According to former CIA agent John Kiriakou: “What I told [ABC News journalist] Brian Ross in late [December 10] 2007 was wrong on a couple of counts. I suggested that [al Qaeda operations chief] Abu Zubaydah had lasted only thirty or thirty-five seconds during his waterboarding before he begged his interrogators to stop; after that, I said he opened up and gave the agency actionable intelligence. I wasn’t there when the interrogation took place; instead I relied on what I’d heard and read inside the agency at the time. Now, we know that Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded eighty-three 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.”
– John Kiriakou with Michael Ruby, The Reluctant Spy, Page 191