The exchange came after Kiriakou had described what he saw as the collapse of a national self-image. He has said he takes seriously Ronald Reagan’s description of the United States as a shining city on a hill and a beacon of hope because of its respect for human rights and civil liberties — and that the torture programme showed the description to be false.[1]
The reciprocity argument
His host put the consequence to him: what made her sad was that the programme gave every other government in the world the right to do the same thing to Americans. Kiriakou agreed — “exactly” — and then supplied the specific case.[2]
“It’s not an accident,” he said, that even ISIS, when it kidnapped an American — and the group did kidnap American journalists — would make them wear orange jumpsuits before beheading them. The reason, in his account, is that the United States made its prisoners wear orange jumpsuits.[2]
He extended the point to the photographs that had already circulated worldwide: the images of prisoners naked, and of prisoners being frightened with dogs. These, he said, do not meet the standards the nation has professed for so long.[2][3]
Why the argument matters to him
The claim is a precise one, and it is not a claim about deterrence or about intelligence yield. Kiriakou’s usual objections to the torture programme are that it was illegal under the Federal Torture Act and the Convention Against Torture, that it produced nothing, and that it killed prisoners. The orange jumpsuit argument is different in kind: it concerns iconography, and what an adversary can borrow.
On Kiriakou’s reading, the costume was chosen because it would be recognised. The image was already available, already associated with American custody, and could therefore be turned around at no cost — which is what he means when he says the programme gave other governments a right they had not previously had.