The nation's intelligence chief says waterboarding "would be torture" if used against him or if someone under interrogation actually was taking water into his lungs.
But Mike McConnell, in a magazine interview, declined for legal reasons to say whether the technique categorically should be considered torture.
"If it ever is determined to be torture, there will be a huge penalty to be paid for anyone engaging in it," McConnell told The New Yorker, which published a 16,000-word article Sunday on the director of national intelligence.
(snip)
A spokesman for McConnell said he does not dispute the quotes attributed to him in the story by Lawrence Wright, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2007 for "The Looming Towers", a book on al-Qaida and the Sept. 11 attacks.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080113/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/terrorist_interrogationWater-boarding 'would be torture'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7185648.stm