For the first time, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency Michael Hayden has admitted that his agency has previously used waterboarding (AKA torture) in the interrogations of three detainees. Of course, the CIA chief also made sure to downplay waterboarding and the frequency of its use, making it sound more like a scene out of Flashdance than the mock execution it really is.

Hayden made the admission to members of the US senate intelligence committee on Super Tuesday in the hopes that it would be overshadowed in the news. “Let me make it very clear and to state so officially in front of this committee that waterboarding has been used on only three detainees,” he said. “It was used on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. It was used on Abu Zubaydah. And it was used on Nashiri.”

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed claimed to have been the mastermind behind 9/11, Abu Zubaydah claimed to have been an aide to Osama bin Laden, and al-Nashiri claimed to have been the mastermind of the suicide attack on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000. Since the information on all three of these men was obtained through torture, their confessions don’t amount to much.

Though this is the first time Hayden has confessed that the CIA has been torturing detainees, former and current intelligence officers and supervisors have been outspoken for years. In 2005, CIA sources noted that Khalid Sheik Mohammed, had won the admiration of interrogators by lasting between two and two-and-a-half minutes of waterboarding before confessing.

Hayden used moral relativism to explain why mock execution was okay five years ago and not now. “The circumstances are different than they were in late 2001, early 2002,” he said, using 9/11 as a free pass. However, Hayden still defended the use of torture as lawful and said he opposed moves by Congress to make the agency follow rules of interrogation set forth in the army field manual. As if it weren’t already illegal under domestic and international law, there is talk that Congress may actually ban waterboarding.

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