Steve Kappes is a former Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. John Kiriakou encountered him in the lobby of the Marriott hotel in Sanaa, Yemen, during his final Yemen trip as a Senate Foreign Relations Committee investigator in approximately 2010. The presence of the “package is moving” protective-detail call-out alerted Kiriakou to the presence of a senior visitor; Kappes greeted him by name on emerging from the elevator.[1][2]
Delivering the ultimatum to Gaddafi
Kiriakou says that while he was serving as executive assistant, Kappes — then CIA deputy director — flew to Tripoli and personally told Muammar Gaddafi to give up his weapons of mass destruction programs; Gaddafi complied, giving up his nuclear energy program as well as his chemical and biological weapons programs.[3]
The Feinstein condition on Panetta’s confirmation
Kiriakou describes Senator Dianne Feinstein as one of the CIA’s foremost cheerleaders on Capitol Hill, and says that when Barack Obama struggled to find a CIA director willing to take the job, she told Leon Panetta she would vote to confirm him only if he chose Kappes — one of the “godfathers” and creators of the CIA torture program — as his deputy.[4]