Craig Murray
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Craig Murray is the former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan whom John Kiriakou cites as a witness to extreme torture and as an example of the CIA training other services in it. During a meeting at the Uzbek intelligence service, Murray heard a man screaming and, against his hosts' admonitions, walked into a room where a man was being "boiled in oil," his skin coming off his body "like removing a glove." In a separate telling, Kiriakou says a CIA station chief was present, standing there and watching the boiling happen. When he reported it, Murray was told to take down the cable and be promoted to Ambassador to Denmark, or go to the press and face arrest; he went to the press, and his career was ruined, but Kiriakou calls him "a champion of human rights" and, elsewhere, "a global human rights hero." Kiriakou says the CIA used Uzbekistan as a place to send prisoners specifically because it lacked a free press or American journalists who might report on the abuses there. Kiriakou also recalls attending a whistleblower-conference panel with Murray at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, describing him there as "the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan who's a renowned human rights whistleblower."

The lunch in London

Kiriakou's fullest account of the offer came from Murray directly, a fortnight before he retold it in 2019. Murray had reported the torture by the Uzbek service and the CIA in a cable classified top secret, and what enraged the foreign minister was that he had put it in writing at all; Murray was recalled to London for consultations. His best friend from the Foreign Service, by then the director of human resources for the entire British Foreign Service, and a friend of thirty years, took him to lunch and told him they were talking about him in the halls, then offered him the embassy in Denmark if he withdrew the report. Murray asked what the alternative was. The alternative, his friend said, was to hire a criminal defence attorney. Murray quit.

Kiriakou tells it as a story about himself as much as about Murray, and refuses the word usually offered: it is not bravery, it is stubbornness, a refusal to quit, and the recognition that where the choice is that clear there is no choice at all. The tellings differ on how it ended: in the 2019 version Murray resigns after the lunch, while in the later telling the alternative to withdrawing the cable is going to the press and facing arrest.

The DNC thumb-drive courier (Reason2Resist)

John Kiriakou says Craig Murray came to the United States in 2016 ostensibly to present him with an award, but that this was a cover trip. Murray was actually here on behalf of WikiLeaks to meet the DNC leaker and take possession of the thumb drive, which he flew back to Iceland and gave to WikiLeaks, direct evidence, Kiriakou argues, that the DNC emails were an in-person leak, not a Russian hack.

Kiriakou has been making the claim since at least February 2017, when he described Murray as the conduit to WikiLeaks: there was no Russian hack, the documents came from a whistleblower inside the DNC who handed them to Murray, and Murray gave them to WikiLeaks. Murray would not say who it was, and Kiriakou said he had no idea why the mainstream media had ignored the account entirely. By 2025 the account has a location attached: the emails were not exfiltrated by email but carried on a thumb drive by a disgruntled DNC staffer to a park near American University in Washington, and handed to Murray there.

Since then

Kiriakou describes Murray as a good friend and cites his treatment as the British case matching those he documents in the United States: problem after problem entering and leaving his own country, for what Kiriakou summarises as the unmitigated gall of standing up for Julian Assange. He raises it alongside George Galloway's detention for more than five hours at Gatwick.

See also

- Cold cell
- CIA Torture Program Whistleblowing
- Julian Assange
- Russiagate
