Former
CIA analyst John Kiriakou blew the whistle on the agency’s use of
waterboarding and was subsequently locked up.
“I was
surprised by the terrible quality of the medical care, of the food.
American prisoners aren’t even fed human-grade food. I remember
passing boxes, cases of food in the cafeteria marked 'not for human
consumption, feed use only' or 'for sale only in China.' And the
medical care was even worse. There were almost a half a dozen deaths
of prisoners when I was there in prison, and almost every one of
those deaths was preventable.”
“I saw
a policy that I believed was not just wrong, but was criminal, and I
decided to speak about it. I really didn’t think long-term about
how the US government can bring its full weight against a
whistleblower. The goal really of the Justice Department is to ruin
the whistleblower personally, professionally, and financially. I
hadn’t thought that through, and that’s exactly what happened to
me. But again, it’s opened up a whole new world for me in the realm
of human right and civil liberties.”
“Personally
I feel that the Justice Department is hypocritical to charge me for a
crime, and not just me but other whistleblowers as well – [such] as
Ed Snowden, Chelsea Manning, and others – and then allow the
torturers to go free. But what really bothers me, is that there is no
prosecution of CIA officers who obviously violated the law; those CIA
officers who were conducting interrogations in which prisoners were
killed. I have no idea why there is no outrage, and why those
officers are not being prosecuted.”
“We
always seem to step in a mud puddle, so to speak, when it comes to
things like interrogations or drone strikes or attacks on
individuals. These activities always serve to promote terrorist
recruitments. You know, when we first began fighting Al-Qaeda in
Afghanistan, we were talking about a core of just several hundred
people. Well, now look at ISIS, which is sort of the next generation
of Al-Qaeda. We are talking about fighting something like 35,000
people. And I think that we’ve had a hand in that recruitment.”
Full
interview:
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