36 Facts About John Kiriakou

John Chris Kiriakou is an American whistleblower, author, journalist, former intelligence officer and convicted felon.

John Kiriakou was jailed for exposing the interrogation techniques of the Central Intelligence Agency.

John Kiriakou was an intelligence analyst and operations officer for the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and a consultant for ABC News.

John Kiriakou was the first US government official to confirm in December 2007 that waterboarding was used to interrogate al-Qaeda prisoners, which he described as torture.

In 2012, John Kiriakou became the only CIA officer to be convicted for exposing the CIA's enhanced interrogation program, having passed classified information to a reporter.

John Kiriakou pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 30 months in prison.

John Kiriakou was born on August 9,1964, the son of elementary school educators in Sharon, Pennsylvania, and raised in nearby New Castle, Pennsylvania.

John Kiriakou graduated from New Castle High School in 1982 and attended George Washington University in Washington, DC, where he earned a bachelor's degree in Middle Eastern Studies and a master's degree in Legislative Affairs.

John Kiriakou was recruited into the CIA by a graduate school professor who had been a senior CIA official.

John Kiriakou spent the first eight years of his career as a Middle East analyst specializing on Iraq.

John Kiriakou learned Arabic and, from 1994 to 1996, was assigned to the American Embassy in Manama, Bahrain, as an economic officer.

John Kiriakou returned to Washington, DC to work on Iraq until 1998, when he transferred to the CIA's Directorate of Operations.

John Kiriakou became a counter-terrorism operations officer and worked in Athens, Greece, where the CIA targeted 17N and other leftist Greek terrorist groups, as well as secular Palestinian revolutionaries.

In Greece, John Kiriakou recruited foreign agents to spy for the United States, and was nearly assassinated by leftists.

John Kiriakou led a raid on the night of March 28,2002, in Faisalabad, Pakistan, capturing Abu Zubaydah, then thought to be al-Qaeda's third-ranking official.

John Kiriakou left the CIA in 2004 to take up a consulting job.

From September 2008 until March 2009, John Kiriakou was a terrorism consultant for ABC News.

John Kiriakou speaks often at colleges and universities around the country about the CIA, terrorism, torture, and ethics in intelligence operations.

On December 10,2007, John Kiriakou gave an interview to ABC News in which he described his participation in the capture of Abu Zubaydah, who was accused of having been an aide to Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

John Kiriakou said that he did not witness Zubaydah's interrogation, but had been told by CIA associates that it had taken only a single brief instance of waterboarding to extract answers:.

John Kiriakou was able to withstand the waterboarding for quite some time.

John Kiriakou has said that he chose not to blow the whistle on torture through internal channels because he believed he "wouldn't have gotten anywhere" because his superiors and the congressional intelligence committees were already aware of it.

On January 23,2012, John Kiriakou was charged with disclosing classified information to journalists, including the name of a covert CIA officer and information revealing the role of another CIA employee, Deuce Martinez, in classified activities.

John Kiriakou faced up to 45 years in prison and millions of dollars in legal fees for these charges.

John Kiriakou initially pleaded not guilty to all charges and was released on bail.

On October 22,2012, John Kiriakou agreed to plead guilty to one count of passing classified information to the media thereby violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act; his plea deal spared journalists from testifying in a trial.

On January 25,2013, John Kiriakou was sentenced to 30 months in prison, making him the second CIA employee to be jailed for revealing classified material of CIA undercover identities in violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.

In January 2013, Bruce Riedel, a former CIA analyst and intelligence adviser to Barack Obama, sent the President a letter signed by eighteen other CIA veterans urging that John Kiriakou's sentence be commuted.

John Kiriakou received a prison "send off" party at an exclusive Washington, DC, hotel hosted by political peace activists dressed in orange jumpsuits and mock prison costumes.

On February 28,2013, John Kiriakou began serving his term at the low-security Federal Correctional Institution, Loretto in Loretto, Pennsylvania.

In summer 2013, John Kiriakou wrote an open "Letter From Loretto" to Edward Snowden, published by the blog Firedoglake, expressing his support and giving advice; urging him to not, "under any circumstances, cooperate with the FBI".

On February 3,2015, John Kiriakou was released from prison to serve three months of house arrest at his home in Arlington, Virginia.

In July 2018, John Kiriakou signed a $50,000 agreement with Karen Giorno, a former campaign advisor to Donald Trump, as payment for lobbying for a pardon, with the promise of an additional $50,000 as a bonus if it was granted.

John Kiriakou said that he discussed his quest for a pardon with Rudy Giuliani, in 2020.

John Kiriakou is a founding member of the organization Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.

In January 2022, John Kiriakou commented to Declassified UK about their allegations that the National Endowment for Democracy, a non-profit corporation funded by the United States Congress, had funnelled millions of dollars into British independent media groups since 2016.