# The woman escorted from the White House > **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou. > > Cite as: "The woman escorted from the White House," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-woman-escorted-from-the-white-house/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia. *Before John Kiriakou spoke to ABC News, someone else had already blown the whistle on the CIA's secret prisons, a woman at the White House whom he respected deeply, who was escorted out of the building, stripped of her badge and told never to come back, and who has always insisted it was not her.* - **The disclosure:** The CIA's secret prisons - **What happened:** Escorted from the building, badge taken, told never to return - **Her position since:** Adamant that it was not her - **Kiriakou's verdict:** "Whoever it was, they're an American hero" - **Told to:** Whistleblower of the Week, 5 May 2026 Kiriakou's account of why he eventually spoke turns on a period of waiting. Having declined the enhanced interrogation training and having read the cable traffic coming back from the secret site, he kept waiting for somebody to go public and say that this was happening.[1] ## Someone did Somebody did, but on a different subject, and at a cost. Indeed, he says, someone blew the whistle on the secret prisons that the CIA had set up.[1] The person who paid for it was a woman at the White House whom Kiriakou says he respected deeply. She was escorted out of the building. Her badge was taken. She was told never to come back.[1] ## The unresolved part The detail Kiriakou dwells on is that the punishment may have landed on the wrong person. To this day, he says, she adamantly maintains that it was not her.[1] He does not attempt to settle it, and does not name her. His verdict is deliberately indifferent to the identification: *"whoever it was, they're an American hero."* And he adds that we will never know who it was.[1][2] ## Where it sits in his story The episode marks the end of Kiriakou's expectation that someone else would act. In the same passage he moves directly from the woman's removal to December 2007 and Brian Ross's telephone call, which set in motion his own decision to give the interview.[2] It also stands as an illustration of a claim he makes often about the machinery he later faced: that a leak investigation does not need to identify the leaker in order to produce a consequence, and that the consequence, once produced, is not reviewable by anyone. The woman he describes lost her position and her access without a charge, a hearing, or, on her own account, having done the thing. ## See also - [CIA Torture Program Whistleblowing](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia-torture-program-whistleblowing) - [Brian Ross](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/brian-ross) - [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) - [Curtailment cables](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/curtailment-cables) ## Sources 1. John Kiriakou - CIA Whistleblower Exposed Torture Program and Paid the Price (2026-05-05), at 20:21. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aud3bfdf93c4&t=1221s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-05-05-whistleblower-of-the-week-john-kiriakou-cia-whistleblower-exposed-tortu/ 2. John Kiriakou - CIA Whistleblower Exposed Torture Program and Paid the Price (2026-05-05), at 20:52. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aud3bfdf93c4&t=1252s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-05-05-whistleblower-of-the-week-john-kiriakou-cia-whistleblower-exposed-tortu/ --- From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-woman-escorted-from-the-white-house/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt