Title: Sentenced to Prison While Torturers Walk Free
Show: Democracy Now!
Date: 2013-01-30
URL: https://youtu.be/YeBIRH9VlBQ
Duration: 17:00

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[00:00] garcy now democracynow.org the war and peace report I'm Amy Goodman with nermeen Shaikh a retired CIA agent who blew the whistle on the agency's bush-era torture program has been sentenced to two and a half years in prison John Kiriakou becomes the first CIA official to be jailed for any reason relating to the torture program under a plea deal Kiriakou admitted to a single count of violating the intelligence identities Protection Act by revealing the identity of a covert officer to a freelance reporter who did not publish

[00:31] it under the plea deal prosecutors dropped charges brought under the Espionage Act in 2007 Kiriakou became the first CIA official to publicly confirm and detail the Bush administration's use of waterboarding when he spoke to ABC's Brian Ross at the time I felt that waterboarding was something that we needed to do and as time has passed and has September 11th has has you know has moved farther and farther back into history I think I've changed my mind and I think that

[01:02] waterboarding is probably something that we shouldn't be in the business of doing why do you say that no because we're Americans and we're better than that John Kiriakou supporters say he has been unfairly targeted in the Obama administration's crackdown on government whistleblowers in a statement urging President Obama to commute kiriakos sentence a group of signatories including attorneys and former CIA officers said quote Kiriakou is an anti torture whistleblower who spoke out against torture because he believed it violated his oath to the Constitution

[01:34] please mr. president do not allow your legacy to be one where only the whistleblower goes to jail prosecutor Neal McBride the US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia defended the government's handling of the case as the judge just said in court today's sentence should be a reminder to every individual who works for the government who comes into the possession of closely-held sensitive information regarding the national defense or the

[02:05] identity of a covert agent that it is critical to that information remain secure and not spill out into the public domain or be shared with others who don't have authorized access to it John Kiriakou joins us now from Washington DC spent 14 years at the CIA as an analyst and a case officer in 2002 we led the team that found Abu Zubaydah a high-ranking member of al-qaeda he's father of five in 2010 he published a memoir entitled

[02:36] the reluctant spy my secret life in the CIA's war on terror and we're joined by one of John kiriakos attorneys jesselyn Radack she's the director of national security and human rights at the Government Accountability Project a former ethics adviser to the United States Department of Justice we reached out to the US Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia but they declined our request for an interview John Kerry aku why are you going to jail explain the plea deal you made with the government well thanks first of all for

[03:08] having me and giving me the opportunity to to explain I'm going to prison ostensibly for violating the intelligence identities Protection Act of 1982 I believe and my supporters believe that this however was not a case about leaking this was a case about torture and I believe I'm going to prison because I blew the whistle on torture I've been a thorn in the CIA side since that interview in 2007 in which I said that waterboarding was

[03:38] torture and that it was official US government policy and I think finally the Justice Department caught up with me jesselyn Radack let me just bring you into the conversation to explain what the intelligence identities Protection Act is your client John Kiriakou it's been invoked in his case for the first time in 27 years that's correct in fact there have only been two convictions under the intelligence identities Protection Act

[04:08] which was enacted to prevent cases like Philip Agee not things like John Kiriakou it was to prevent the revealing of covert identities for profit or to aid the enemy in this case john confirmed the name of a torturer to a journalist which makes neil mcbride statement all the more hypocritical because the biggest leaker of classified information including sources and

[04:39] methods and undercover identities has been the US government john kerry aku explain what it is that you were trying to expose explain what you were involved with talk about Abu Zubaydah your involvement in the finding of him and then the course you took where your conscience took you sure in in 2002 I was the chief of counterterrorism operations for the CIA in Pakistan and my job was to try to locate al-qaeda

[05:12] fighters or al Qaeda leaders and capture them to turn them over to to the Justice Department and and have them face trial that was the original the original idea not to have them sit in Cuba for the next decade but we caught up with Zubaydah he was shot three times by Pakistani police as he was trying to escape from his safe house and and I was the first person to to have custody of him to sit with him we spoke to each

