John Kiriakou | |
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_Disruptionlab_Prisoners_2017-05-12_-_2_(cropped).jpg) Kiriakou on May 12, 2017 | |
| Born | John Chris Kiriakou (1964-08-09)August 9, 1964 (age 60) Sharon,Pennsylvania, United States |
| Other names |
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| Citizenship |
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| Education | New Castle High School |
| Alma mater | George Washington University |
| Occupations |
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| Years active | 1990–present |
| Employer | Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)(1990–2004) |
| Known for | CIA torture disclosure |
| Criminal charges | Disclosing classified information[Note 2] |
| Criminal penalty | 30 months(2 ½ years) |
| Criminal status | Served twenty eight months(three months in home confinement) |
| Spouse | Heather Katherine Kiriakou (before 2018) |
| Children | 5 |
| Website | Column at Consortium |
John Chris Kiriakou (/kiriˈɑːkuː/kee-ree-AH-koo;[1] born August 9, 1964) is an American author, journalist and former intelligence officer. Kiriakou is a columnist with Reader Supported News[2] and co-host ofPolitical Misfits onSputnik Radio.[3] He was jailed for exposing the interrogation techniques of theCentral Intelligence Agency (CIA).
He was anintelligence analyst andoperations officer for the CIA'sCounterterrorism Center, senior investigator for theSenate Foreign Relations Committee, and a consultant forABC News.[4][5][6] He was the first U.S. government official to confirm in December 2007 thatwaterboarding was used to interrogate al-Qaeda prisoners, which he described astorture.[7][8]
In 2012, Kiriakou became the only CIA officer to be convicted for exposing the CIA'senhanced interrogation program, having passed classified information to a reporter.[9] He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 30 months in prison.[10]
Kiriakou was born on August 9, 1964, the son of elementary school educators inSharon, Pennsylvania, and raised in nearbyNew Castle, Pennsylvania. His grandparents had immigrated fromGreece.[11] Kiriakou graduated fromNew Castle High School in 1982 and attendedGeorge Washington University inWashington, D.C., where he earned a bachelor's degree inMiddle Eastern Studies and a master's degree in Legislative Affairs.
Kiriakou was recruited into the CIA by a graduate school professor who had been a senior CIA official.[12] Kiriakou spent the first eight years of his career as aMiddle East analyst specializing onIraq.[12] He maintained aTop Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information security clearance.[12] He learned Arabic and, from 1994 to 1996, was assigned to the American Embassy inManama, Bahrain, as an economic officer.[12] He returned to Washington, D.C. to work on Iraq until 1998, when he transferred to the CIA'sDirectorate of Operations.[12] He became a counter-terrorismoperations officer and worked inAthens, Greece, where the CIA targeted17N and other leftist Greek terrorist groups, as well as secular Palestinian revolutionaries. In Greece, Kiriakou recruited foreign agents to spy for the United States, and was nearly assassinated by leftists.[13] In 2000, Kiriakou returned toCIA Headquarters.[12]
Following theSeptember 11 terrorist attacks, Kiriakou was named Chief of Counterterrorist Operations inPakistan. In that position, he led a series ofmilitary raids onal-Qaedasafehouses, capturing dozens of al-Qaeda fighters. Kiriakou led a raid on the night of March 28, 2002, inFaisalabad, Pakistan, capturingAbu Zubaydah, then thought to be al-Qaeda's third-ranking official.[12] He left the CIA in 2004 to take up a consulting job.[9]
From 2004 until 2008, Kiriakou worked as a senior manager inBig Four accounting firmDeloitte & Touche'scompetitive intelligence practice.[14] From September 2008 until March 2009, Kiriakou was a terrorism consultant forABC News. Following SenatorJohn Kerry's (D-MA) ascension to the chairmanship of theSenate Foreign Relations Committee in 2009, Kiriakou became the committee's seniorUnited States Senate investigator, focusing on the Middle East,international terrorism,piracy, andcounter-narcotics issues.[15] In 2011, he left the committee to becomemanaging partner of Rhodes Global Consulting, anArlington, Virginia-based politicalrisk analysis firm.[16] From April 2011 to April 2012, he resumedcounter-terrorism consulting for ABC News.[16] He speaks often at colleges and universities around the country about the CIA, terrorism, torture, and ethics in intelligence operations.[citation needed]
On December 10, 2007, Kiriakou gave an interview toABC News[17] in which he described his participation in the capture of Abu Zubaydah, who was accused of having been an aide to Al-Qaeda leaderOsama bin Laden. Kiriakou said that he did not witness Zubaydah'sinterrogation, but had been told by CIA associates that it had taken only a single brief instance of waterboarding to extract answers:
... He was able to withstand the waterboarding for quite some time. And by that I mean probably 30, 35 seconds ... and a short time afterwards, in the next day or so, he told his interrogator that Allah had visited him in his cell during the night and told him to cooperate.[18]
Following the interview, Kiriakou's accounts of Abu Zubaydah's waterboarding were widely repeated and paraphrased,[Note 3][7] and he became a regular guest expert on news andpublic affairs shows on the topics of interrogation and counter-terrorism.
