John's Bio CASE FILE

John Kiriakou is a former CIA analyst and counterterrorism operations officer, former senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and former counterterrorism consultant for ABC News. Immediately after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Kiriakou became the CIA’s chief of counterterrorism operations in Pakistan. In that capacity, he led a CIA team in a series of raids resulting in the capture of Abu Zubaydah, who was then considered al-Qaeda’s third-ranking official.

Following Abu Zubaydah’s capture, Kiriakou refused to be trained in the CIA’s so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques,” describing them as a “torture program.” He then became Executive Assistant to the CIA’s Deputy Director for Operations, where he served as the Director of Central Intelligence’s principal Iraq briefer. Kiriakou left the CIA in March 2004. He later served as a senior investigator on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and as senior intelligence advisor to Committee Chairman Senator John Kerry. Throughout his career, Kiriakou received 12 CIA Exceptional Performance Awards, the CIA’s Sustained Superior Performance Award, the Counterterrorism Service Medal, and the State Department’s Meritorious Honor Award.

In 2007, Kiriakou appeared on ABC News in an interview with Brian Ross, during which he became the first former CIA officer to confirm that the CIA waterboarded detainees and he labeled waterboarding “torture.” His interview revealed that this practice was not the result of a few rogue agents, but was official U.S. policy approved personally by the President. The Justice Department began investigating Kiriakou immediately after his media appearance. Five years later, the government finally succeeded in piecing together enough information to prosecute him criminally. He became the sixth whistleblower indicted under the Espionage Act, a law designed to punish spies, not whistleblowers.

Eventually, to avoid a trial that could have resulted in separation from his wife and five children for up to 45 years, he opted to plead guilty to one count of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act in exchange for a 30-month sentence. Kiriakou is the only CIA officer to go to prison in connection with the U.S. torture program, despite the fact that he never tortured anyone. Rather, he blew the whistle on this horrific wrongdoing. Even more troubling is that CIA officers who actually engaged in torture after 9/11 have never been prosecuted, nor have the officials who condoned or ordered torture, the attorneys who wrote memos justifying it, or the CIA official who destroyed evidence of it.

Kiriakou reported to federal prison in Loretto, Pennsylvania on February 28, 2013 to begin serving his sentence, where he continued to speak out in a series of “Letters from Loretto”—providing a stunning portrait of prison life. He was released from prison in February 2015.

Kiriakou is widely regarded as one of the country’s foremost national security whistleblowers. He bravely served his country and blew the whistle on torture. In 2012, he received the Joe A. Callaway Award for Civic Courage, recognizing individuals who advance truth and justice despite personal risk. Two days before sentencing, he was also honored by inclusion in artist Robert Shetterly’s series “Americans Who Tell the Truth.” That portrait is now part of Philadelphia’s Museum of Peace. Additional portraits—one by Ai Weiwei and another by Andres Serrano—are held by the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and London’s Tate Museum of Contemporary Art.

In November 2013, the Peace and Justice Center of Sonoma County honored Kiriakou as its “Peacemaker of the Year.” He received the PEN First Amendment Award in 2015 for his writing from prison. In 2016, his former intelligence and law enforcement colleagues presented him with the Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence. Later that year, he also received the Blueprint International Whistleblowing Prize for Bravery and Integrity in the Public Interest.

As Chief Operations Officer at Ivy Cyber, Kiriakou applies his intelligence and whistleblowing experience to the defense of privacy and digital freedom. Kiriakou works alongside Yale cybersecurity expert Sean O’Brien to deliver innovative education and technology that strengthen public understanding of surveillance, privacy, and data protection. He helped launch the Surveillance Defense Course, a program that merges intelligence tradecraft with hands-on cyber defense, empowering professionals, journalists, and activists to recognize and counter both physical and digital threats.

Kiriakou writes columns for Consortium News and Covert Action Magazine. His first book, The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA’s War on Terror, reached #5 on the New York Times Bestsellers List. His second, Doing Time Like a Spy: How the CIA Taught Me to Survive and Thrive in Prison (May 2017), was a finalist for Foreword Reviews Memoir of the Year. His third, The Convenient Terrorist: Abu Zubaydah and the Weird Wonderland of America’s Secret Wars, was published in July 2017.

He has also authored a series of CIA Insider’s Guides for Skyhorse Publishing, including The CIA Insider’s Guide to the Iran Crisis; The CIA Insider’s Guide to Surveillance and Surveillance Detection; The CIA Insider’s Guide to Lying and Lie Detection; and The CIA Insider’s Guide to Disappearing and Living Off the Grid. His forthcoming book, Remains of the Day: The Ultimate Guide to Washington, D.C.’s Historic Cemeteries, will be published in 2025.