[classicman]

Al Qaeda seen planning attack on U.S.

Mr. Hayden added that waterboarding was only used those three times as a necessary measure to handle the imminent threat posed by the terrorist organization.

"We used it against these three detainees because of the circumstances at the time," Mr. Hayden said. "There was the belief that additional catastrophic attacks against the homeland were inevitable. And we had limited knowledge about al Qaeda and its workings. Those two realities have changed." The three al Qaeda detainees were Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the September 11 terrorist attacks; Abu Zubaydah, an early member of al Qaeda and close associate of bin Laden and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, behind the USS Cole bombing and who headed al Qaeda operations in the Persian Gulf before he was captured in November 2002.

The three captives were interrogated in 2002 and 2003 and waterboarding has not been used since, Mr. Hayden said.