Ex-CIA officer to speak on government whistleblowers

CHAPEL HILL

A former counterrorism agent who was the first former CIA officer to publicly acknowledge the use of waterboarding on prisoners will speak Tuesday on the role of whistleblowers in government.

John Kiriakou spent almost 2 years in a federal prison for giving classified information to a reporter. He was released this year.

Kiriakou worked as an analyst and counterrorism officer for the CIA from 1990 to 2004. His 2012 memoir, “The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the C.I.A.’s War on Terror,” tells of his role in the operation that captured Abu Zubaydah, an al-Qaida organizer and leader under Osama bin Laden.

In 2007, Kiriakou publicly expressed concern about the interrogation of some prisoners captured in the war on terror. He told ABC News that Abu Zubaydah had been subjected to waterboarding, a practice that Kiriakou said he later came to consider torture.

Kiriakou in 2012 was charged with disclosing classified information and admitted in a plea deal to revealing the name of an undercover CIA officer to a journalist.

Kiriakou’s address, “Keeping Government Honest: Whistleblowers, Torture, and America’s War on Terror,” will be at 7:15 p.m. at the Freedom Forum Conference Center at Carroll Hall on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus.

http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/article41319801.html

Exclusive: Freed CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou Says "I Would Do It All Again" to Expose Torture

In a broadcast exclusive interview, we spend the hour with John Kiriakou, a retired CIA agent who has just been released from prison after blowing the whistle on the George W. Bush administration’s torture program. In 2007, Kiriakou became the first CIA official to publicly confirm and detail the agency’s use of waterboarding. 

In January 2013, he was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison. Under a plea deal, Kiriakou admitted to a single count of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act by revealing the identity of a covert officer involved in the torture program to a freelance reporter, who did not publish it. In return, prosecutors dropped charges brought under the Espionage Act. Kiriakou is the only official to be jailed for any reason relating to CIA torture. Supporters say he was unfairly targeted in the Obama administration’s crackdown on government whistleblowers. 

A father of five, Kiriakou spent 14 years at the CIA as an analyst and case officer, leading the team that found high-ranking al-Qaeda member Abu Zubaydah in 2002. He joins us from his home in Virginia, where he remains under house arrest for three months while completing his sentence. In a wide-ranging interview, Kiriakou says, "I would do it all over again," after seeing the outlawing of torture after he came forward. Kiriakou also responds to the details of the partially released Senate Committee Report on the CIA’s use of torture; argues NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden did a "great national service," but will not get a fair trial if he returns to the United States; and describes the conditions inside FCI Loretto, the federal prison where he served his sentence and saw prisoners die with "terrifying frequency" from lack of proper medical care...

http://www.democracynow.org/2015/2/9/exclusive_freed_cia_whistleblower_john_kiriakou

Imprisoned CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou Threatened with ‘Diesel Therapy,’ Suffers Shakedowns for Talking to Press

The federal correctional institution of Loretto, Pennsylvania, where former CIA officer John Kiriakou is serving a thirty-month jail sentence, appears to be scrambling to find any way they can to stop him from sending letters from prison. He has written another letter that details what seem to be clear acts of retaliation.

Since August of last year, Firedoglake has been publishing “Letters from Loretto,” by Kiriakou, an imprisoned whistleblower who 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 2012 after he pled guilty to 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. He was sentenced in January 2013, and reported to prison on February 28, 2013.

Firedoglake has been publishing Kiriakou’s “Letters from Loretto” since the summer of last year. In fact, the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) considers copies of Kiriakou’s letters to be a danger to the Loretto prison: a threat to the “security, good order or discipline of the institution” or “to the protection of the public” or a document that “might facilitate criminal activity.”...

http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2014/02/17/imprisoned-cia-whistleblower-threatened-with-diesel-therapy-suffers-shakedowns-for-press-communications/

Defend John Kiriakou

We are writing to ask you to join us in supporting, protecting, and materially helping our friend and colleague John Kiriakou, a long-time former CIA official and case officer. John, an anti-torture whistleblower and activist, was hounded into ruin by the Justice Department because he revealed that the CIA had tortured prisoners and that torture was official US Government policy.

John accepted a plea to violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act and was sentenced to 30 months in prison. The irony is extraordinary. For more than 14 years, John worked in the field and at home, under conditions of great peril and stress and at great personal sacrifice, dedicating himself to protecting America and Americans from harm at home and abroad.

The Justice Department’s actions have created huge pressures on John and his family. John and Heather have five children—the youngest is just over a year old—and they face the challenge of raising them while simultaneously fighting the CIA, FBI, and Justice Department...

http://defendjohnk.com

Obama's abuse of the Espionage Act is modern-day McCarthyism

The conviction of Bradley Manning under the 1917 Espionage Act, and the US Justice Department's decision to file espionage charges againstNSA whistleblower Edward Snowden under the same act, are yet further examples of the Obama administration's policy of using an iron fist against human rights and civil liberties activists.

President Obama has been unprecedented in his use of the Espionage Act to prosecute those whose whistleblowing he wants to curtail. The purpose of an Espionage Act prosecution, however, is not to punish a person for spying for the enemy, selling secrets for personal gain, or trying to undermine our way of life. It is to ruin the whistleblower personally, professionally and financially. It is meant to send a message to anybody else considering speaking truth to power: challenge us and we will destroy you.

Only ten people in American history have been charged with espionage for leaking classified information, seven of them under Barack Obama. The effect of the charge on a person's life – being viewed as a traitor, being shunned by family and friends, incurring massive legal bills – is all a part of the plan to force the whistleblower into personal ruin, to weaken him to the point where he will plead guilty to just about anything to make the case go away. I know. The three espionage charges against me made me one of "the Obama Seven"...

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/06/obama-abuse-espionage-act-mccarthyism

“Everyone is corrupt, I’ve come to learn”

John Kiriakou, the former CIA officer who blew the whistle on Bush’s torture program and is now in prison, sent an open letter to Edward Snowden last week warning him not to trust the FBI.

“DO NOT,” Kiriakou wrote, “under any circumstances, cooperate with the FBI. FBI agents will lie, trick, and deceive you. They will twist your words and play on your patriotism to entrap you. They will pretend to be people they are not – supporters, well-wishers, and friends – all the while wearing wires to record your out-of-context statements to use against you. The FBI is the enemy; it’s part of the problem, not the solution.”

These are the words of a registered Republican who voted for Gary Johnson, whom the Rosenberg Fund for Children denied a grant, informing him that he wasn’t “liberal enough,” Kiriakou says, for the award — and who last year received a birthday card from Jerry Falwell Jr...

http://www.salon.com/2013/07/11/“everyone_is_corrupt_ive_come_to_learn”/

Please Help Defend John Kiriakou

Dear Friends and Colleagues:

We write to ask you to join us in supporting, protecting and materially helping our friend and colleague, John Kiriakou, a long-time former C.I.A. official and case officer. Incredibly, John has been accused by the Department of Justice of crimes under the 1917 Espionage Act, a charge historically reserved for persons who betrayed their country to foreign governments for money.

Why? The prosecutors have not claimed that John talked to any foreign government, passed any government documents or accepted funds from anyone hostile to the United States. Instead, according to the facts asserted in the indictment, he committed the "crime" of responding honestly to a query from theNew York Times related to the agency's interrogation program under the Bush Administration, which included water boarding...

http://www.defendjohnk.com/