CIA agent John Kiriakou was in charge of the operation to capture Zubaydah. Recently he contradicted himself on the effectiveness of torture:
From a very recent NewsReal Blog interview by Elise Cooper:
NRB: Let’s put this controversy to rest; did the CIA get actionable intelligence from water boarding?
Kiriakou: I said in September, 2007 that Zubaydah produced actionable intelligence. I believe that to be true. I don’t know if he started to talk after the first time he was water boarded or after the last time. If you are asking me did Abu Zubaydah provide intelligence that saved American lives the answer is YES.
John Kiriakou: The Spy who Came in from the Cold Part OneFrom his book The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA's War on Terror:
What I told Brian Ross in late 2007 was wrong on a couple of counts. I suggested that Abu Zubaydah had lasted only thirty or thirty-give 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.
One of Zubaydah's lawyers has raised doubts about Zubaydah's links to al Qaeda:
For many years, Abu Zubaydah's name has been synonymous with the war on terror because of repeated false statements made by the Bush administration, the majority of which were known to be false when uttered. On 17 April 2002, <...> President Bush publicly announced that Zayn had been captured: "We recently apprehended one of al-Qaida's top leaders, a man named Abu Zubaydah. He was spending a lot of time as one of the top operating officials of al-Qaida, plotting and planning murder."
Zayn's capture and imprisonment were touted as a great achievement in the fight against terrorism and al-Qaida. There was just one minor problem: the man described by President Bush and others within his administration as a "top operative", the "number three person" in al-Qaida, and al-Qaida's "chief of operations" was never even a member of al-Qaida, much less an individual who was among its "inner circle". The Bush administration had made another mistake.
The truth about Abu Zubaydah by defense counsel Brent MickumIt has also been credibly alleged that Zubaydah suffered a brain injury when hit with shrapnel during the war with the Soviets in Afghanistan.
This raises questions about FBI agent Ali Soufan's claims that actionable intelligence was attained by interrogating Zubaydah with legal interrogation methods.
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