Jane Harman
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John Kiriakou described the congressional briefings on the CIA's enhanced interrogation program as a deliberate effort to give key lawmakers advance knowledge, and thereby political cover for the agency. Among those briefed was Jane Harman, then the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. Kiriakou says Harman, whom he describes as a progressive Democrat from Venice, California, chaired the House Intelligence Committee for much of the torture program's duration, and that despite the oversight committees being fully informed the programs were illegal, immoral, and unethical, not a single member objected, Harman included.

When journalists subsequently asked Harman whether she had known about the torture program, she denied it. Kiriakou told the New York Times that Harman had been in the room during the briefing. Faced with that account, Harman changed her statement: she acknowledged attending the briefing but claimed she had left before it concluded, leaving an aide to take notes in her absence.

Kiriakou presented this sequence as illustrative of the broader pattern in which members of Congress were read into programs and then disclaimed knowledge of them when those programs became politically toxic.

See also

- Enhanced interrogation techniques
- Senate Torture Report
- John Kiriakou
- CIA
