CIA Whistleblower EXPOSES US Security State | John Kiriakou

## The moral calculus that produced a whistleblower The conversation with John Kiriakou centers on a wrenching moral choice: when the instruments of state security abandon legal and ethical constraints, what obligation does a participant have to speak out? Kiriakou’s account moves beyond a simple act of conscience; it is an argument about the genealogy of that conscience. He describes a transformation from patriotic conformity to principled dissent driven not by abstract idealism but by the lived experience of colleagues who valued retribution over the rule of law. That trajectory — from believing that national strength is grounded in constitutional fidelity to confronting a domestic security apparatus that treats secrecy as self-justification — frames the larger claim of the discussion: secrecy-enabled power can corrode the very democracy it purports to defend, and exposing that corrosion is, in Kiriakou’s terms, an act of civic duty rather than treason. Kiriakou’s narrative rejects facile heroism; he refuses the martyr label while insisting on the necessity of his disclosures. But the refusal works rhetorically to sharpen his point: these choices are not for glory, they are to preserve the norms that make governance legitimate. When the machinery of counterterrorism normalized practices — extraordinary rendition, widespread torture, and the bureaucratic collateral of secrecy — that violated habeas corpus and treaty obligations, the decision to reveal was an attempt to pull state power back under legal scrutiny. The conversation treats his revelations as the start of a public accounting that was never fully permitted, and the cost he paid becomes an indictment of institutional priorities. ## Secrecy, sanctioned leaks, and the paradox of information control One striking theme from the exchange is the asymmetry of secrecy: the government both hoards and selectively dispenses information. Kiriakou and the discussant unpack a paradox that should trouble anyone interested in democratic accountability. The national security apparatus routinely leaks to shape narratives, testing policy reception or intimidating political actors, while simultaneously weaponizing classification against those who reveal inconvenient facts. The legal architecture — especially the broad and antiquated Espionage Act — functions as a blunt instrument to deter whistleblowing even as sanctioned leaks flood the same news cycles. The normalization of anonymous sourcing — “according to senior officials,” “intelligence sources say” — is revealed as a deliberate technique to manage public perception. Such leaks are not spontaneous blowouts but are often routed and approved through channels precisely because they serve institutional aims. The government’s information regime thereby creates a two-tiered transparency model: official narratives circulate freely, while first-hand disclosures by insiders are criminalized. The conversation underscores how this dynamic twists accountability: the public can be informed, but only on terms set by those who hold power. ## Prosecution as message: the Kiriakou case in context Kiriakou’s prosecution illuminates how legal processes can become instruments of political discipline. He explains that the Obama administration, despite its campaign rhetoric about rule-of-law rectitude, chose to prosecute sources who revealed wrongdoing rather than prioritize accountability for those who perpetrated it. His case exemplifies the legal sleight-of-hand that converted exposure of abuses into a prosecutable offense under statutes never designed to address whistleblowing. Where his initial revelations could not be framed as espionage because they documented criminal conduct, prosecutors pursued more esoteric charges related to intelligence identities — statutes that carry severe penalties and offer flexibility for political use. The exchange points to an unsettling pattern: enforcement decisions reflect institutional interests as much as legal merits. High-profile examples of prosecutorial restraint — when compared with aggressive actions against lower-profile whistleblowers — reveal selective appetite for accountability. Kiriakou’s experience, including post-sentencing apologies from agents and later regret among some investigators, suggests that the machinery of prosecution can be deployed even when the moral grounds are shaky. The lesson is stark: legal instruments can be repurposed to insulate the security state from embarrassment and to deter future disclosures, thereby chilling internal dissent and public debate. ## The security state’s leverage over politics and policy Another powerful thread running through the conversation is the security state’s institutional muscle: it shapes congressional behavior through a combination of fear, expertise, and budgetary incentives. Kiriakou recounts simple tactics — invoking the specter of 9/11, presenting vivid operational briefings, and