Former CIA officer John Kiriakou has been sentenced to more than two years prison by a federal US judge who rejected arguments that he was acting as a whistleblower on the agency’s use of torture when he leaked a covert officer’s name to a reporter.
The 48-year-old pleaded guilty in October to identifying an undercover operative who was involved in the use of severe interrogation techniques, including waterboarding.
His lawyers and civil rights advocates portrayed the former counterterrorism officer as a whistleblower who helped expose torture in secret prisons. The CIA and its defenders denied using torture, which is illegal, referring to enhanced interrogation techniques.
The US District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema said that Kiriakou had damaged the CIA. She called the sentence, the result of a plea arrangement with prosecutors, ”way too light”. Before issuing the sentence, the judge asked Kiriakou if he had anything to say. When he declined, she said: ”Perhaps you have already spoken too much.”
Kiriakou helped lead the CIA team that captured Abu Zubaydah, believed to be a senior al-Qaeda member, in Pakistan in 2002. Kiriakou said in interviews that Abu Zubaydah and other detainees were waterboarded.
