Former agent testifies against harsh interrogations

Washington - A former federal agent who was involved in the interrogation of terrorism suspects said in congressional testimony Wednesday that the harsh techniques used by the Bush administration were ineffective and unreliable.

Ali Soufan told a Senate judicial committee that al-Qaeda operatives were trained to resist the harsh methods, including waterboarding, and argued that conventional interrogations were much more reliable in extracting information.

'I strongly believe that it is a mistake to use what has become known as enhanced interrogation techniques,' said Soufan, who was a special agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. 'A major problem with it is it is ineffective. Al-Qaeda are trained to resist torture.'

Soufan was involved in the questioning of Abu Zubaydah, an alleged top al-Qaeda operative captured in 2002 and still held at the US military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The CIA has acknowledged waterboarding Zubaydah, and memos released last month by the White House said the technique was used on him dozens of times.

Soufan said that he and other agents were able to gain useful information of Zubaydah through conventional interrogations, but when the CIA began waterboarding, Zubaydah stopped talking.

The Senate has begun hearings on the interrogations practices approved under former president George W Bush that critics say amounted to torture. The process followed President Barack Obama's decision last month to release the Bush-era memos.

Former vice president Dick Cheney has been appearing on news shows in recent weeks to defend the interrogations, saying they provided valuable information that saved American lives. He warned that Obama's softer approach places national security at risk.

Philip Zelikow, who was a legal advisor to former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, said he circulated a memo in the administration objecting to the harsh methods shortly before a trip to the Middle East.

'When I came back, I heard the memo was not considered appropriate for further discussion and that copies of my memo should be collected and destroyed,' he said.