Kiriakou on WikiLeaks and Trump

by | Mar 15, 2017

Kiriakou on WikiLeaks and Trump

by | Mar 15, 2017

John Kiriakou knows a lot about leaking classified information. He went to prison for it.

A former CIA agent who said too much about the Bush-era torture program, he’s also the first CIA leaker to go to jail for his trouble. Kiriakou served just under two years in federal prison, though before the Department of Justice offered a plea deal, it seemed more likely he’d serve as many as 45.

History has frowned on the “enhanced interrogation techniques” Kiriakou helped expose, but he’s still a controversial guy. Leakers usually are. They operate in gray areas. Kiriakou isn’t a cheering squad for loose-lipped aides and intelligence agents everywhere, but does see whistleblowing as essential. He’s critical of the way the CIA (and the White House, and the Department of Justice) deal with leakers, but holds national security sacrosanct. He’s got beef with President Trump, and with former President Obama as well.

So how does the intelligence community’s current predicament—from the Vault 7 dump to WikiLeaks generally to their fraught relationship with President Trump—look to a guy like Kiriakou? Basically, a mess. One that could nudge the Trump administration’s “deep state” paranoias closer to reality.

Read the rest at Wired here.

Emma Grey Ellis

Emma Grey Ellis

View all posts

Our Books

Shop books published by the Libertarian Institute.

libetarian institute longsleeve shirt

Support via Amazon Smile

Our Books

15 books

Recent Articles

Recent

TGIF: The Unfortunately Forgotten Sumner

TGIF: The Unfortunately Forgotten Sumner

Some things haven't changed since 1883. In that year Yale University professor William Graham Sumner, the anti-imperialist laissez-faire liberal and pioneer of American sociology, noticed that "we are told every day that great social problems stand before us and...

read more
How the Captive Media Divides Us

How the Captive Media Divides Us

Most political differences in America today aren’t a result of moral differences, or even policy opinions. Rather, they are generated by divergent media consumption. There’s a huge difference between those whose news comes primarily from the corporate Big Five...

read more
Forty Years Sniping at Leviathan

Forty Years Sniping at Leviathan

I have spent decades trying to turn political dirt into philosophic gold. I have yet to discover the alchemist’s trick, but I still have fun with the dirt. I was born in Iowa and raised in the mountains of Virginia. Wheeling and dealing with old coins as a teenager...

read more

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This