Waterboarding Whistleblower Released From Prison, Two Months After Torture Report's Release Vindicated His Actions. Guess who went to jail because of the CIA's long-running, illegal torture programs.
It wasn't former director Leon Panetta, who was ultimately responsible for the actions of his agency. It wasn't any number of agents, officials or supervisors who directly or indirectly participated in the ultimately useless torture of detainees. It wasn't the private contractors who profited from these horrendous acts committed in the name of "national security. " The single person to be put behind bars thanks to the CIA's torture programs was the man who blew the whistle on the agency's waterboarding: John Kiriakou. Now, he's finally free again (mostly), two months after the Torture Report that corroborates his allegations was released. Kiriakou is serving out the remainder of his sentence for "revealing an undercover operative's identity" under house arrest. Now that he's out, he's still talking. The ultimate irony, he says, is that everything he was punished for saying has now been proven true. Techdirt - Guess who went to jail because of the CIA's...
DN! AMY GOODMAN: Today, a Democracy Now!
Radio and television broadcast exclusive. We spend the hour with John Kiriakou, the retired CIA agent who blew the whistle on torture. He’s just been released from prison. He’ll join us from his home in Virginia, where he remains under house arrest while finishing his two-and-a-half-year sentence. Shortly after his release last week, John Kiriakou tweeted a picture of himself at home with his smiling children, along with a quote from Dr. In January 2013, Kiriakou was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison. JOHN KIRIAKOU: At the time, I felt that waterboarding was something that we needed to do. BRIAN ROSS: Why do you say that now? JOHN KIRIAKOU: Because we’re Americans, and we’re better than that.
AMY GOODMAN: John Kiriakou’s supporters say he was unfairly targeted in the Obama administration’s crackdown on government whistleblowers. Meanwhile, the federal prosecutor in the case, Neil MacBride, has defended the government’s handling of the case. John Kiriakou. John Kiriakou (born August 9, 1964) is a former CIA analyst and case officer, former senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and former counterterrorism consultant for ABC News, blogger for Huffington Post,[1] and author.[2][3][4] He is notable as the first official within the U.S. government to confirm the use of waterboarding of al-Qaeda prisoners as an interrogation technique, which he described as torture.[5][6] On October 22, 2012, Kiriakou pled guilty to disclosing classified information about a fellow CIA officer that connected the covert operative to a specific operation.
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.[10] In 2012, Kiriakou received the Joe A. Callaway Award for Civic Courage for standing up for constitutional rights.[11] Biography[edit] Education[edit] CIA career[edit] Life after the CIA[edit] CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou: Prison Broke Promise of Nine Months in Halfway House, Will Resume Letters. John Kiriakou (Creative Commons-licensed Photo from Truthout.org) Former CIA officer John Kiriakou, who is serving a thirty-month jail sentence in the federal correctional institution in Loretto, Pennsylvania, has resumed writing letters from prison after the Bureau of Prisons failed to give him nine months in a halfway house to finish out his sentence.
Kiriakou was the first member of the CIA to publicly acknowledge that torture was official US policy under the George W. Bush administration. He was convicted in October of last year of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA) when he provided the name of an officer involved in the CIA’s Rendition, Detention and Interrogation (RDI) program to a reporter and sentenced in January of this year.
He reported to prison on February 28, 2013. Firedoglake had been publishing Kiriakou’s “Letters from Loretto.” Halfway houses are often residences in communities where prisoners can go to serve all or part of their sentence. P.O. Firedoglake. John Kiriakiou, Torture Whistleblower, Ex-CIA Agent Needs Your Help Now! Interoccupy.net. John Kiriakiou, Torture Whistleblower, Ex-CIA Agent Needs Your Help Now!