How CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou Went to Prison for Exposing the Post-9/11 Torture Program

The Joe Rogan Experience.

And um, I get a call from this Japanese diplomat, and he invites me to lunch. I said, great. We meet at a place on Capitol Hill, and um, I, I remember that lunch very well.

I remember we talked about Israeli elections, we talked about Turkish elections, and we talked about the Arab-Israeli peace process. And at the end of the lunch, he says to me, and I should add, his English was so bad that we had to do the lunch in Arabic.

So, he said, what's next for you? And I said, well, I think I'm going to resign soon. I promised Senator Kerry I'd give him two years. It's been two and a half.

I have five kids, and I really need to make some money and put my kids through college. And he goes, no, don't do that.

If you give me information, I can give you money.

And I said, what the fuck is wrong with you?

You have any idea how many times I've made that pitch?

Shame on you, cold pitching me like that.

And I got up indignantly, and I walked out.

And I walked, I mean, directly without stopping, to the office of the Senate Security Officer.

And I, I knocked on the door, and I went in, I said, hey, I was just pitched by a foreign intelligence officer.

And he goes, was that that damn Russian again?

And I said, no, it was Japanese.

He goes, Japanese?

I said, I know, right?

He goes, well, no, sometimes they poke around looking for trade information.

I said, this didn't have anything to do with trade information.

I don't think.

I don't know.

We didn't even get that far.

He said, okay, do me a favor, he said, I've got a standalone computer here that's not connected to the internet.

Write it up as a memo, and I'm going to courier it over to the FBI.

So I sat there and I wrote the whole thing, blow by blow.

The next day he calls me, and he says, two FBI agents are going to come up and talk to you.

And I said, okay.

So they come up, I recount the whole, the whole lunch.

And they said, all right, here's what we want you to do. We want you to call him back.

Invite him to lunch, and then try to get him to tell you exactly what information he wants.

And how much he's willing to pay for it.

And I said, because I'm a patriot.

I said, you want me to wear a wire?

And they said, no, we're going to be at the next table.

We're, we're going to listen to everything.

I said, but he only speaks Arabic.

That's okay, we got a guy who speaks Arabic.

Don't worry.

I said, all right.

So I call him, I invite him to lunch.

We go to lunch, do the whole thing.

But before the lunch, right before the lunch, they called me and said, operation came up.

Just write us another, another memo.

Do the lunch and write us another memo.

I said, fine.

So I wrote another memo, they asked me to do it a third time, a fourth time, and a fifth time.

The fifth time, he says to me, I have great news.

He said, I got my dream job. I've been promoted and I'm going to be the Deputy Ambassador in Cairo.

And I said, congratulations, I shook his hand, never saw him again.

So, I've written all this to the FBI.

One day in January of 2012, so I've been out of the Senate for about nine months.

The FBI calls.

And I look at my cell phone, it says, Federal Bureau of Investigation.

I was like, I wonder what that's all about.

So I answer, and they said, hey, you remember that thing you helped us out with a year ago?

And I said, yeah.

And they said, we've got a similar situation and we need your help.

And again, because I'm a patriot.

I said, anything for the FBI.

I kick myself now for saying it.

I said, anything for the FBI.

What do you want me to do?

They said, come down to the Washington Field Office Thursday morning at 10.

I said, done.

I go down there the next Thursday.

And uh, they're waiting for me at the entrance, which I thought was odd.

And we go up to a conference room and they said, we're both cleared SITK, Gamma.

And then there were two compartments above top secret that I was cleared for that they said they were cleared for.

And so if the, if the conversation necessitated it, we could go into that area.

So, they said, well, before, before we start, just wanted to ask you.

Just read your book, it was great, I loved it.

Hey, what about this that you said in your book?

And I was like, yeah, okay.

Yeah.

It was a cool story.

What about this other thing?

Yeah.

I had fun.

I said, it was kind of hard, you know, it took me nine months to write the book.

22 months to get it cleared.

Oh, yeah, you got it cleared.

