John Kiriakou

Bipartisanship! Whistleblowers go to jail, torturers live comfortably in retirement

Kiriakou is expected to plead guilty to violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA) for “outing” a torturer. “Outing” is quotes because the charge is not that Kiriakou’s actions resulted in a public disclosure of the name, but that through a Kevin Bacon-style chain of causation, GITMO torture victims learned the name of one of their possible torturers. Regardless, how does outing a torturer hurt the national security of the U.S.? It’s like arguing that outing a Nazi guarding a concentration camp would hurt the national security of Germany…..

The only person to be criminal[ly] prosecuted, and now likely jailed, as a result of the Bush-era torture regime is John Kiriakou, who refused to participate in torture, helped expose the program, and said on national television that torture was wrong.

Jesselyn Radack

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