Ex-CIA officer John Kiriakou sentenced for leaking name on agency's use of torture
A file photo of former CIA officer John Kiriakou, who helped track down a suspected al Qaeda leader -- and was later charged with leaking classified information about the agency's use of torture.
ALEXANDRIA, Va. A former CIA officer was sentenced Friday to more than two years in prison by a federal judge who rejected arguments that he was acting as a whistleblower on the agency's use of torture when he leaked a covert officer's name to a reporter.
A plea deal required the judge to impose a sentence of 2 1/2 years. U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema said she would have given John Kiriakou much more time if she could.
Kiriakou's supporters describe him as a whistleblower who exposed aspects of the CIA's use of torture against detained terrorists. Prosecutors said he was merely seeking to increase his fame by trading on his insider knowledge.
Kiriakou's 2007 interviews about the interrogations of al-Qaida terrorist Abu Zubaydah were among the first by a CIA insider confirming reports that several detainees had been waterboarded.
The 48-year-old pleaded guilty last year to violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. No one had been convicted under the law in 27 years.
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Kiriakou was an intelligence officer with the CIA from 1990 until 2004.
Hard Measures, part 1
Hard Measures, part 2
In 2002, he played a key role in the agency's capture of Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan. Abu Zubaydah, who was waterboarded by government interrogators, revealed information that exposed Khalid Sheikh Mohamed as the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
Accounts conflict, though, over whether the waterboarding was helpful in gleaning intelligence from Abu Zubaydah, who was also interrogated conventionally.
Kiriakou, who did not participate in the waterboarding, expressed ambivalence in interviews about waterboarding, but he ultimately declared it was torture.
In court papers, prosecutors said the investigation of Kiriakou began in 2009 when authorities became alarmed after discovering that detainees at Guantanamo Bay possessed photographs of CIA and FBI personnel who had interrogated them. The investigation eventually led back to Kiriakou, according to a government affidavit.
Prosecutors said Kiriakou leaked the name of a covert operative to a journalist, who disclosed it to an investigator working for the lawyer of a Guantanamo detainee.
Kiriakou was initially charged under the World War I-era Espionage Act, but those charges were dropped as part of a plea bargain.
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As for the "info we need to prevent catastrophies like 9/11"? Israel, and probably US government officials had advanced knowledge of 9/11 and very likely elements within Israel assisted the perpetrators with intelligence. Grow up yourself, it's called a false flag attack and Machiavelli's question of how many of your own are you willing to sacrifice to meet your goals. You haven't a clue how fascist you and your nation have become.
Have you any idea how socipathic and ignorant that advice its? When all you have is a great big hammer (metaphor for totalitarian security state) EVERYTHING looks like a hammer. Pretty soon you yourself are destroying your own cherished "freedoms". BTW, the US wasn't founded upon freedom. It was founded upon equality. Freedom was one of the inalienable rights derived from a priori equality.
And don't forget Al Gore (whom I don't think much of either) actually enlisted, fought and was wounded while Cheney took 5 deferments and JUNIOR's Daddy got him into the Texas ANG which never did and never would have been assigned to Vietnam.
Ha!!
It doesn't say that Kirakou had anything to do with giving detainees photographs of CIA agents. In fact he was convicted of mentioning only one CIA name in passing to a reporter.
Whether Kirakou should have said a CIA officers's name is an issue. But so much of this case reeks of a government crackdown against anyone that protests against waterboarding. The above implication that Kirakou had given pictures of CIA agents, and the emphasis on the accusation that Kirakou only wanted to achieve notoriety, are indications that Kirakou is being smeared by the government.
As many other commenters have noted, Bush White House aides Scooter Libby, Karl Rove, Air Fleischer, and Richard Armitage, all made a far more deliberate and vicious leak of a CIA officer's name to reporters. They did this pretty much just to get back at her husband for writing a true article that said Bush was wrong. Nothing ever happened to them (excepting Libby who was actually convicted for lying to the Grand Jury, not leaking the CIA agent's name).
There really is no equal justice under law anymore.
Unfortunately, Kiriakou said in 2007 that the waterboarding was "probably necessary."
Torture is NEVER necessary. It is ALWAYS wrong... The only thing it is effective at is coercing false confessions.