John Kiriakou

Kiriakou in 2017
John Kiriakou
Born	John Chris Kiriakou 8/9/1964
Birthplace	Sharon, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Nationality	American
Occupation	Author, journalist, podcaster, former intelligence officer
Title	Former CIA Counterterrorism Officer
Employer	Central Intelligence Agency (1990–2004)
Known for	Disclosing the CIA's use of waterboarding
Education	George Washington University (BA, MA)
Awards	PEN Center USA First Amendment Award; Sam Adams Award; Blueprint International Whistleblowing Prize

John Chris Kiriakou (born August 9, 1964) is an American author, journalist, and former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer who, in December 2007, became the first U.S. government official to publicly confirm that the CIA had used waterboarding on detainees during the War on Terror. A career counterterrorism analyst and case officer, Kiriakou led the team in Pakistan that captured the suspected al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah in 2002. Five years later, after leaving the agency, he disclosed in a televised interview that waterboarding had been part of the CIA's interrogation program — a disclosure that drew international attention and helped frame the public debate over the agency's "enhanced interrogation" practices.

In 2012, Kiriakou was indicted by the United States Department of Justice on charges that included violations of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. He pleaded guilty to a single count of disclosing the identity of a covert officer to a journalist and was sentenced in January 2013 to 30 months in federal prison. He served roughly two years before his release in 2015. Since then, Kiriakou has worked as an author, columnist, and podcast host, and has received several awards recognizing his whistleblowing. He is the author of multiple books on the CIA, prison reform, and U.S. national-security policy.

Early life

Kiriakou was born on August 9, 1964, in Sharon, Pennsylvania, a small steel-producing city in the western part of the state. He was raised in a Greek-American family in the surrounding Mercer County area. From an early age he expressed an interest in foreign affairs and international politics, an interest he later credited with motivating his move to Washington, D.C., for university studies.

Education

Kiriakou attended George Washington University in Washington, D.C., where he studied at the Elliott School of International Affairs. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in Middle Eastern Studies and subsequently completed a Master of Arts in legislative affairs at the same institution. While a student, he was recruited into U.S. government service through a professor who had connections to the intelligence community, a recruitment path he later described in interviews and lectures. He has since returned to George Washington University as a guest speaker on subjects related to intelligence, ethics, and whistleblowing.

Career

Central Intelligence Agency (1990–2004)

Kiriakou joined the CIA in January 1990, initially as an analyst at the agency's Directorate of Intelligence. He later transferred to the Directorate of Operations, where he was trained as a case officer. His specialization throughout his career was the Middle East and counterterrorism, with assignments that included service overseas and in Washington, D.C.

Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, Kiriakou was sent to Pakistan, where he became the chief of counterterrorist operations. In that role he led a team responsible for tracking suspected al-Qaeda figures who had fled to Pakistan from neighboring Afghanistan. In March 2002, Kiriakou's team participated in the operation that captured Abu Zubaydah in Faisalabad, Pakistan. Abu Zubaydah was, at the time, characterized by U.S. officials as a senior al-Qaeda operative; that characterization was later disputed by other former intelligence officials and by the U.S. Senate's review of the CIA detention program.

Kiriakou left the agency's overseas service in 2002 and resigned from the CIA in 2004. According to his later public statements, he was offered a role in the agency's interrogation program but declined to participate.

Private sector and Senate work

After leaving the CIA, Kiriakou worked in the private sector, including a period of consulting work in business intelligence. He was associated with Deloitte's intelligence-related practice during this time, in which former intelligence officers were employed in advisory roles for corporate clients.

In 2009, Kiriakou returned to government service as a senior investigator for the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, then chaired by Senator John Kerry. His work included issues related to intelligence oversight, counterterrorism, and U.S. policy toward the Middle East and South Asia.

ABC News interview and disclosure of waterboarding (2007)

In December 2007, Kiriakou gave an interview to ABC News reporter Brian Ross in which he publicly confirmed that the CIA had used waterboarding as an interrogation technique. He stated that Abu Zubaydah had been subjected to waterboarding, and characterized the practice as torture. The interview marked the first time that a U.S. government official, current or former, had openly acknowledged the use of waterboarding by the CIA.

In the interview, Kiriakou described waterboarding as effective in producing information, a characterization he later revised. He subsequently said that he had not been a direct participant in Abu Zubaydah's interrogation and that he had relied on information provided to him by colleagues; he later concluded that the technique had not in fact produced reliable intelligence, and that his earlier statements had been mistaken.

The ABC interview had substantial consequences for U.S. public debate on interrogation policy. It was cited by journalists and members of Congress as the moment that the existence of waterboarding by the CIA, which had been previously reported only through anonymous sources, was placed on the public record by a named official. The interview also drew the attention of federal investigators, who later examined Kiriakou's contacts with reporters during this period.

Indictment and prosecution (2012–2013)

On January 23, 2012, the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced that Kiriakou had been charged in connection with alleged disclosures of classified information to journalists. The original complaint included counts under the Espionage Act and the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, with prosecutors alleging that Kiriakou had provided the name of a covert CIA officer to a journalist, as well as information about another officer's role in the agency's rendition, detention, and interrogation program.

