The State Department cover investigation
========================================

The State Department cover investigation was one of several inquiries John Kiriakou opened while serving as senior investigator on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and one of several that were closed on him.

The tip

"I got a call from a reporter who told me that he had some information that seemed to indicate that the CIA was taking its torturers and putting them under State Department cover", which, Kiriakou notes, "was a violation of the cover agreement between the CIA and the State Department."

The letter

He did what the job allowed: "I sent the State Department a letter asking for clarification." Then nothing, for "something like five, six weeks."

The answer

"Finally a colleague of mine comes into my office and says, oh, you got a response to your letter from the agency. I said, I didn't get any response. He said, well, they classified it top secret and you're not cleared for it."

Asked what the response said, the colleague smiled and gave the substance: "they said go f--- yourself. So that was the end of that investigation."

In sequence

Kiriakou places this inquiry immediately after the Dasht-i-Leili massacre investigation, which the committee's own deputy staff director had ordered him to drop within days of his writing to the agency. He treats the pair as part of a pattern that ran for another three years, "there were other investigations too, at which I was poking them", before the charges came.

See also

- Senate Foreign Relations Committee
- Dasht-i-Leili massacre
- John Kiriakou