leveraging classified budgets — that effectively foreclose robust oversight. The result is predictable: lawmakers risk being branded reckless if they oppose expansions of surveillance or funding for covert operations. That dynamic helps explain why policies like mass collection under Section 702 or persistent drone campaigns survive bipartisan support, even when costly in civil liberties terms. The security apparatus also cultivates a revolving door of influence, embedding former officials in media and consulting roles. This normalizes certain framings of security threats and elevates voices predisposed to defend institutional prerogatives. In the conversation, the observation that ex-intelligence chiefs are now mainstream media fixtures is not mere cultural commentary; it is a structural note about how expertise is monetized and how narratives are reinforced. The cumulative effect: an ecosystem in which fear, institutional knowledge, and financial incentives align to limit disruptive reform. ## Realignment: politics, public opinion, and the changing base of support The discussion grapples with an important political reversal: the old alignment that saw the left skeptical of national-security excesses and the right deferential to them has frayed. Kiriakou and his interlocutor argue that a new mapping of loyalties has emerged, with elements of the left increasingly allied to the security establishment and elements of the right rediscovering civil-liberties skepticism. For whistleblowers and defenders of civil liberties, this realignment presents both obstacles and opportunities. When institutions that once were criticized become institutional allies of progressive causes on other issues, the politics of reform complicates. This shift is not purely ideological; it flows in part from electoral considerations and the changing constituencies of parties. Trade unions and working-class voters have migrated in ways that reorder party priorities, and national-security policy has become a domain where branding and loyalty matter profoundly. The conversation captures a visceral reaction to what Kiriakou calls a shameful embrace of figures associated with grave abuses. The result is a policy environment where calls for restraint in surveillance or interrogation are increasingly stranded between partisan reinvention and institutional inertia. ## Whistleblowers, democracy, and the path forward What emerges most forcefully from the discussion is a challenge: how can democratic societies reconcile the need for effective intelligence with the imperative of accountability? The conversation offers no simple technical fixes, but it does supply an ethical roadmap. First, there must be legal protection and cultural space for insiders to raise alarms without fear of draconian reprisal. Current statutes and prosecutorial practices, as illustrated by Kiriakou’s case, function more to manage embarrassment than to protect secrets in the service of public safety. Reforming those laws — narrowing t

CIA Whistleblower EXPOSES US Security State | John Kiriakou John Kiriakou was a counterterrorism intelligence officer who worked at the CIA for 14 years. In 2007, he became the first US official to reveal the global and unconstitutional extraordinary rendition and torture program. He was ultimately prosecuted and jailed by the Obama administration for his crime of revealing his government’s crimes. John Kiriakou joins independent journalist Harrison Berger to discuss his torture disclosures, his prosecution, the nefarious role of the US security state in domestic politics, whether or not Trump will take on the Deep State, and much more. Follow John Kiriakou here: https://unifyd.tv/pages/johnkiriakou Follow Harry Berger here: https://harrisonberger. locals.com/ #M2 John Kiriakou is an American hero. He took great risks when he made his disclosures in 2007 in service of his country and the rule of law. But rather than being rewarded for his bravery, he was punished for it. You can find all of his excellent work on Unity TV, including his popular series Whistleblowers and CIA Declassified. And he is my guest today. John, thank you so much for being here. It's a real privilege to speak to you. #M3 Thank you, Harry. I'm not a hero, though, but thank you for those very kind words. #M2 So, I mean, to me and to many people, you are. But we'll move past that. So, I was born in 2001, which was... #M3 Wow. Right. Which is like the day before yesterday in my mind. #M2 Yeah. But it was a very important year, and I think things radically changed that year. There was a sense afterward, after 9/11, of course, of this kind of righteous rage that consumed the United -- 1 of 15 -- States for many years afterward, throughout the entire time that I was growing up. And it enabled all sorts of expansions of power that were implemented in secret at first by the Bush administration and then later by the Obama administration, which expanded on those powers. And it was behind