Kiriakou initially pleaded not guilty and disputed the government's account. He and his supporters characterized the prosecution as retaliation for his 2007 disclosure of waterboarding, while the Department of Justice maintained that the case was a straightforward enforcement action against unauthorized disclosure of classified information. The case proceeded in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

In October 2012, Kiriakou pleaded guilty to a single count of disclosing the identity of a covert agent under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. The remaining counts were dropped as part of the plea agreement. On January 25, 2013, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema sentenced him to 30 months in federal prison, the sentence that had been stipulated in the plea deal. Kiriakou became the first CIA officer to be convicted of passing classified information to a reporter, although the conviction did not pertain directly to his disclosures about waterboarding.

Imprisonment (2013–2015)

Kiriakou began serving his sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Loretto, Pennsylvania, in February 2013. During his imprisonment he wrote a series of "Letters from Loretto" describing prison conditions, which were published online and later collected in book form. In July 2013, he published an open letter to Edward Snowden in which he urged the former National Security Agency contractor not to return to the United States, citing his own prosecution as evidence that whistleblowers would not receive fair treatment in U.S. courts.

He was released to home confinement in February 2015, completing the custodial portion of his sentence. In a series of post-release interviews, he described both the personal cost of his prosecution — including the loss of his federal pension and severe financial strain on his family — and his continued belief that the public disclosure of the waterboarding program had been justified.

Post-prison commentary and writing

After his release, Kiriakou worked as a columnist, author, and broadcaster. He wrote frequently on questions of intelligence oversight, prison reform, and U.S. foreign policy. In a March 2018 op-ed published in The Washington Post, he criticized the nomination of Gina Haspel as CIA director, citing her role in the agency's interrogation program, and described his own experience of going to prison in connection with the disclosure of those practices.

In 2015, Kiriakou was among 28 former U.S. intelligence officers who signed a public statement contesting CIA claims that the Bush-era interrogation program had produced useful intelligence. The statement, drafted in response to the agency's continued defense of the program after the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee's torture report, argued that the techniques had not been necessary to obtain information from detainees.

Kiriakou later hosted podcasts and online programming, including work associated with Russian state-owned media outlet Sputnik, before launching independent podcast projects. In 2025 and 2026 he made appearances on a range of high-profile podcasts and interview programs, including programs hosted by Tucker Carlson and Mehdi Hasan, where he discussed topics ranging from U.S.–Iran tensions and intelligence tradecraft to his proposal to abolish the CIA in its current form. Edited clips from these appearances circulated widely on social media platforms in 2026.

He is the author of seven books on intelligence and related subjects, including The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA's War on Terror.

Personal life

Kiriakou is of Greek-American descent. He has spoken publicly about the financial and family consequences of his prosecution and imprisonment, including the loss of his federal pension and the strain on his marriage during his time in federal custody. He has five children. After his release, Kiriakou resided in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area and continued to work as a writer and commentator on national-security issues.

Recognition

Kiriakou has received several awards from press-freedom and civil-liberties organizations recognizing his disclosure of the CIA's waterboarding program and the personal cost of his prosecution.

In 2015, PEN Center USA announced that Kiriakou and the investigative news organization ProPublica would jointly receive its First Amendment Award, presented for contributions to the protection of free expression. The award was reported by The Washington Post at the time of the announcement.

He has also received the Sam Adams Award, which is presented annually by a group of retired U.S. intelligence officers known as the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence to figures whom the group considers to have shown integrity in the field of intelligence. Kiriakou's case has additionally been the subject of documentary film work, including the film Silenced, which examined the prosecutions of national-security whistleblowers under U.S. administrations of the 2000s and 2010s.

Beyond formal awards, Kiriakou has been the subject of extensive media coverage and commentary, including a March 2026 retrospective in The Quinnipiac Chronicle that characterized his disclosure as a turning point in the public understanding of post-9/11 interrogation policy, and an April 2026 profile in The GW Hatchet tracing his path from a George Washington University student to a federal prisoner and, later, a social-media commentator.

Legacy

Kiriakou's December 2007 disclosure that the CIA had used waterboarding marked a pivotal moment in the public history of the post-9/11 interrogation program. Prior to his ABC News interview, the existence of the program had been the subject of journalistic reporting based on anonymous sources, but no government official had publicly acknowledged the use of waterboarding by name. His statement helped to shift the debate from whether the technique had been used to whether it was lawful, effective, or moral.

His subsequent prosecution became one of a series of cases brought against current and former U.S. government employees under President Barack Obama's administration on charges related to the disclosure of classified information. Civil-liberties groups, press-freedom organizations, and several former intelligence officials argued that the prosecutions reflected an aggressive interpretation of the Espionage Act and related statutes; the Department of Justice maintained that the cases were straightforward enforcement of laws protecting classified information. Kiriakou's case was frequently cited in subsequent debates over the treatment of national-security whistleblowers, including the cases of Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden.

Kiriakou's writings from prison, his post-release advocacy on prison reform, and his continued commentary on intelligence policy have contributed to public discussion of the institutional culture of the CIA and the structure of intelligence oversight in the United States. His arguments that the agency requires fundamental restructuring — including, in some of his later public statements, that it be abolished in its current form — have become a recurring feature of his media appearances. The dissemination of his interviews on large-audience podcasts in the mid-2020s introduced his account of CIA practices to audiences well beyond the national-security press, contributing to his profile as a public figure on intelligence-related questions.