Breaking news reached the broadcast in its closing minutes: a car bombing in New Delhi. John Kiriakou’s response is a compact example of how he handles attribution before any evidence is available.
The report
The explosion occurred outside the Red Fort, a tourist attraction in New Delhi.[1][2] Kiriakou relayed the early figures — “more than two dozen injured so far. I haven’t seen any number on deaths” — and gave his read of the event itself: “it’s clearly a terrorist attack.”[2] The pictures and video from the scene that morning, he said, were grisly.[2]
The attribution
Invited by Ted Rall to speculate, Kiriakou did — and prefaced it with the cost. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it was Kashmiri separatist groups,” he said, and immediately added: “Again, I’m going to get death threats from Pakistanis now, like I did two or three weeks ago, when I say that these groups carry out terrorist attacks.”[2]
He did not soften it. “Yeah, they carry out terrorist attacks because they’re terrorist groups.”[2]
The definition
What followed is the reasoning behind the label, stated as a rule rather than a judgement about Kashmir. “Whatever your political point is, is irrelevant,” Kiriakou said. “If you’re out there murdering civilians, you’re a terrorist.”[2]
Rall completed the definition — that terrorism is violence against civilians for political purposes — and Kiriakou confirmed it: “Political. That’s the definition of terrorism.”[3] He then restated his guess in the form of a wager: “So yeah, I would bet this is probably Kashmiris.”[3]
Note on epistemic status
Kiriakou marks this as speculation throughout — “I wouldn’t be at all surprised,” “I would bet,” “probably” — offered minutes after the event and with no claim to information. What he states without hedging is the definitional point: that the merits of a cause do not bear on whether an organisation attacking civilians is a terrorist organisation.
The segment closed the broadcast; the hosts said they would follow the story the next day.[3]