According to a former CIA agent, waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah, a major al-Qaida figure, got him to talk in less than 35 seconds, a technique he asserted had the approval of high-ranking U.S. officials. He said he thought the technique, which critics say is torture, probably disrupted "dozens" of planned al-Qaida attacks.

The former agent, John Kiriakou, a leader of the team that captured Zubaydah, did not explain how he knew who approved the interrogation technique but said such approval comes from top officials.

"This isn't something done willy nilly. This isn't something where an agency officer just wakes up in the morning and decides he's going to carry out an enhanced technique on a prisoner," he said Tuesday on NBC's "Today" show. "This was a policy made at the White House, with concurrence from the National Security Council and Justice Department."

Each time CIA agents wished to use waterboarding or any other harsh interrogation technique, they had to present a "well-laid out, well-thought out reason" to top government officials, Kiriakou said. In Zubaydah's case, Kiriakou said the waterboarding had immediate effect.

"The next day, he told his interrogator that Allah had visited him in his cell during the night and told him to cooperate," Kiriakou said in an interview first broadcast Monday evening on ABC News' World News. "From that day on, he answered every question. The threat information he provided disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks."

Details of Zubaydah's interrogation came as Hayden prepared for two days of questioning by the Senate and House intelligence panels about the CIA's destruction of the videotapes. Both are closed sessions.

Kiriakou said he did not know the interrogation of Zubaydah was being recorded by the CIA and did not know the tapes subsequently were destroyed.

"Like a lot of Americans, I'm involved in this internal, intellectual battle with myself weighing the idea that waterboarding may be torture versus the quality of information that we often get after using the waterboarding technique," Kiriakou, now retired from the CIA, told ABC News. "And I struggle with it."

He added: "What happens if we don't waterboard a person and we don't get that nugget of information and there's an attack. I would have trouble forgiving myself. ... At the time, I felt that waterboarding was something that we needed to do."

Hayden told CIA employees last week that the CIA taped the interrogations of two alleged terrorists in 2002. He said Congress was notified in 2003 both of the tapes' existence and the agency's intent to destroy them.

The CIA destroyed the tapes in November of 2005. Exactly when Congress was notified and in what detail is in dispute.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said the CIA claims it told the committee of the tapes' destruction at a hearing in November 2006. Rockefeller said, however, that the hearing transcript found no mention of that subject.

The House committee first learned the tapes had been destroyed in March 2007, according to Committee Chairman Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas.

In last week's message, Hayden told CIA employees that "the leaders of our oversight committees in Congress were informed of the videos years ago and of the Agency's intention to dispose of the material. Our oversight committees also have been told that the videos were, in fact, destroyed."

But Reyes said Monday that Hayden's claim that Congress was properly notified "does not appear to be true."