CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou interviewed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. - December 8, 2022

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“There are some things we should not do, even in the name of national security.”   – John Kiriakou

John Kiriakou is a former CIA analyst and case officer, former senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and former counterterrorism consultant. While employed by the CIA, he was involved in critical counterterrorism missions following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, but refused to be trained in so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques.” and Kiriakou never authorized or engaged in these techniques:

After leaving the CIA, Kiriakou appeared on ABC News in an interview with Brian Ross, during which he became the first former CIA officer to confirm that the agency waterboarded detainees and label waterboarding as torture. Kiriakou’s interview revealed that this practice was not just the result of a few rogue agents, but was official U.S. policy approved at the highest levels of the government.john kiriakou

The government started investigating Kiriakou immediately after his media appearance. Five years later, the government finally succeeded in piecing together enough information to criminally prosecute him. He became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act – a law designed to punish spies, not whistleblowers.

When Kiriakou came to GAP for help, we began acting as his legal counsel on whistleblower issues and started a public advocacy campaign on his case. Eventually, in order to avoid a trial that could have resulted in separation from his wife and five children for up to 45 years, he opted to plead guilty to one count (not Espionage) in exchange for a 30-month sentence.

Kiriakou is the sole CIA agent to go to jail in connection with the U.S. torture program, despite the fact that he never tortured anyone. Rather, he blew the whistle on this horrific wrongdoing.

Kiriakou’s Service To His Country

Kiriakou worked at the CIA from 1990 until 2004, risking his life on several occasions. He began his career at the CIA as an analyst, and later served as a counterterrorism operations officer overseas.

abu zubaydahAfter the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Kiriakou became the chief of counterterrorism operations in Pakistan. CIA officials offered to train Kiriakou in “enhanced interrogation techniques,” but he refused. While serving in Pakistan, Kiriakou led the CIA team in the March 2002 raid and capture of Abu Zubaydah, who was considered al Qaeda’s third-ranking official at the time. Kiriakou sat with Abu Zubaydah for days after his capture, but did not witness the agency waterboarding him. The CIA distributed disinformation internally that Zubaydah had been waterboarded one time, and that as a result, he had “cracked.” It was later revealed that the CIA waterboarded Abu Zubaydah 83 times, and the waterboarding had not resulted in any actionable intelligence. Although Zubaydah’s interrogations were videotaped, the CIA later destroyed the videos despite a judicial order to preserve them, claiming it was done to protect the identities of agents shown in the footage. Following Zubaydah’s capture, Kiriakou became Executive Assistant to the CIA’s Deputy Director for Operations, where he served as the Director of Central Intelligence’s principal Iraq briefer.

Kiriakou left the CIA in March 2004. He later served as a senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and as senior intelligence advisor to Committee Chairman Senator John Kerry. Kiriakou also authored a book and worked as an intelligence consultant.

Throughout his career, Kiriakou received 10 Exceptional Performance Awards, the Sustained Superior Performance Award, the Counterterrorism Service Medal, and the State Department’s Meritorious Honor Award.

Kiriakou’s Disclosures

In the 2007 interview on ABC News, Kiriakou became the first CIA officer to publicly confirm that the CIA had waterboarded prisoners, and that such an action was torture. He also confirmed that torture was an official U.S. government policy, rather than wrongdoing by a few rogue agents.

abs news intervieweeImmediately after Kiriakou’s 2007 interview, the CIA submitted a crimes report to the Department of Justice (DOJ), a step typically taken to alert the authorities to an improper disclosure of classified information. The DOJ declined to prosecute Kiriakou. But in the following years, and as Kiriakou’s public statements continued, the CIA sent at least six more crime reports to the DOJ.

In August 2008, Kiriakou, in a discussion with an individual who claimed to be writing a book on the CIA’s rendition practices, confirmed the name of an agent (Officer A) who had been involved in the agency’s rendition and detention program. Despite the individual’s claims that he was working as a reporter, the name of Officer A, though never published, eventually wound up in a January 2009 sealed defense filing at the military commission trials in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Despite the fact that Officer A’s name was well known in the human rights community, the Justice Department argued Kiriakou had violated the law by confirming it, a claim that a member of Kiriakou’s criminal defense team said “criminalized routine conduct between journalists and their government sources.” (The public did not know Officer A’s name until four years later, well after Kiriakou had been charged).

Also in 2008, a New York Times reporter writing a story on interrogations contacted Kiriakou and asked him about CIA agent Deuce Martinez. Kiriakou shared Martinez’ business card, which identified Martinez as working at a private government contractor known for its involvement in torture. Martinez had not been an undercover agent, and his contact information and past job as an intelligence officer was listed on the Internet and available to the public. But the FBI later alleged that information was classified, despite the fact that at the time Kiriakou was charged (approximately 10 years later), the story of Abu Zubaydah’s capture and interrogation was well known.

https://whistleblower.org/bio-john-kiriakou/