'I'm proud of using waterboarding to break terrorists,' declares Bush's top political adviser

Defiant: Karl Rove claimed that waterboarding had saved lives

George W Bush's top political adviser has said he was 'proud' of controversial techniques such as waterboarding, which he claimed broke the will of terrorist.

Karl Rove - known as the former president's 'brain' - said he did not believe that the interrogation method amounted to torture.

In an interview with the BBC, he claimed that waterboarding - which simulates drowning - had helped prevent terrorist attacks.

'I'm proud that we used techniques that broke the will of these terrorists and gave us valuable information that allowed us to foil plots,' he said.

'I am proud that we kept the world safer than it was by the use of these techniques. They are appropriate, they are in conformity with our international requirements and with US law.'

Asked if he believed waterboarding was torture, he said: 'No, it's not. People need to read the memos that outline what was permissible and not permissible before they make a judgement about these things.'

'Every one of the people who were waterboarded had a doctor who had to ascertain that there had been no long-lasting physical or mental damage to the individual,' he said.

The senior Republican aide and Bush's deputy chief of staff said in the Newsnight interview that subjects had told they would not drown before they underwent the procedure.

He insisted terror plots had been prevented by the tough interrogation, citing flying planes into Heathrow and London, bringing down aircraft over the Pacific and flying an aircraft into the tallest tower in Los Angeles.

Human rights activists demonstrate waterboarding on a volunteer in Washington

Mr Rove has recently published his memoir, Courage And Consequence, and in it he defends the Bush regime as 'impressive, durable and significant'.

Earlier this week, the former head of MI5 Baroness Eliza Manningham-Buller said that U.S intelligence agencies deliberately concealed their mistreatment of terror suspects.

She said she had only learnt that 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had been waterboarded - a total of 160 times - after retiring from the Security Service in 2007.

Ex-MI5 head Lady Manningham-Buller said members of Bush's team may have been inspired by on-screen excess in the TV series '24', starring Kiefer Sutherland (above). Mr Rove said the comment was 'laughable'

When asked on Newsnight if U.S. intelligence had told their British counterparts about their methods, Mr Rove said he did not know and would have to 'defer to intelligence officials'.

But he added: 'I suspect since we were sharing that information with the Democratic and Republican leaders of committees that there was widespread knowledge in the intelligence committees of this information and its source.'

In her speech to the Mile End Group at the House of Lords, Lady Manningham-Buller also joked that members of U.S. President George W. Bush's administration, including Vice President Dick Cheney and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, may have been inspired by on-screen excess.

'One of the sad things is Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush all watched "24",' Lady Manningham-Buller said, referring to the popular TV show about a counter-terrorist agent, starring Kiefer Sutherland.

But Mr Rove said this was 'laughable'. He said President Bush rarely watched TV apart from sport and that Mr Cheney while a fan of 24 'is fully capable of distinguishing between fact and fiction'.

Barack Obama banned waterboarding shortly after his inauguration in Janaury 2009.

The technique had been sanctioned in a series of memos compiled by lawyers working for Bush in August 2002.

Crucially, the documents laid out the legal provision for its use thus giving immunity to the state employees who carried it out. Some of the memos were released last year.

There have been a number of high profile detainees who were subjected to the technique, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks.

Pressure: Binyam Mohamed, left, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, right, were both waterboarded

He was waterboarded on more than 160 separate occasions. Briton Binyam Mohamed, who was held at Guantanamo Bay, was also waterboarded.

Lady Manningham-Buller said earlier this week she had wondered how the US had been able to supply the UK with intelligence from Mohammed.

'I said to my staff, 'Why is he talking?' because our experience of Irish prisoners, Irish terrorists, was that they never said anything,' she said. 'They said, well, the Americans say he is very proud of his achievements when questioned about it.

'It wasn't actually until after I retired that I read that, in fact, he had been waterboarded 160 times.