[05:44] other extensively I mean talked about everything from September 11th to poetry that he had been writing to his family and and then he was moved on to a secret prison after that once I got back to headquarters I heard that he had been subject to two harsh techniques then you've amidst eclis called enhanced interrogation techniques and I was asked one of the leaders in the CIA's counter-terrorist Center if I wanted to be trained in the use of these techniques I told him that I had a moral

[06:15] problem with them and I did not want to be involved so fast-forward to 2007 by then Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International had reported that al-qaeda prisoners had been tortured and ABC News called and said that they had information that I had tortured Abu Zubaydah I said that was absolutely untrue I was the only person who was kind to Abu Zubaydah and I had never tortured anybody so they asked me to go on their

[06:47] show and defend myself I did that and in the course of the interview I said that not only was the CIA torturing prisoners but that it was official US government policy this was not the result of some rogue CIA officer just beating up a prisoner every once in a while this was official policy that went all the way up to the President of the United States and so what happened after that in 2007 once you gave this interview can you explain what happened to you and and to your family sure within 24 hours the

[07:18] CIA filed what's called a crimes report against me with the Justice Department saying that I had revealed classified information which was the torture program and asking for an investigation with an eye toward prosecuting me the Justice Department decided at the time that I had not revealed classified information that the information was already in the public domain but immediately within weeks I was audited by the IRS I've been audited by the IRS every single year since giving that interview in 2007 but a more important bit of

[07:53] fallout from that interview was that every time I would write an op-ed every time I would give a television interview or give a speech at a university the CIA would file a crimes report against me accusing me of leaking additional classified information each time the Justice Department determined that I did not leak any classified information in fact I would get those op-eds and those speeches cleared by the CIA's publication's Review Board in a then the CIA started harassing my wife who at the time was a senior CIA officer

[08:25] particularly over an op-ed I had written they accused her of leaking classified information to me for the purpose of writing the op-ed well I said I had gotten the information in in the op-ed from two UPI reports and from a South American Ministry of Foreign Affairs website and they would back off but this this sort of became our life we would be under FBI surveillance she would be called into the CIA's office of security I would have trouble getting a security

[08:57] clearance when I went to Capitol Hill it just became this pattern of harassment so John why didn't you stop because I think that that torture is something that needs to be discussed I said this in 2007 this is something that we should about which we should it be having a national debate and frankly I have a First Amendment right to free speech and you know writing an op-ed is not against the law giving a speech about the Arab Spring or about torture is not against

[09:29] the law and I felt that that I didn't want to be cowed I didn't want to be frightened into silence by the CIA and John Kiriakou you said that in these instances that you've named you were actually charged with espionage is that right can you talk about the significance of the Espionage Act yes the government initially charged me with three counts of espionage I'm it sounds silly maybe but I'm still personally offended by these espionage charges

[09:59] which which were dropped of course the the espionage charge is is used as a hammer by the administration to force people into silence my espionage charge is related to a conversation that I had with a New York Times reporter a New York Times reporter approached me and said that he was writing a story about a colleague of mine and what I grant him an interview I gave him the interview I said this colleague was a great guy the unsung hero of the Abu Zubaydah operation terrific officer

[10:31] the reporter said do you know how I can get in touch with him and I said no I've been out of touch with him for a while but I think I might have his business card so I gave the reporter of the business card now mind you this is a CIA officer who had never ever been undercover his business card showed that he was involved as a CIA contractor and it had his personal email on it and his cell phone number I gave the reporter the business card and was charged with two counts of espionage I later gave the same business card to another journalist

[11:02] who was doing an article and was charged with a third count of espionage what is it that you allege the CIA was doing for all of these years explained the torture program that you were trying to expose sure there were there were something like ten different techniques that were used in the CIA's torture program they went from the benign you know where where an officer would grab a prisoner by the lapels and give him a shake all

