, Kiriakou "basically made up" details about the waterboarding of al Qaeda agent Abu Zubaydah.
Arguing that waterboarding — or simulated drowning — is actually effective in forcing prisoners to share secret information, Kiriakou told ABC News' Nightline in April, "The next day [after his first time being waterboarded], he told his interrogator that Allah had visited him in his cell during the night and told him to cooperate."
"From that day on, he answered every question," he said, according to ABC. "The threat information he provided disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks."
"Now comes John Kiriakou, again, with a wholly different story," Stein noted in Foreign Policy. "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."
Read More
