About a year ago, I had dinner with a man who played a key role in the U.S. war on terror.

The talk turned to allegations of torture. He said that our policy should be that we do not torture. And we should adhere to that policy.

Unless, that is, a truly special situation comes up and we decide that we have to violate that policy in an extremely narrow set of circumstances.

Then, we explain what we did — by that, I think he meant the executive branch would be open with members of Congress — and move on.

What he couldn’t understand was the determination, on the part of some lawmakers, to pass a law that would deal with any and all situations in the future. It’s just not possible.

I thought of that this week when John Kiriakou, a former CIA interrogator, went public with the story of how U.S. officials dealt with Abu Zubaydah, the logistical chief of al Qaeda and a top planner of Sept. 11.

Kiriakou told his story to ABC News’s Brian Ross, and the network posted the full, unedited text of the interview on its website.

Zubaydah was captured in Pakistan in 2002. Shot three times before being caught, his life was saved by U.S. doctors. When he recovered, Kiriakou was among the first to speak to him.

Zubaydah was talkative, but he gave the CIA no usable intelligence.

CIA interrogators tried a variety of techniques of escalating severity on Zubaydah. Each one had to be specifically authorized in advance at the highest levels of the CIA.

Still, Zubaydah resisted. Finally the interrogation worked its way up to waterboarding.

“Was it used on Zubaydah?” Ross asked Kiriakou.

 “It was.”

“And was it successful?”

“It was.”

After the waterboarding session, Zubaydah was a different man. “He told his interrogator that Allah had visited him in his cell during the night,” Kiriakou said, “and told him to cooperate because his cooperation would make it easier on the other brothers who had been captured.”
U.S. interrogators, fearing another major attack — remember, this was just months after 9/11 — worked fast. According to Kiriakou, Zubaydah provided information that helped stop a number of al Qaeda actions.

“So in your view the waterboarding broke him?” Ross asked.

“I think it did, yes.”

“And did it make a difference?”

“It did. The threat information that he provided disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks.”

“No doubt about that? That’s not some hype?”

“No doubt.”

Kiriakou didn’t actually do the waterboarding. He declined to be trained in how to do it — although he actually underwent the technique as part of his preparation.

Since 2002, he has changed his mind about it.

Back then, he thought waterboarding was necessary. “As time has passed,” he told Ross, “I think I’ve changed my mind. And I think that waterboarding is probably something that we shouldn’t be in the business of doing.”

But he conceded his mind could change again.

“What happens if we don’t waterboard a person and we don’t get that nugget of information, and there’s an attack on a -— on a movie theater or a shopping mall or in midtown Manhattan, you know, at rush hour?” Kiriakou asked, apparently of himself. “Then — then what do we do? I would have trouble forgiving myself.”

According to most reports, the CIA waterboarded two people — Zubaydah and Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11. In the end, Ross asked, did Kiriakou think it was worth it?

“Yes.”