Yeah, of course I got it cleared.

22 months it took me to get it cleared.

I'm thinking, what an odd question.

Then they start asking me about something called the Sam Adams Project.

And I said, I'm sorry, I don't know what that means.

And then the bad cop of the two says, we know you've been giving information to the Guantanamo defense attorneys.

I said, what are you talking about?

And then I said, wait a minute.

Are you investigating me?

And they said, yeah, and we're raiding your house right now as we speak.

And I said, thank God.

I said, I want to speak to my attorney right now.

That was the only reason that they didn't arrest me.

And one of the things that I learned, and this became painfully evident when they started arresting January 6 people.

Was the FBI in Washington likes to make its arrests on Thursdays.

Because there are no federal arraignments on Friday.

So you're in the DC jail Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday night.

Getting the shit beat out of you.

And then they arraign you on Monday.

And then you want to make a deal just so you don't ever have to go inside that prison again.

But because I asked to see my attorney, they let me go.

So I called the attorney as soon as I, I got out of the office.

Actually, when I was walking out, one of them went over to, I didn't know it at the time.

But it was Peter Strock.

And Peter Strock says, tell me he implicated himself.

And the guy said, not really, no.

We have to let him go.

And so I grabbed my cell phone and I left.

Went to the attorney's office.

They had already called my attorney and said they were charging me with espionage.

I hadn't committed espionage.

They knew I hadn't committed espionage.

And in fact, since then, I'm fast forwarding a lot.

Three FBI agents have reached out to me, well, two to my attorneys, one reached out to me directly to apologize.

Saying that this came from the top, they thought it was a BS case.

They were sorry they were involved.

But there was nothing they could do.

One guy reached out to me through eBay.

Of all things.

Like to try to cover up the, uh, the trail.

He's like, listen, I've, I've been losing sleep over this for the.

Excuse me.

For the last 13 years, I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am.

Blah, blah, blah.

I was like, well, I hope you feel better.

My whole life fell apart.

But I'm glad you got that off your chest.

So, um, it became a matter of, of just survival.

After that, you know, you have to take it seriously.

I was facing 45 years in prison.

And then when the Justice Department, um, made a, a request for a proffer meeting.

The proffer meeting is, they'll give you a little idea of what they have against you.

And then they make an offer.

You can take it or leave it.

And they offered me 45 years.

And I said, I'm not doing 45 minutes.

I didn't do anything wrong.

And this woman, she became Deputy Attorney General for the Criminal Division under Biden.

She said, take this deal, Mr. Kiriakou, and you may live to meet your grandchildren.

Oh my God.

Oh, it was.

I went home that night and.

I'm, I'm ashamed to even say it.

That night we, we put the kids to bed.

And my wife and I were watching TV.

And she said, come on, let's go to bed.

I said, I can't sleep.

I, there's no way I'm going to be able to sleep.

And she said, no, come on, let's go to bed.

She knew.

I was going to go down into the garage, turn the car on and just lay across the back seat.

And she said, now, come on.

You need to try to get some sleep.

She saved me that night.

But 45 years.

And so, they waited 10 months before they were even willing to engage in a conversation.

And then they offered 10 years.

On a Monday, on Wednesday they offered eight.

And on Friday they offered five.

My lead attorney was this legendary guy named Plato Kacheris.

And Plato said, you know, I've been a criminal defense attorney in this city.

For 52 years.

And this is the first time I've ever seen them come down in time.

He said, usually they offer you 10, you say no.

The next offer is 15.

Then the next offer is 20.

I said, why are they coming down in time?

He said, because they have a shit case and they know it's shit.

And that's why we're going to go to trial and we're going to win this thing.

I said, great.

Well.

They, they, they stayed at five.

And then they came back and they said, three and a half.

And I said, I'm going to trial.

I'm going to win this thing.

Turned out at the time, my best friend, his wife had an uncle who was O.J. Simpson's jury consultant.

And she called him for me and she said, hey, my friend John, he's in this situation.

He's like, yeah, I read about this in the papers.

