How I became a CIA whistleblower | John Kiriakou | TEDxFoggyBottom

so I want to start by saying that I would like to talk to you about ethics and intelligence operations or even the lack of ethics and intelligence operations. I was very lucky to have spent 15 years at the CIA and the second half of my career. I was in very tough but fun counterterrorism operations, the most fun I've ever had in my life I went to 65 countries, I really felt like I was making an impact for that, for the United States, 9/11 changed everything, it

became

deadly serious 9/11 and, frankly, a lot less fun, but like everyone else in the building on 9/11, I repeatedly volunteered to go to Afghanistan to fight or do whatever was required of me and was eventually sent to Pakistan as a boss. of CIA counterterrorism operations there, about six weeks after my death.

When we arrived, we received news from CIA headquarters that Abu Zubaydah was somewhere in Pakistan and we had to catch him. We thought at that time that Abu Zubaydah was number three in Al Qaeda. He was a very big fish. Well, Pakistan is the size of Texas. he has almost 200 million people, so saying that he is somewhere in Pakistan, go get him, is totally useless. I came up with a couple of really bad ideas that didn't come to anything, it was a waste of time and I finally told CIA headquarters. I needed a target analyst. A target analyst is someone who analyzes large amounts of data and is able to identify the location of a target, so a target analyst came, worked another two weeks, and finally told me that he simply couldn't identify Abu Zubaydah. location to less than 14 sites, we had never gotten to more than two sites in a previous night, so I asked headquarters to send a large team and we ended up flying three dozen people half CIA half FBI we paired them with military officers Pakistanis and on the night of March 22, 2002 we broke down the doors of 14 safe houses in silence.

I can't tell you how many people we caught that night, but I can tell you it was many dozens of Al Qaeda fighters who were shot three times while trying. To escape, a Pakistani police officer shot him in the thigh, in the groin, in the stomach and we rushed him to a hospital in Faisalabad to try to save him, but word had spread in the Al Qaeda community that we had caught him. him and the Al Qaeda fighters. I started passing by the hospital and opened fire on the hospital. I told my Pakistani colleague that if they realize we are unarmed, we are dead.

Can you get a helicopter here? 20 minutes later a helicopter landed, we loaded it into the helicopter we flew to. At a Pakistani military base he was unconscious for another 24 hours, but my instructions, which came directly from CIA Director George Tenet, were under 24/7 surveillance. The CIA was watching me 24/7. I wasn't supposed to leave his bed, so I tore a sheet and tied him up. to bed because I was afraid, frankly, that he would fall asleep and he would run away. He really wasn't in a position to escape. He was tied up like this and had an oxygen mask on and he finally woke up after 24 hours and gestured to me. so that I came closer to his bed and I moved his oxygen mask and I told him in Arabic what is your name show us MEC and he shook his head and I repeated it show us MEC and he told me in English I will not speak to you in the language of God I said it is well Abu Zubaydah we know who you are he said please brother kill me take the pillow and kill me and I said no one will kill you we have been looking for you for a long time I told you You will receive the best medical care that the American government can give you but I will give you some advice.

I am the nicest guy you will meet in this experience. My colleagues are not as friendly as me. So if there's one thing you should do it's cooperate and he said you seem like a good man but you're the enemy and I'll never cooperate. I told him do what you want. Another 24 hours later, a private jet flew in three. The FBI agents and I got on the plane, we tied his stretcher to the luggage rack in the back and I whispered remember you have to cooperate and the plane took off. I never saw him again two months later he was back at CIA headquarters.

He was in the cafeteria having lunch and a senior officer at the counterterrorism center approached me and said, "Hey, I'm glad I ran into you." Do you want to obtain certification in the use of enhanced interrogation techniques? I had never heard that term before and then. I asked him what he meant and he explained to me what those ten different techniques were and I said man, that sounds like a torture program, are you crazy? And he said, well, it's not torture because the White House approved it. I told him no. Interested, what's wrong with them? I said it's illegal, it's immoral, it's unethical, don't count me out, I'm sorry to tell you that of the 14 people they approached, I was the only one who said no and that's a very sad thing when you think about it, that It was in May 2002, August 1, 2002, Abu Zubaydah was tortured.

Waterboarding was supposed to be the ultimate punishment as part of this torture program. In fact, the CIA started waterboarding and he was waterboarded. times and never provided any actionable intelligence that saved American lives, waterboarding was a complete failure, well, I left the CIA two years later and kept my mouth shut. I kept it closed until December 2007 and finally decided because President Bush kept saying it over and over again. Once again, no torture, no torture, no torture. I knew it was a lie, so I went to ABC News and said three things. I said the CIA is torturing its prisoners.

I said that torture is official US government policy. It was not the result of a rogue as the president had been saying and finally I said that the torture program had been personally approved by the president himself, as you can imagine, the FBI began to investigate me about five seconds later, it investigated me for a year starting in December of 2007 until December 2008 and in December 2008 they determined that I had not committed any crime. What I did not know was that three weeks later when Barack Obama took office the CIA asked him to secretly reopen the case against me and so on for the next For three years I had no idea that my emails were being intercepted, my phone calls were being intercepted and that there were three different FBI surveillance teams following me all the time and in January 2012 I was finally charged with five felonies, including three espionage charges.

Espionage is a death penalty case and I had not committed espionage. You know, talking to ABC News from the New York Times is not espionage, especially when you're exposing a crime, but I was charged with these crimes and I was facing 45 years in prison. Long story short, it becomes an economic decision. He had five children at home. I had a 1.1 million dollar legal bill and the government came back and said take 30 months and it all went like I said it's an economic decision so I took the 30 months and went to prison when I got home, the Senate torture report had been released proving that everything I said was true and then, in the summer of 2015, when Congress passed the McCain Fine Stein amendment formally and permanently banning torture, Senator John McCain said my revelations were the inspiration for that law, so 23 months in prison was worth it because torture is finally illegal in this country.

That's a thank you. I never thought about it because we already had the Federal Torture Law of 1946 and we had the United Nations Convention against Torture, which was ratified by the Senate and has the force of law, and I asked rhetorically why in 1946 we executed Japanese soldiers who had subdued American prisoners of war by waterboarding. in 1946 in January 1968 The Washington Post published a front-page photograph of an American soldier waterboarding a North Vietnamese prisoner. The day that photo was released, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara ordered an investigation. That soldier was arrested. He was accused of torture. I was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in a military prison, so why was torture illegal in 1946 and illegal in 1968, but somehow magically legal in 2002?

The law never changed, we changed, so what can we do to make sure this doesn't happen again? I can stand here and tell you that we need to write and blog and speak and protest and blah, blah, blah, no, that works, it makes us feel better, but it doesn't work, what we have to do is two things that we have to write to our elected officials. make sure they do what we tell them to do and if they don't, we will throw them out of office and we have to be firm about that. The second thing, the second thing is that I am a realist.

I know the CIA isn't. If it leaves, it won't break up and scatter in the wind like John Kennedy wanted to do, it's here to stay, so what happens? Young people like you join the CIA, change it from within once you've been there for ten years. You will be surprised because you will be in a position of authority and you can change it and then it will stay changed, so thanks for listening to me, good luck.