#2392 - John Kiriakou

I took over for Mike in Athens, where security was off the charts because local militants and foreign groups operated under a quiet deal not to target Greeks, which left Americans exposed.

Your path from counter-terror work to prison centers on exposing the torture program; how long had you been with the CIA when this began?

By the time I ran counter-terror operations in Pakistan after 9/11, I had almost thirteen years in, and we captured Abu Zubaydah after a six-week hunt, which led to a surprise offer back at HQ to get certified in so-called enhanced techniques.

A mentor told me plainly it was torture and a slippery slope, so I refused on legal and moral grounds, got branded the human-rights guy, and was even passed over until a senior leader promoted me out of cycle.

Refusing training meant no interrogations, right?

Yes, which was ironic because we had no real interrogation training anyway, so I improvised with Pakistani partners while HQ rolled out a menu of methods that escalated from slaps to things like the cold cell, where people were chained, soaked, and chilled until some died.

Early on there were no safeguards, and I know of a case where a doctor revived a detainee during waterboarding only so the session could continue.

Were drugs or MKUltra-style tactics part of it?

They later tinkered with so-called truth serums and relaxants, but much of what MKUltra produced was erased, even as the agency once ran wild LSD setups in safehouses and clinics without consent.

Is this the unelected machinery outlasting presidencies?

That’s the heart of it; lifelong bureaucrats can slow-walk a president’s agenda because they know they’ll still be there when he’s gone.

When did you realize your career was in danger for refusing?

Only later, even as I read cables from the black sites where some officers said they hadn’t signed up for this, while methods like extreme sleep deprivation, chaining people to an overhead ring under bright lights and loud music, literally broke and sometimes killed detainees who were then buried without paperwork.

Did any of it work?

No; rapport-building did, like when FBI agent Ali Soufan treated Abu Zubaydah humanely and got the organization’s wiring and that Mukhtar was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, but once the CIA took control and started torturing, he shut down.

So why push torture if rapport got results?

Revenge for 9/11 and a sunk-cost deal with two contract psychologists who repackaged SERE for interrogations and took more than a hundred million dollars drove it, and I kept waiting for someone to speak up.

After I left to be near my kids, an ABC reporter poked me about allegedly torturing, and when the president publicly denied torture three times and hinted at a rogue officer, I went on air and said it was policy approved at the top; CIA filed a crimes report, the FBI first declined to prosecute, then the new team under Brennan pushed charges anyway.

That’s so dirty.

We’re so over-criminalized that if they want you, they’ll find something.

Why did Brennan come after you personally?

We’d never clicked, and he rose via George Tenet from analyst to Riyadh station chief to top ranks, while I thought he was out of his depth; he aligned early with Obama, then targeted me once in power.

At the Senate I tried to probe CIA-linked abuses, but my boss killed them, and when a Japanese diplomat pitched me for paid intel, I reported it and cooperated with the FBI repeatedly.

Later the Bureau lured me to a meeting, raided my home, and threatened espionage; they offered me forty-five years, then ratcheted down to five and then three and a half as my attorneys warned I’d never beat the Virginia jury pool.

I took a deal for two and a half years, and I’m told Brennan pushed to make my time harsher than promised.

What was prison like?

I was sent to the low-medium at Loretto with mob guys and predators, got sized up by white supremacists on day one, then an Italian crew told me to sit with them and protected me, but the stress was relentless.

I wrote a letter home about a guard’s abuse and a setup where a detainee was told to kill me, which drew national media and kept me out of solitary, and later they tried to bait me with a supposed Taliban spokesman while a camera waited in the trees, but I refused to shake his hand and he was gone in days.

It’s hard to process that, especially since torture didn’t work and no one high up was charged; are you seeking a pardon?

Yes; I’ve got support from former senior officials, journalists, and even a statement that CIA wouldn’t object, so I’m hopeful even if hope isn’t a strategy.

Does speaking out hurt your odds?

I’m told my detractors are gone, and when a CIA class flashed my face as an insider threat, the room booed and they removed it, which tells me I won and Brennan didn’t.

There are so many cases of federal setups, from bar-stool bomb plots to the Whitmer case and January Sixth, with provocateurs pushing people over the line.

The FBI has staged cases where the plot and the gear came from the informant, and whatever individual offenses occurred on January Sixth, the presence of so many federal actors and the crushing sentences don’t fit the reality on the ground.

That narrative divides us, and the media has largely failed; independent reporters are the only ones really doing the work.

The system rewards arrests and long sentences, not restraint, and without resources people get ground up by plea deals while the press runs cover.

