John Kiriakou

John Chris Kiriakou kiriˈɑːkuː keereeAHkoo born August 9 1964 is an American former Central Intelligence Agency CIA officer author and whistleblower who in 2007 exposed the CIAs use of torture during the war on terror He was an intelligence analyst and operations officer for the CIAs Counterterrorism Center and a senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Kiriakou joined the CIA in 1990 as an analyst He became the chief of counterterrorist operations in Pakistan following the September 11 terrorist attacks and led the capture of Abu Zubaydah who was then believed to be a highranking AlQaeda member Kiriakou left the CIA in 2002 joining the private sector thereafter In 2009 he rejoined government service as a US Senate investigator under John Kerry In December 2007 Kiriakou became the first US government official to openly confirm that waterboarding was used to torture prisoners at CIA black sites during interrogations In 2012 he was indicted for exposing the CIAs enhanced interrogation program and was later convicted for having passed classified information to a reporter receiving a sentence of 30 months in prison After his twoyear imprisonment ended in 2015 Kiriakou received multiple awards recognizing his whistleblowing including the PEN First Amendment Award and the Sam Adams Award He was later hired by Russian stateowned Sputnik to host a podcast before starting his own podcast shows In 2026 edited clips of Kiriakou on podcasts such as The Joe Rogan Experience and The Diary of a CEO became viral on multiple social media platforms He is an author of seven books and is an activist on issues of intelligence whistleblowing prison reform civil liberties covert foreign policy and the national security state in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks Description above from the Wikipedia article John Kiriakou licensed under CCBYSA full list of contributors on Wikipedia