"I had no intent"
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In the days around his sentencing, John Kiriakou settled on a formulation he has used since: an admission of the act, coupled with a denial of the intent.

The formula

Asked about the offence, he answered: "Did I commit that crime? Yes I did. I didn't have any intent to commit a crime, I didn't have any intent to harm this individual."

The factual account behind it is that he had sent the name of a covert CIA officer to a reporter believing the man had retired and could therefore be interviewed. He had not.

Why the distinction has no legal effect

The Intelligence Identities Protection Act count to which he pleaded does not turn on an intent to harm, which is why the admission and the denial can both stand. Kiriakou has been consistent that his charge concerned a single name, confirmed rather than volunteered, which was never published by the reporter who received it.

He was, on his own account and on that of contemporaneous reporting, the first current or former CIA officer convicted of the offence, and the first American imprisoned in connection with waterboarding, "not for having committed it but for having blown the whistle on it."

The asymmetry he attaches to it

Kiriakou immediately places the plea inside the comparison he considers the point of the case: "the only person who's going to prison for having anything related to do with the torture regime is the guy who blew the whistle on the torture. The torturers aren't going to prison. The people who ordered or conceived of the torture aren't going to prison."

That is the sense in which he calls the conviction politically motivated. He does not argue that the statute was misread, only that it was reached for.

See also

- John Kiriakou
- Intelligence Identities Protection Act
- Espionage Act
- CIA Torture Program Whistleblowing
- The legal bills
