AP
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jIFsTo19N8Z7aMbOOQ2C-X0NmJXgD8U8JGPO1

Former Secretary on Waterboarding

January 19, 2008

The first secretary of homeland security says waterboarding is torture. “There’s just no doubt in my mind — under any set of rules, waterboarding is torture,” the former secretary, Tom Ridge, said in an interview.

Mr. Ridge offered the same opinion earlier in the day to members of the American Bar Association at a conference on national security.

Mr. Ridge served as secretary from 2003 to 2005. He said: “I believe, unlike others in the administration, that waterboarding was, is and will always be torture. That’s a simple statement.”

The Central Intelligence Agency has not used waterboarding as an interrogation technique since 2003, and the director of the agency, Michael V. Hayden, prohibited it in 2006, officials said.