An Interview With John Kiriakou (CIA Whistleblower On The White House Torture Program)

John Kiriakou is a former CIA officer, former senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and former counterterrorism consultant for ABC News. He was responsible for the capture in Pakistan in 2002 of Abu Zubaydah, then believed to be the third-ranking official in al-Qaeda. In 2007, Kiriakou blew the whistle on the CIA’s torture program, telling ABC News that the CIA tortured prisoners, that torture was official U.S. government policy, and that the policy had been approved by then-President George W. Bush. He became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act. In 2012, Kiriakou was honored with the Joe A. Callaway Award for Civic Courage, an award given to individuals who “advance truth and justice despite the personal risk it creates,” and by the inclusion of his portrait in artist Robert Shetterly’s series Americans Who Tell the Truth, which features notable truth-tellers throughout American history.He was later named “Peacemaker of the Year” by the Peace and Justice Center of Sonoma County, California. He won the PEN Center USA’s prestigious First Amendment Award in 2015 and is the author of The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA’s War on Terror. While also authoring other books such as "The Convenient Terrorist: Two Whistleblowers' Stories of Torture, Terror, Secret Wars, and CIA Lies" "Surveillance and Surveillance Detection: A CIA Insider's Guide" and "Doing Time Like a Spy: How the CIA Taught Me to Survive and Thrive in Prison". Kiriakou spoke about how his college professor, Jerrold Post, was actually a CIA case officer and recruited him into the agency. How Kiriakou became involved with the CIA's arab fundamentalist squad, his time at the Bin Laden Issue Station, the raid and capture of Abu Zubaydah, his whistleblowing of CIA's torture program and his subsequent arrest and release. Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA's War on Terror:https://www.amazon.com/Reluctant-Spy-Secret-Life-Terror/dp/1616086289/ref=sr_1_6?qid=1658452695&refinements=p_27%3AJohn+Kiriakou&s=books&sr=1-6&text=John+KiriakouJohn Kiriakou (Consortium News Articles):https://consortiumnews.com/tag/john-kiriakou/ This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit adamfitzgerald.substack.com/subscribe