According to knowledgeable sources, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has hired John Kiriakou, the former CIA official who supervised the 2002 interrogation of al-Qaeda detainee Abu Zubaydah, as an investigator. Kiriakou, who served in Pakistan from 1998 to 2004, will start work this week, focusing on the Middle East and South Asia for the committee.

In late 2007, Kiriakou became the first CIA official to publicly acknowledge participating in an abusive interrogation. He was part of a team that interrogated Abu Zubaydah, a member of al-Qaeda whom author Ron Suskind claims is mentally challenged, after the operative’s capture in Pakistan in 2002. CIA officials waterboarded Abu Zubaydah, and while Kiriakou told ABC News and The Washington Post that he was not present for that abusive technique — he had left the interrogation team by that time — he has said he considers the waterboarding to be both necessary but immoral.

He told The Post:

“Maybe that’s inconsistent, but that’s how I feel,” he said. “It was an ugly little episode that was perhaps necessary at that time. But we’ve moved beyond that.”