The Short Version
Kiriakou's core public disclosure — that the CIA waterboarded detainees as official policy — was substantially correct, later confirmed by the 2014 Senate Intelligence Committee report. However, his prominent specific claim that Abu Zubaydah broke after just 30–35 seconds of waterboarding was grossly inaccurate; Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times. He also initially echoed false CIA claims about interrogation effectiveness. Calling his public statements "mostly accurate" overstates their reliability by ignoring these significant, well-documented errors.