Deuce Martinez
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Deuce Martinez is a former CIA analyst who, on John Kiriakou's account, "had never, ever been undercover, ever." He is nonetheless the subject of two of the three Espionage Act charges brought against Kiriakou.

The business card

Martinez resigned from the CIA about a year after Kiriakou did. They were friends, and Martinez was "excited to tell me about his onward position", so they had lunch and he handed over his new business card. It read: "Deuce Martinez, Mitchell and Jessen LLC."

Kiriakou's reaction was immediate, "are you crazy going to work for these monsters?", Mitchell and Jessen being the two psychologists who designed the torture programme. Martinez's answer was "no, no, they're good guys, they're misunderstood." Kiriakou pressed: "you've got to be insane to resign from the agency and go to work for these guys of all people. There wasn't one other job that you could have taken." After Kiriakou went on ABC News, Martinez stopped speaking to him, "which was fine." But he still had the card.

The two charges

Scott Shane (#) of the New York Times telephoned to ask how he could reach Martinez for a story. Kiriakou said they had not spoken in a long time, but that he had the business card, so he scanned it and emailed it. "I was charged with espionage for that email." When Shane's article ran, a reporter from ABC News called with the same question, and Kiriakou sent the card again. "I got a second espionage charge."

The judge threw out all three espionage counts.

Kiriakou's standing objection to the charge is that Martinez's status was never secret in the first place: "They charged me with espionage, saying that I outed Deuce Martinez. Deuce Martinez is on LinkedIn, Central Intelligence Agency Targeting Officer."

A second account of the same charge

Kiriakou has described the conduct behind his prosecution more than once, and the tellings do not match in their particulars, a variance worth recording rather than smoothing.

In a 2021 account he traces it not to the business card but to a book project. In 2008 an ABC News reporter told him he was writing a book on the Abu Omar rendition, Abu Omar being a radical Egyptian cleric in Milan, and asked for an introduction to one of a dozen people on a list. Kiriakou replied that he knew nothing about the rendition and none of the people: "kidnapping wasn't my thing at the CIA. I wasn't involved. I can't help." A second list of a dozen names produced the same answer.

The reporter then changed tack and asked about a man Kiriakou had himself mentioned in his first book, giving only a first name. Kiriakou supplied the rest, "oh, you're talking about John Smith. I don't know whatever happened to him, he's probably retired and living in Virginia somewhere", and, in his words, "I confirmed the last name of this John Smith, and that's what got me in trouble."

See also

- Mitchell and Jessen
- Espionage Act
