Lawrence Wilkerson is the retired U.S. Army colonel who served as chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell. In John Kiriakou’s account he was also Powell’s best friend: the two came up through the military together and served alongside each other for years before Powell reached the State Department.[1] Kiriakou describes him as a friend of his own circle and as a man for whom he has “incredible respect.”[1][2]
On the Iraq case
Kiriakou recounts interviewing Wilkerson on his program, where Wilkerson confirmed that the Iraq WMD case Powell presented at the UN was knowingly “sold” to the public. Kiriakou says the confirmation nearly knocked him off his chair: “I was lucky I was sitting on the chair otherwise I almost fell off.”[3]
Wilkerson is also Kiriakou’s source for what Powell thought of himself. Powell had risen from lieutenant colonel to four-star general in four years under Ronald Reagan — faster, Kiriakou observes, than George Washington was promoted. In their private moments, Kiriakou says, Wilkerson “will tell you” that Powell admitted he was in over his head, that he should not have been promoted so quickly, and that he was weak in the weapons-of-mass-destruction debate; Powell told Wilkerson at the time, and wrote in his memoirs years later, that he should have resigned and had ruined his reputation by going along with what Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld wanted him to say.[4][5]
The count of 108
Wilkerson is the authority Kiriakou defers to on how many detainees died in American custody. Asked how many prisoners were killed under torture, Kiriakou distinguishes the CIA deaths he knows of — the two he briefed in 2002, plus the three at Guantánamo documented by the former guard Joe Hickman — from the far larger military figure, and says he has always believed the true number is higher than five, having wondered whether prisoners were killed off the books at sites like the salt pit and simply never reported.[6][2] On the total, his position is deference: “If Larry Wilkerson, who I have incredible respect for, is saying that the number was as high as that … I’m gonna believe Larry Wilkerson” — a figure of 108 dead in military custody, later confirmed by the Associated Press at exactly the same number.[2][7][8]
Among the military whistleblowers
Kiriakou places Wilkerson in a lineage rather than treating him as a single source. Asked why so many of the most consequential whistleblowers in American history have come from the military, he lists Wilkerson alongside Daniel Ellsberg and Tony Russo, Ron Ridenhour, Chelsea Manning, Joe Darby, Matthew Hoh and Danny Davis — and attributes the pattern to the oath: in the military, unlike most civilian life, you must swear to uphold and defend the Constitution, and those who swear it take it seriously.[9][10]