The contrition requirement is the procedural obstacle John Kiriakou identifies in his own repeated failure to obtain a pardon, and the one he says he will not remove.
The rule
Kiriakou states it as a formal condition of the application rather than an informal expectation. “this is one of the things when you apply for a pardon, you have to show proof that you showed contrition. And I’m not contrite.”[1]
He then supplies the question and his answer to it: “Are you sorry for the crime you committed? No, I’m not. I would do it again.”[1]
The cost he sets against it
The refusal is not offered as costless. Kiriakou opens the same passage with an inventory of losses — “My wife and I split up. I lost my pension. I lost my security clearance. I lost my job” — and closes it with the same conclusion: “I would do the whole doggone thing over again … Because it was the right thing to do. And torture is outlawed in this country now. And I’m proud to have played a role in that.”[1]
The reasoning he attaches is about the passage of time rather than vindication in the moment: “You come to some issues where you know that you’re right and they’re wrong. And eventually everybody else is going to see that.”[1]
The one period of doubt
Asked whether he ever regretted doing the principled thing, Kiriakou dated the doubt precisely to the plea negotiations — “when the Justice Department offered me 45 years in prison and told me that was the best deal I was going to get” — and to the night he intended not to survive, an episode recorded at whistleblowers and suicide.[2]
What he says settled the question was not comfort but arithmetic about who else would act: “the more I thought about it, the more I thought, ‘No, somebody had to do it. We’re led by a cabal of criminals. And somebody had to say something.’”[3]