this wall of secrecy that all sorts of abuses occurred: the destruction of due process and habeas corpus through this extraordinary rendition program and torture program, which you exposed, the creation of this mass surveillance state, and then ultimately the creation of this drone program to extrajudicially assassinate people, thanks to the Obama administration. And I just want to ask you about your disclosures, what you saw at the time, and what caused you to come forward. You really risked everything to confront this permanent power faction in Washington. So, why did you do that? #M3 There's no single easy answer. I want to give you just a little bit of background. I'm the kind of guy— I've always been the kind of guy who, for example, when I go to the post office to buy stamps, I tell them nothing patriotic. I'm tired of the flag stamps and the July 4th firework stamps. Give me something with a flower on it or something, right? Because I feel like patriotism is forced down our throats. We express patriotism here unlike any other country in the world. And I've been all over the world. Nobody does it like we do. Nobody has giant flags at car dealerships or plays the national anthem at every sporting event. Countries just don't do that. Not to say I'm not patriotic. I just don't appreciate it being forced down my throat. After 9/11, I actually went to Walmart and bought flag stickers to put in the windows of my car. And even my dad said, "Wow, even you with the flag stickers." I said, "I know, right? I'm changing my mind." With that said, my patriotism is based on the rule of law. It's based on the Constitution. And I naively believed in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 that everybody's patriotism was based on the Constitution, right? That's what makes our country so great, is we have this incredible Constitution. I realized by halfway through 2002 into 2003 that I was just wrong. That it wasn't about a love and respect for the Constitution. The CIA, the people at the CIA with whom I was working or for whom I was working, were more interested in revenge than they were in upholding the rule of law. And that's when I first started to turn at the agency. There were things taking place that, in my view, were so patently illegal, besides being immoral and unethical, that I didn't think there were any circumstances in which they should be taking place. And so I got to the point where, yeah, I've said this in interviews before, but I was passed over for promotion just one month after leading the capture of Abu Zubaydah. And I went into my boss's office. He was a friend of mine. And I said, "What do I need to do to get promoted around here? Do I need to catch bin Laden? Is that the only way to get promoted around here?" And then he told me, "Look, you know, you turned down the enhanced interrogation techniques training. And the chief of counterterrorism, Jose Rodriguez, said in my promotion panel -- 2 of 15 -- that I displayed"—his words—"a shocking lack of commitment to counterterrorism because I wouldn't torture anybody." I ended up getting promoted anyway, but I should have never been denied because carrying out a torture program should not be a prerequisite for career advancement. Later on, a friend of mine—a friend in like four or five different ways. We were working in counterterrorism together. We go to the same church. We're in the same men's group. He's both a brigadier general in the army and a psychiatrist. He said to me, "You know, they call you the human rights guy behind your back." And I said, "Yeah, I know." And he said, "You know, that's not a compliment, right?" And I said, "Oh, it is to me. It's a compliment. I'd rather they call me the human rights guy than the torturer or the monster or bloody John Kiriakou or whatever." So, you know, I realized then—that was in like the summer, the late summer of 2002—I was going in a different way compared to most of my colleagues. #M2 I just have a question about your prosecution and your punishment for what you did. So you were prosecuted for your disclosures by the Obama administration, which, despite having promised to hold accountable the torturers and the power abusers in the Bush administration, really immediately immunized them. He said, "We're going to look forward and not back." Right? #M2 To be very odd, given that no group of people leaks to the press more than the U.S. security state. And that was actually one of the revelations in the 2014 torture report, where CIA officials were seen bragging about whenever you see senior officials say in a New York Times or Washington Post report, it means it's coming from the CIA's Office of Public Affairs. Can you just discuss that aspect of your prosecution? #M3 Oh, sure. You know, most people don't ask me about that, but I think this is a very important issue. Washington runs on leaks. Most of those leaks come from, as you correctly pointed out, the White House, the Pentagon, and the CIA. Anytime