The man detained over CIA ‘torture’ report
Meet the former CIA agent who was imprisoned after revealing the existence of ‘advanced interrogation’.
After Tuesday’s release of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the CIA’s interrogation tactics, the Department of Justice (DOJ) decided not to re-open their investigation into the agency’s methods.
This means none of those responsible for the acts depicted in the report will face prosecution.
There is one person connected to the report though, who is currently in jail: the man who alerted the world to what the CIA was doing.
In 2007, John Kiriakou, an ex-CIA employee, revealed the existence of the programme in an interview with ABC News.
In that interview, and subsequent ones with other American news outlets, Kiriakou told the world the CIA was waterboarding detainees in order to make them talk.
The DOJ charged Kiriakou in 2012 with disclosing a covert officer’s identity and other classified information to journalists. He plead guilty to one charge in 2013 and was sentenced to 30 months in a federal prison. He had originally been looking at 30 years if found guilty.
So John Kiriakou spent Tuesday, the day the DOJ decided that the new information in the Senate report wasn’t sufficient to re-open their investigation, in his cell in Loretto, Pennsylvania, still the only man prosecuted in connection with the CIA’s treatment of detainees.
Read the Senate Intelligence Committee report here.
Read the DOJ’s press release in the John Kiriakou case.