Mark Warner is the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a former governor of Virginia.[1][2] He is Kiriakou’s own senator, and has chaired or co-chaired the intelligence committee at points across the period in which Kiriakou has been seeking a pardon.[3][4]
”Hanging from a tree”
The clearest account of the hostility Kiriakou reports comes through a third party. Jim Moran, then a congressman from northern Virginia, had given a couple of speeches on the floor of the House calling for Kiriakou’s release from prison and for a pardon — neither of which came in any timely fashion — and the two men stayed in touch long afterwards.[5][4]
Kiriakou put a proposal to him: “What if we go to Senator Warner? Senator Warner at the time from Virginia was the chairman of the intelligence committee. We ask Warner to ask Obama to pardon me.” Moran’s answer, as Kiriakou relates it, was: “I have been in the room when Warner has said that you should be hanging from a tree.” Warner, Moran told him, was not going to help.[4][6]
Kiriakou does not treat this as personal so much as representative: “that was the view of the Democratic Party.”[6] He follows it immediately with a second closed door — being warned off approaching John Podesta, who attends his church, on the advice that “Podesta’s no friend of yours.”[6]
The Haspel confirmation
Kiriakou’s principal substantive charge against Warner concerns the confirmation of Gina Haspel as CIA director. Having argued that it was far past time for a woman to run the agency but that this was the wrong woman — “this one is a war criminal, this one has committed crimes against humanity” — he holds the Democrats jointly responsible for the outcome. Donald Trump put her in office, “but the Democrats are just as responsible,” because at the very last minute five prominent Democrats switched sides and voted yes.[7][8][3]
Among them, he says, was “my own senator” — a name he first gets wrong and then corrects mid-sentence to Mark Warner, “who is the highest ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee.”[3]
Warner as the argument against oversight
Asked in 2026 how the culture of the CIA might be fixed, Kiriakou answered that the only way is true robust congressional oversight, which the United States has not had since 1982. Asked in turn whether that is realistic given the incentives of legislators who must be re-elected every two years, he answered by naming names: “Mark Warner, Tom Cotton — come on. These guys… What a joke. It’s all a big joke.”[9][10][11]
It is the preamble to the story he tells next, of the senator on the intelligence committee who greeted him warmly at the Greek ambassador’s residence after his release and, pressed on why he had offered no support, said it had taken everything he had not to lose his own security clearance.[12]
The Assange negotiation rumour
Warner’s name also attaches to an account of the collapsed 2017 negotiations between the Justice Department and Julian Assange over Vault 7, in which Assange’s lawyer is said to have approached the senator, who alerted the FBI, ending the talks.
Kiriakou declines to endorse it. Asked directly, he answered that he had only ever seen it as a rumour, as the questioner had, “and who knows — it’s entirely plausible.”[13] His reason for finding it plausible is procedural rather than evidential: negotiations are a normal part of all of this. He recounts recommending attorneys to Edward Snowden, who engaged them immediately and had them open talks with the Justice Department, offering to do time if he could say in open court why he had done what he did — an offer the department refused, at which point those negotiations also fell apart. His own lawyers, he adds, spent hundreds of hours negotiating with the department, and he would expect Assange’s attorneys to try the same if they were worth their salt.[13][14]
The assessment
Set against all of this, Kiriakou’s formal grading of Warner is unreservedly favourable, and he states the conflict before giving it: “Mark Warner I’m told does not like me at all and doesn’t think I should be pardoned. I’m going to put that aside. I’ve never met the man. We’ve never exchanged a harsh word. But I’m told he doesn’t like me, and that’s fine.”[2]
The judgement itself — “very very smart… a terrific manager… an accomplished leader, not just in government, but in private industry” — places Warner at the top of the rankings as a prospective director rather than a case officer: “I think he would actually be quite an excellent CIA director.”[2][15] The honesty finding rests on longevity: “we know that because he’s been in public life for decades and he’s honest.”[15]