Skeptics dismiss conspiracies, yet we still don’t have full JFK files.

We learn new pieces decades later, and I even saw CIA files on Americans when that’s supposed to be off-limits.

Obama campaigned on protecting whistleblowers, then used the Espionage Act more than all prior presidents combined.

He did, and when I tried to investigate the Dasht-i-Leili mass deaths, CIA replied with a top-secret brush-off and my boss shelved it despite a campaign promise to dig in.

What’s your read on the latest Middle East moves?

The new ceasefire makes Trump look stronger and Netanyahu weaker, and while people say Qatar a lot of ways, in Gulf Arabic it’s deep in the throat.

I could even see Trump brokering steps with Iran through Riyadh if he wants a legacy of de-escalation.

He seems to want big, positive shifts.

Despite partisan narratives, there have been openings in South Asia and now toward ending the Gaza war, and I expect more movement.

How do you see Netanyahu’s position?

He’s deeply unpopular, under indictment, and sustained by a fractured system and far-right partners, which gives him incentives to keep the war going while he delays trial.

Big picture, what worries you most abroad?

China, because they’re patient, building infrastructure and buying influence while we spread ourselves thin and then get hammered by their online manipulation.

They also stoke online arguments and use bots.

They’re excellent at covert influence and we’re weak at spotting bots, while various actors try to steer AI and social platforms toward their narratives.

I’ve been smeared by obvious bot swarms and even watched chatbots fabricate my bio and argue with corrections, which shows how easily these systems can be shaped.

We checked your bio on an AI search and it was spot on, but a popular chat system showed wrong school info; why would it invent that?

No clue, but I tried that same tool for my graduate course and it gave me a full set of scholarly links that did not exist; every citation was fabricated.

Given your history, that kind of glitch has to spike your paranoia; do you still feel hunted?

At times, yes; after prison I spotted surveillance, took down plates, and my lawyer confirmed it was the FBI, which is absurd because they could just ask me—plus their tail work was sloppy.

You’ve taken a beating, yet you served the country; I still think intelligence work matters, we just cannot let it rot from the inside.

Exactly—keep it apolitical and honest; for example, when the deputy director stepped in as acting general counsel because the office refused to do its job, that strike me as a qualified leader forcing the mission to move.

Americans only see a sliver of the real picture; the quiet wins never make headlines, while the failures do, which skews public perception.

What was it like to go from government service to being targeted, doing time, and then speaking out?

I felt abandoned at first, then a retired deputy director wrote that he wished he’d had the nerve to do what I did; that note changed everything, and my true friends at the agency stayed loyal, if discreetly.

Oddly, the Trump years widened the space for dissent; earlier administrations were far quicker to criminalize speech they disliked, while populism insists the government answers to the public.

I watched a legal tweak meant for broadcasts to Cuba morph into permission to beam propaganda at home; since then there’s been no real rollback, even after the surveillance revelations, and the outrage never came.

That should be a nonpartisan red line; do you see it getting worse?

Yes, unless we push back together, and we are too fractured to do that right now.

In Cuba I found no jamming—people just listen to baseball; legacy propaganda radio is obsolete, the real battlefield is the internet, and plenty of those bots are likely domestic too.

As AI accelerates and jobs automate, we drift toward universal income and deeper dependence; who steers that?

It is coming within about a decade, and we are not ready.

Before we wrap, any final foreign policy calls?

On Russia and Ukraine, the experts I trust say Russia is gaining; keep channels open and let diplomacy shape an end where Ukraine likely loses some land, fast-tracks into the European Union, and gets major non-NATO ally status.

Meanwhile, the human cost is horrific, with older men pulled off the street to fight and casualty numbers we cannot verify.

It is massive, particularly for Ukraine, and the war probably burns out rather than breaks cleanly.

I am more alarmed by the prospect of Israel striking Iran and by escalating settlement seizures; there was a Christian village recently emptied, and the long-stated goal of a greater Israel worries me.

And the political pull here at home?

APAC is extremely effective and well funded; I do not understand why it avoids foreign agent registration when I had to file for a tiny op-ed contract tied to Abu Dhabi.

We also see those junkets to Israel for lawmakers.

Lobbyists offered me an all-expenses trip my first week on the Senate staff and I declined, but colleagues went; that is the soft entry point before campaign support.

At my first liaison brief, we met Israeli services offsite because of past bugging attempts; the Shin Bet officer even probed me for recruitment based on my name, which they apparently try with everyone—small country, very aggressive collection.

John, thanks for doing this and for sharing all of it.

Thank you for having me; it was a real privilege.