John Kiriakou is a former CIA analyst and counter-terrorism case officer.
For the record, it is a form of torture in which water is poured over a cloth covering the face and breathing passages of an immobilised captive, causing the person to experience the sensation of drowning.
The Americans, in particular the CIA, perfected the practice, subjecting terror suspects to prolonged torture for what they would describe as “enhanced interrogation techniques”.
There were ten of them – different torture methods they employed in places like Guantanamo Bay.
All the while denying to the world that the CIA had a torture programme.
“Stripping people of their humanity, they would strip men naked and have them interrogated by women, and by the way children were not exempt,” he said.
John Kiriakou is a former CIA analyst and counter-terrorism case officer, former senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and former counter-terrorism consultant.
Immediately after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Kiriakou became the CIA’s chief of counter-terrorism 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.
He had a front-row seat in the theatre of war against al-Qaeda. He was at the top of the CIA tree, and he thought he knew everything about the organisation and the government he worked for – but he didn’t.
Following Abu Zubaydah’s capture, Kiriakou was introduced to the “enhanced interrogation techniques”.
“I couldn’t believe it, we were routinely torturing people, I was astonished because it was so counter-productive, could the greatest minds in counter-intelligence not see that all we were doing is creating a bigger and angrier enemy?” he told the Sunday World this week.
In 2007, he 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 labelled waterboarding “torture”.
Kiriakou’s interview revealed that this practice was not the result of a few rogue agents, but was official US policy approved personally by the President.
From a glittering career, he found himself cast as a traitor and facing a 45-year prison term after being indicted by President Obama.
“I was lost, I had to examine what I did, and I was and still am comfortable with it, but I lost many, many friends, some regarded me as a traitor.
“I don’t mind saying there were dark times when I just wanted to end it all.
“I remember one night a few days before I went to prison, I was with my wife we were watching TV, well I wasn’t, my wife said she was going to bed.
“I said I was going to watch some more TV, but what I was going to do was go to the garage, get in the car and switch on the engine and stay there until it was over. She saw that in me and told me to take ownership of my actions and embrace them. Not for her I wouldn’t be talking to you today.”
Taliban prisoners in orange jumpsuits sitingt in holding area under the watchful eyes of military police at Camp X-Ray at Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba
A former Director General of the CIA messaged him to say “you’ve chosen a difficult path, I wish I had your courage”. His old boss tweeted him to say when in prison “don’t drop the soap”.
Eventually, in order 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 sole CIA officer to go to prison in connection with the US torture programme, despite the fact that he never tortured anyone. Rather, he blew the whistle on this horrific wrongdoing.
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 the torture or the CIA official who destroyed evidence of the torture.
“When I was in Pakistan we had so much success against al-Qaeda that the prisons were full, we had nowhere else to put them. It was 2002 in Rawalpindi and we had captured so many people.
“It was decided to put them on a C12 (cargo plane) and fly them to Cuba (Guantanamo) with a view to shipping them to the States to stand trial.
“I was fully supportive, these suspects would stand trial in Massachusetts, New York, (Washington) DC and Virginia where all the incidents happened on 9/11.”
It was the intervention of then US Secretary of State Dick Cheney that set alarm bells ringing.
“He stepped in and said, they have no rights in Guantanamo, we’ll just leave them there. He had no right to do that.
“It was against our constitution plus Americans never got the right to see justice being served. And so many of the people who ended up in there for years were innocent.
“Have you ever wondered why, when al-Qaeda posted videos them beheading our people, they made them wear orange jumpsuits? Because that’s what we did to them when we sent them to be tortured.”
Speaking to the Sunday World from his Washington DC home via Zoom, Kiriakou divides opinion. He has since been honoured repeatedly by human rights groups as a whistleblower and a teller of truth.
He brings his story and his message to Belfast on January 31 for a special event at the Europa Hotel.
“I’m very proud of my service in Pakistan, Iran, combating Hezbollah, what I didn’t know was I was handing people over to be tortured.”
A multi-published author and columnist, he has become an advocate for a reformed American prison service.
“I was in jail with killers and paedophiles, it was very scary. We have so much to learn from our European partners – in America there is no education in jails, there is no notion of rehabilitation, it is all about punishment.
“Is it any wonder we have 50 per cent recidivism?
“In many ways the US is like an old-style Third World country. Last week a CIA official is facing arrest for referring in pubic to Israel’s nuclear programme, we all know they have a nuclear programme, we’re just not allowed to say it.
“Future wars will be fought with drones, we see it already, yet the CIA continue to deny the US has a drone programme. When I’m asked questions in public I often say ‘I can’t confirm or deny’, even though we know the truth. I don’t want to go back to jail.
“America has a long way to go.”
An Evening With The Ex-CIA is at Belfast’s Europa Hotel on January 31, and Dublin’s Crowne Plaza on February 1. Tickets are available via https://tigerslanestudios.com/an-evening-with-the-ex-cia/
