John Kiriakou: The CIA Whistleblower on Torture

He led a dangerous nighttime raid in Pakistan that captured a top al-Qaeda suspect, then became the first CIA officer ever imprisoned over a classified leak, related to the very interrogation programs he had helped facilitate. This episode traces the contradictory life of John Kiriakou.We follow him from a Rust Belt childhood and a classroom recruitment into the CIA, through his shift from analyst to field officer, to his public confirmation of waterboarding, his prosecution, and his later reinvention as an activist and viral media personality.Being scouted by a professor secretly working as a CIA psychiatristLeading the 2002 raid that captured Abu ZubaydahHis 2007 ABC News interview confirming the CIA's use of waterboardingThe email trail that led to charges under the Intelligence Identities Protection ActHis 30-month sentence and later resurgence on major podcasts and social media