you see "according to national security officials," "senior officials," "White House officials," or "intelligence community sources," those are leaks that have been approved up the chain of command. They're not legal. Because remember, the simple definition, the legal definition of espionage, is providing national defense information to any person not entitled to receive it. Well, if the information hasn't been properly declassified, that is a violation of the Espionage Act. But it's authorized because it's in support of the policy or it's been leaked in order to gauge public opinion. Very common. And when I say very common, I mean literally every single day. The Obama administration was particularly bad in this respect for a couple of reasons. First, they promised to not -- 3 of 15 -- just be better than the Bush administration, but to reverse a lot of those damaging policies that we saw under the Bush administration. They didn't. They just continued the policies of the Bush administration. And in many cases, like drones, they made it worse. Now here, I'm going to get on my soapbox, but I can't help myself. The Espionage Act was written in 1917 to combat German saboteurs in the early years of the First World War. Between 1917 and 2009, Barack Obama's inauguration, three Americans were charged with espionage for speaking to the press. Just under Obama, there were nine of us, three times the number of all previous presidents combined. Nine of us were prosecuted under the Espionage Act for speaking with the press. Now, in some cases, espionage is punishable by death. So it's not like they're just slapping us down to get us to stop talking. The minimum that you can get under the Espionage Act is five years. The common punishment is 15 years. So this is a very serious, very heavy felony. Now, I was charged with espionage for giving an interview to ABC News and a follow-up interview to the New York Times in which I said that the CIA was torturing its prisoners, that torture was official U.S. government policy, and that the policy had been personally approved by But it is a felony to classify a crime. And this is why I wasn't initially charged, because the FBI determined that the torture program was a crime. And so my revelations of the torture program could not constitute a crime because I was exposing a crime. So what the Obama administration did is they secretly reopened the case against me, tapped my phones, collected my emails going back years, put teams of FBI surveillance on me, and came up with something else. They came up with an obscure violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1981. I'm only the second American ever charged with this crime. Now, this is one of those crimes that they just can kind of hold in abeyance. And if they want to use it as a weapon against somebody, as a cudgel, they can. So, the reason I was charged with this crime is because an author sent me an email and said he's writing a book about the Abu Omar rendition. This was an Egyptian cleric in Milan that the CIA kidnapped and sent back to Egypt to be tortured. I said, I don't know anything about Abu Omar other than what I've read in the Washington Post. He said, well, can you introduce me to any of these 12 people? I said, I don't know any of these people. Then he sends me a second email and he says, can you introduce me to any of these 12 people? And I said, look, kidnapping wasn't my thing at the CIA. I didn't work with the kidnapping people. I don't know who these people are. I said, you obviously know this information, this story far better than I do. Then he says, what about the guy that you mentioned on page 145 or whatever of your first book? And he said, I think his name is John. And I said, oh, you mean John Doe. I don't know whatever happened to him. He probably retired and he's living in Virginia somewhere. But I said the last name, the surname. So I technically violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1981. Now, this reporter or author never made that name public. So there was never any danger to this officer. But the Justice Department got me. Now, at the same time, within months, the CIA director, David Petraeus, leaked the names of 10 covert operatives to his adulterous girlfriend. You're a -- 4 of 15 -- #M2 Yeah, I was just going to say he had this black book. #M3 Yeah, he showed her the black book. You can't show anybody the black book. And then, at the same time, there was a disgruntled former CIA officer in Bethesda, Maryland, who exposed the names of seven covert operatives on his anti-CIA website. The Justice Department didn't charge either one of them. They charged me. So it was a political case from the very beginning. And since then, in the immediate aftermath, right after I'd gone to prison, I was sentenced to 30 months. I did 23. But two FBI agents wrote to my attorneys and apologized. And then, just three weeks ago, I got an email from an FBI agent saying that he was sorry for his role in m