"There’s been a shift at the CIA post-911. With our primary focus being counter-terrorism, we really shifted away from the traditional way of collecting intelligence, which is recruiting sources.

I had already decided to leave the agency in 2003, when torture started being talked about in the hallways. There was an awareness that we were interrogating people in Guantanamo using these methods, that before would have been unheard of. I remember at the time thinking, 'I’m so glad I’m getting out of here.' Because I wouldn’t have been able to stay at the agency knowing that that’s what they were doing.

I think that as Americans, as a country, we’ve done ourselves a great dis-service by relying on torture. We no longer have the authority to claim any kind of moral high ground. And personally I think it’s been a detriment to our national security. I think it will enrage people.

Kathryn Bigelow has gotten a lot of flak for the movie for portraying the torture [that took place at the CIA during its anti-terrorism operation] and my feeling is, she did a brilliant job tackling a very complex subject matter. I think she was fully justified in saying, 'Why is this anger directed at me? It should be directed at the people who are actually doing the torturing.'"

Hunting down Bin Laden

"Osama Bin Laden represented a genuine threat to us as Americans and I felt pleased and really proud and happy when I found out that the CIA had finally got him. I actually enjoyed telling my kids, ‘Yeah, we got the bad guy. He’s gone now.’ It’s a simplistic way of looking at it but I think that particular raid is a great example of the pain-staking process of human intelligence work.

Some people make the argument that the film Zero Dark Thirty suggests that the use of torture led to the capture and killing of Osama Bin Laden. I think the film showed the CIA’s reliance on torture, but if torture was so effective why didn’t we have Osama Bin Laden right away? Why didn’t we get him after we started interrogating people at Guantanamo?"

One a spy, always a spy

The real life Zero Dark Thirty spy