In 2009, however, it was reported that Abu Zubaydah had been waterboarded at least 83 times.[19] The treatment "broke" Abu Zubaydah and he told his interrogators of al-Qaeda terrorism plots. However, most of the useful information was obtained prior to Abu Zubaydah's waterboarding and the torture resulted in little or no useful additional information.[20][21]
Kiriakou has said that he chose not to blow the whistle on torture through internal channels because he believed he "wouldn't have gotten anywhere" because his superiors and the congressional intelligence committees were already aware of it.[22]
After the ABC News interview, Kiriakou exchanged emails with a freelance writer. In the emails, Kiriakou disclosed the name of a former CIA colleague who had participated in the detention and interrogation program; the employee was, at the time, still undercover.[23] The freelance writer then shared the name withlawyers representing detainees held at Guantanamo Bay.[23] The name then appeared in a sealed legal filing submitted by the defense attorneys.[23] Although the name was not made public at the time, the disclosure angered federal officials, and the resulting federal investigation led to Kiriakou's arrest.[23] The name that was disclosed appeared on the New York Times website in October 2011.[23]
On January 23, 2012, Kiriakou was charged with disclosing classified information to journalists, including the name of a covert CIA officer and information revealing the role of another CIA employee,Deuce Martinez, in classified activities.[24][25][26] In addition, Kiriakou was alleged to have lied to the CIA in order to have his book published.[27] His criminal defense lawyer was Robert Trout.[28] His other lawyer,Jesselyn Radack,[29] toldPolitico that the government was wrong to deny Kiriakou's whistleblower status.[30]
According toPEN America:
The specific charges were that in 2008, Kiriakou confirmed the name of a CIA officer—which was already well known to people in the human rights community, according to the Government Accountability Project—to someone who claimed to be writing a book about the agency's rendition practices. In a separate 2008 incident, Kiriakou gave aNew York Times journalist the business card of a CIA agent who worked for a "private government contractor known for its involvement in torture." That agent had never been undercover and his contact information and affiliation with the CIA was already publicly available on the Internet. Kiriakou faced up to 45 years in prison and millions of dollars in legal fees for these charges.[22]
On April 5, 2012, Kiriakou wasindicted for one count of violating theIntelligence Identities Protection Act, three counts of violating theEspionage Act, and one count ofmaking false statements for allegedly lying to the Publications Review Board of the CIA.[31] Kiriakou initially pleadednot guilty to all charges and was released on bail.[32]
Starting September 12, 2012, the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia conducted closedClassified Information Procedures Act hearings in Kiriakou's case.[33]
On October 22, 2012, Kiriakou agreed to plead guilty to one count of passing classified information to the media thereby violating theIntelligence Identities Protection Act; his plea deal spared journalists from testifying in a trial. All other charges were dropped.[34]
On January 25, 2013, Kiriakou was sentenced to 30 months in prison, making him the second CIA employee to be jailed for revealing classified material of CIA undercover identities[22][23] in violation of theIntelligence Identities Protection Act (the first wasSharon Scranage, a CIA secretary who was arrested and convicted in 1985).[35] In February 2013New York Times reporterScott Shane referenced the Kiriakou case when he told NPR that Obama's prosecutions of journalism-related leaking were having achilling effect on coverage of national security issues.[36]
In January 2013,Bruce Riedel, a former CIA analyst and intelligence adviser toBarack Obama, sent the President a letter signed by eighteen other CIA veterans urging that Kiriakou's sentence becommuted.[23]
_at_Disruptionlab_Prisoners_of_Dissent_2017-05-12.jpg)
Kiriakou received a prison "send off" party at an exclusive Washington, D.C., hotel hosted by political peace activists dressed in orange jumpsuits and mock prison costumes.[37]
On February 28, 2013, Kiriakou began serving his term at the low-securityFederal Correctional Institution, Loretto inLoretto, Pennsylvania.[10]
In summer 2013, Kiriakou wrote an open "Letter From Loretto" toEdward Snowden, published by the blogFiredoglake, expressing his support and giving advice; urging him to not, "under any circumstances, cooperate with theFBI".[38]
On February 3, 2015, Kiriakou was released from prison to serve three months of house arrest at his home inArlington, Virginia.[39] Following his release, Kiriakou said his case was not about leaking information but about exposing torture, continuing, "and I would do it all over again." He has since expressed interest in campaigning forprison reform.[39]