He could use your help.

He came up, didn't charge me a cent.

He came up to Washington, we got him a security clearance.

And uh, which was another thing.

We asked for a security clearance and then, uh, the, uh, the Justice Department called and said.

The White House said Kiriakou's attorneys have enough security clearances.

And I said, who at the White House said we have enough security clearances?

Well, they had to tell us.

That it was John Brennan.

No more attorneys for Kiriakou.

Fisher cut bait.

Well, like, it's not up to John Brennan to decide if I have enough attorneys.

They have an unlimited number of attorneys, an unlimited budget.

As it turned out, they spent $6 million to put me in prison.

Was society really better off spending $6 million to put me in a low security prison?

For, for 23 months?

So, in the end they said, best and final offer.

30 months, you do 23.

Well, I was only the second American who had ever been charged with this crime of, um.

Violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982.

Uh, the only other person that was charged with it was a woman named Sharon Scranage.

She was a CIA secretary in Ghana in the 80s.

And she was having an affair with a member of Ghana's intelligence service, and in the course of pillow talk.

She revealed the names of all of the CIA officers in the station.

And the names of the sources they were running.

And so the Ghanaians executed these guys.

Oh my God.

She got nine months in prison.

Nine months.

And they offer me 45 years.

Phew.

For blowing the whistle on the torture program.

So, my wife and I stayed up all night.

Literally all night, and because Sharon Scranage had taken a plea.

There was literally no case law.

So what we found, we found several things, um, we found several articles from the Harvard Law Review saying.

This law is unconstitutional.

It violates the First Amendment.

And it is prior restraint.

Right, like it tells you in advance you can't say X, Y, and Z.

But because there was no case law, you can't, you couldn't challenge it in court.

And I said, well, can't we just appeal, appeal the charge?

And maybe, you know, all the way up to the Supreme Court.

And they said, yeah, we can do that post conviction.

And then you're going to be 45 years waiting and hoping that the Supreme Court does the right thing.

We can't do that.

So, um, so I decided by 6:00 a.m.

I'm going to turn it down.

I believed in my heart I hadn't done anything right.

This was political, it was a vendetta by John Brennan.

And Obama, by all accounts, I had friends, of course, who were still working at the agency and working at the, uh, at the White House.

And they said that Obama had this Nixonian obsession with national security leaks.

And it's because that came from Brennan.

Obama was a senator for two years.

He didn't have any experience doing anything.

So he did what John Brennan told him to do.

And Brennan said, you got to crack down on these leaks.

They do nothing but embarrass us.

So, um, I decided I'm going to turn it down.

6:00 a.m. I send an email to my attorneys.

I had 11 attorneys.

I was paying half of them.

Five of them.

And um, and then one of them writes back and says, put on a pot of coffee.

We'll be at the house by seven.

So they come to my house.

The, the four main ones came to the house.

Plato was the first one in.

Now imagine this, like 80-year-old, 6'2", 280-pound mean old man.

He comes in and I said, good morning, Plato.

And he said, you stupid son of a bitch.

Take the deal.

Like that.

I said, take the deal.

You're the one that told me not to take the deal.

You're the one who told me we're going to go to trial and win this thing.

And he says, I only told you that to keep your spirits up.

Oh God.

And then the second one, his partner, Bob Trout, a sweet, a gentleman.

A Southern gentleman.

He says, if you were my own brother, I would beg you to take this deal.

And I'm like, what?

Now what do I do?

And then the third, who was the guy, Mark McDougal.

One, one of the best attorneys I've ever encountered in my life.

And, and the one that I liked and respected the most out of all of them.

I liked all of them and respected all of them.

But, but I felt a connection to this guy.

He pulls me aside, he was a little bit angry.

And he said, you know what your problem is?

Your problem is you think this is about justice, and it's not about justice.

It's about mitigating damage.

Take the deal.

And I looked at my wife.

She's just like, what are we going to do?

So I took the deal.

And I got two and a half years in prison, and they made me do every single day of it.