WASHINGTON (Reuters) - CIA officials extracted valuable information from a terrorism suspect after he was subjected to waterboarding, a simulated drowning technique that has been condemned as torture, a former CIA interrogator told U.S. new media.

Suspected al Qaeda lieutenant Abu Zubaida offered to cooperate less than a minute after CIA officials subjected him to the controversial technique, former CIA interrogator John Kiriakou told ABC News and the Washington Post.

"It was like flipping a switch," Kiriakou told the Post. He said the session yielded valuable information and probably helped prevent attacks, but he now believes waterboarding is torture and "Americans are better than that."

Kiriakou, who now works in the private sector, came forward as the CIA faced sharp criticism for destroying a videotape of the interrogation, along with another showing the interrogation of a second suspected al Qaeda member.

Critics have charged that the agency destroyed the tapes to hide evidence of illegal torture. The CIA said it destroyed the tapes in 2005 to protect the interrogators from possible retaliation. A judge had ordered the tapes to be preserved as possible evidence in a lawsuit filed by captives at the Guantanamo Bay military prison.

The Justice Department, the CIA and two congressional committees all plan to investigate the tape destruction.

Abu Zubaida was captured in Pakistan in the spring of 2002, one of the first high-level al Qaeda operatives to come into U.S. custody after the September 11, 2001, hijacking attacks.

He was defiant and uncooperative until he was waterboarded that summer, said Kiriakou, who did not participate in the interrogation but was briefed by those who did. The next day he offered to tell his captors everything he knew, Kiriakou said.

Many countries, U.S. lawmakers and human rights groups have denounced waterboarding as torture. It is believed the technique has not been used by the CIA since 2003.

(Reporting by Andy Sullivan; editing by David Alexander and Sandra Maler)