CIA says used waterboarding three times

By Randall Mikkelsen

"Waterboarding has been used on only three detainees," Hayden told the Senate Intelligence Committee. It was the first time a U.S. official publicly specified the number of people subjected to waterboarding and named them.

Those subjected to waterboarding were suspected Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and senior al Qaeda leaders Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, Hayden said.

"The circumstances are different than they were in late 2001, early 2002," Hayden said.

From the time of their capture in 2002 until they were delivered to Guantanamo Bay prison in 2006, the two suspects accounted for one-fourth of the human intelligence reports on al Qaeda, Hayden said.

He told the committee he opposed limiting the CIA to using interrogation techniques permitted in the U.S. Army Field Manual, which bans waterboarding. CIA interrogators are better trained, and it works with a narrower range of suspects in its interrogations, he said.

A senior intelligence official said after the hearing that it was unclear whether the CIA could legally use waterboarding in the future, given changes in U.S. law. The Bush administration says it neither uses nor condones torture.