Ex-CIA man describes “dirty game” of spying

Regarding the waterboarding of Guantanamo Bay inmate Abu Zubaida, John Kiriakou said, “it’s a… Regarding the waterboarding of Guantanamo Bay inmate Abu Zubaida, John Kiriakou said, “it’s a terrible thing that it was done but necessary at the time.”

Kiriakou, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer, spoke to a half-full David Lawrence lecture hall yesterday. His lecture was titled “Ethics in Intelligence” and focused on where the line for morality should be drawn in cases of national security.

The waterboarding of Abu Zubaida was one example of this.

Waterboarding is a technique in which interrogators strap the subject to a board and wrap his or her face in cellophane or a similar material. Water is then poured – often out of a hose – over the person’s face. The procedure simulates drowning.

Although it has no lasting effects, Kiriakou describes the process as “painful and disturbing.” He admitted that waterboarding is most likely a form of torture. However, in the case of Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein Abu Zubaida, a former high-ranking member of al-Qaeda, it resulted in the release of information that disrupted a number of planned attacks.

So is this particular form of torture wrong?

This was the crux of Kiriakou’s lecture.

“What to do in the gray areas?” he said. “What are our limitations?”

He described spying as “a dirty game,” a game in which an officer must “lie and cheat” every day – as he did – and a game in which you must “associate yourself with bad people.”

According to Kiriakou, this is something that the United States was not always willing to do.

He described one instance during the 1990s where he had an opportunity to talk to one of these so-called “bad guys.” He would not disclose the man’s name but said that he had undergone a “moral transformation.”

Kiriakou wanted to speak to this man right away, but it took a great deal more time because the U.S. government was not willing at first to forget this man’s past. This is something that Kiriakou believed had to change, and has begun to,” he said.

Serving in the CIA from 1990 to 2004 as both an analyst and a counterterrorism operations officer, Kiriakou has a bachelor’s degree in Middle Eastern studies and a master’s degree in legislative affairs from George Washington University.

Kiriakou also touched on morality. He said he considers himself a moral person, one of the “good guys,” as he described it. But how can one determine what separates the good guys from the bad guys?

“There is no training in ethics upon entering the CIA,” Kiriakou told his audience. “There is no discussion of what American ‘values’ should be.”

This statement appeared to shock most audience members. During the question and answer segment of the lecture, audience members asked Kiriakou how intelligence agents could perform their jobs without answering the over-arching question of what is right and wrong.

When asked how Kiriakou dealt with this, he answered “very simplistically.” He said the questions of right and wrong or good and bad are based entirely on the agent’s own moral standing.

“I never did anything that I regret,” he said.

But this left the audience to wonder if other agents could say the same. Could other agents or interrogators used these “extreme measures,” such as waterboarding, without reason?

Kiriakou had no answer to these questions of when it was OK to use extreme measures. He simply responded, “It’s just something that needs to be in your gut.”