In July 2018, Kiriakou signed a $50,000 agreement withKaren Giorno, a former campaign advisor to Donald Trump, as payment for lobbying for apardon, with the promise of an additional $50,000 as a bonus if it was granted. Kiriakou said that he also discussed his quest for a pardon withRudy Giuliani, in 2020. Specifically, an associate of the latter's suggested that they could help, but "it's going to cost $2 million — he's [Giuliani] going to want two million bucks"; Kiriakou laughed, and said that "even if [he] had two million bucks, [he] wouldn't spend it to recover a $700,000 pension."[40]
In a 2018 op-ed for theWashington Post, Kiriakou criticizedGina Haspel, a CIA officer nominated by Trump to the post of CIA director, writing that "while I went to prison for disclosing the torture program, Haspel is about to get a promotion despite her connection to it."[41] Kiriakou said the time he spent in prison was "worth every day" because revelations about the CIA's use of torture led to Congress's enactment of a specific ban on waterboarding and other techniques used at the black sites.[41]
Kiriakou is a founding member of the organizationVeteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).[42][better source needed] In September 2015, Kiriakou and 27 other members of VIPS' steering committee wrote a letter to President Barack Obama challenging a recently published book that claimed to rebut the report of theSenate Intelligence Committee on theCentral Intelligence Agency's use of torture.[citation needed]
In January 2022, Kiriakou commented toDeclassified UK about their allegations that theNational Endowment for Democracy (NED), a non-profit corporation funded by theUnited States Congress, had funnelled millions of dollars into British independent media groups since 2016. He said: "In 2011, the US Congresschanged thelaw that forbade the Executive Branch from propagandizing the American people or nationals of the other 'Five Eyes' countries—the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.[Note 4] The National Endowment for Democracy, likeRadio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, countless Washington-area 'think tanks', andRadio/TV Martí [the US broadcaster that transmits to Cuba], are the vehicles for that propaganda.... And what better way to spread that propaganda than to funnel money to 'friendly' outlets in 'friendly countries'? The CIA's propaganda efforts throughout history have been shameless. But now that they're not legally relegated to just Russia and China, the whole world is a target."[43][non-primary source needed]
The CIA awarded Kiriakou with 10 Exceptional Performance Awards, a Sustained Superior performance Award, the Counterterrorism Service Medal, and the State Department'sMeritorious Honor Award.[12] Kiriakou won the 2012Joe A. Callaway Award for Civic Courage, which is awarded to "national security whistleblowers who stood up for constitutional rights and American values, at great risk to their personal and professional lives".[44] In 2016, he was awarded theSam Adams Award.[45] Also in 2016, he was given the prestigious PEN First Amendment Award by thePEN Center USA.[46]
In 2014,Silenced, a documentary featuring Kiriakou byJames Spione, was released.[47][48] The film explored the US government's response towhistleblowers who disclosed covert violations of constitutionalprivacy laws andterrorism laws. The film revealed in detail the personal toll on Kiriakou,National Security Agency whistleblowerThomas Andrews Drake and whistleblower attorneyJesselyn Radack, each of whom had questioned practices or reported crimes within theNSA,CIA,military, and other organizations.[49][non-primary source needed][50]
{{cite AV media}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)Well, it's official now: John Kiriakou, the former CIA operative who affirmed claims that waterboarding quickly unloosed the tongues of hard-core terrorists, says he didn't know what he was talking about.
John Kiriakou, the former CIA employee whose claims about waterboarding became an oft-cited defense of the torture practice, got the "Colbert Report" treatment this week.
Scranage was a lowly secretary in the CIA's Accra station in the 1980s who betrayed the names of American informants in Ghana after being seduced by her boyfriend, who turned out to be a Ghanaian intelligence agent. ...
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| External videos | |
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 Silenced: trailer Audience Original Documentary, Jan 30, 2015 | |
| Exclusive: Freed CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou Says "I Would Do It All Again" to Expose Torture,Democracy Now, February 9, 2015 | |
| I Believed America Could Do No Wrong - John Kiriakou, Former CIA Official, on Reality Asserts Itself atThe Real News Network |
| International | |
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| National | |