Former CIA Inspector General Confirms BBC Torture Report (Hilary Andersson)

John Helgerson

Sept. 22, 2009 -- (BBC) -- Former CIA inspector general John Helgerson has confirmed that the Bush administration authorised the CIA to use a harsh interrogation method on terror suspect Abu Zubaydah before written legal clearance was given.

This is politically explosive, because the Bush administration has always claimed that it used harsh interrogation techniques such as waterboarding only after government lawyers had determined they did not amount to torture.

This summer, Panorama, in the investigation Licence to Torture, uncovered its own information that Abu Zubaydah had been waterboarded before written legal clearance came. Former CIA agent John Kiriakou, who led the team that captured Abu Zubaydah and was monitoring the cable traffic on his interrogation from CIA headquarters, told Panorama the suspect was waterboarded as early as May or June of that year.

The controversial government legal opinion that determined waterboarding was not torture was written in August of that year.

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