[11:33] the way up to the really rough things that we've heard about like waterboarding or what I think is worse sleep deprivation or the cold cell where they'll put a prisoner naked in a Cell chilled to fifty or fifty-five degrees and then every hour to throw ice water on him I actually think those last two are worse than waterboarding but again these are techniques that we have condemned other countries for throughout history the Japanese did this during the Second

[12:05] World War the Belgians did it in in Africa earlier in the century the Chinese and the Vietnamese did it this is these are techniques that we have always said were crimes against humanity and then it was though it was though after September 11th everything changed and we somehow had license to do the same things we had been condemning I thought that was wrong you know director Petraeus former director Petraeus made a statement in October when I agreed to take a plea to make these other charges go away and he

[12:37] said that my conviction shows that we have to take our oaths seriously why took my oath seriously my oath was to the Constitution on my first day in the CIA I put my right hand up and I swore to uphold the Constitution and to me torture is unconstitutional and it's something that we should not be in the business of doing John Kiriakou I want to play for you comments President Obama made four years ago shortly before he took office about whether CIA officials

[13:07] involved in torture should be prosecuted he appeared on the ABC News this week I don't believe that anybody is above the law on the other hand I also have a belief that we need to look forward as lows as opposed to look looking backwards and part of my job is to make sure that for example at the CIA you've got extraordinarily talented people who are working very hard to keep Americans safe I don't want them to suddenly feel like they've got to spend

[13:37] all their time we're looking over their shoulders and laws no 911 Commission with independency in a pound oh well we have not made final decisions but my instinct is for us to focus on how do we make sure that moving forward we are doing the right thing that was President Obama speaking four years ago to ABC John Kiriakou your response to what the president said I supported the president's response I remember that interview and I thought okay he's right there are wonderful talented

[14:09] hard-working men and women at the CIA who need to be protected but at the same time it's one thing to look forward it's another thing to look forward just for the torturers it's just not fair it's not fair to the American people if we're going to if we're going to make prosecutions or initiate prosecutions those prosecutions can't just be against the people who who blew the whistle on the torturer who opposed to who opposed the torture you know we haven't we

[14:39] haven't even investigated the torturers as jessalyn said we haven't initiated any actions against the people who conceived of the torture implemented the policy or against the man who destroyed evidence of the torture were against the attorneys who used specious legal arguments to justify the torture if we're gonna move forward let's move forward but you can't target one person or two people who blew the whistle junkier you've also spoken about witnessing new foreign service officers

[15:11] being confirmed foreign services officers who were previously with the CIA and participated in acts of torture could you explain what happened and explain its significance yes when I was a senior investigator on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee I was approached by a journalist who said that he had evidence that the CIA was misusing its cover agreement with the State Department to place people involved in the torture program under State Department covers so that their names could not be exposed in the press

[15:41] and if those names were exposed in the press the the people giving the names would be subject to the intelligence identities Protection Act so again this was a violation of the of the CIA State Department cover agreement I sent a letter under Senator John Kerry then Senator John Kerry's signature asking the CIA for clarification I got a response about six weeks later that was classified top secret so I was not permitted to see the response I did not

[16:11] have a top secret clearance at the time and a colleague of mine told me that the letter essentially said in very strongly worded language to mind my own business we're gonna go to break and we come back we want to ask you about President Obama's nominee to become the next set of the CIA John Brennan because as you talked about the administration we're talking actually about administration's from the Bush administration to the Obama administration our guest is about to go to jail his name is John Kiriakou he's about to serve two and a half years

[16:42] in jail these this will be one of his last interviews wherefore he goes to prison will joined also by jesselyn Radack who is one of his attorneys stay with us thanks so much for watching this report from Democracy Now your daily independent global news hour we don't accept advertising or corporate funding but rather rely on donations from viewers like you please make your contribution by visiting democracynow.org we need your support today to keep bring you this hard-hitting in-depth reporting

[17:19] you
