Were the CIA’s torture tactics necessary to protect national security? Today’s guest is former CIA counter-terrorism officer and former senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, John Kiriakou. Kiriakou recently wrote a piece in response to a book coming out by Bush-era CIA directors defending torture tactics as necessary to saving lives.
John Kiriakou confirmed the government’s use of waterboarding to interrogate Al Qaeda prisoners in 2007, and was sentenced to 30 months in prison for disclosing the classified information on January 25th, 2013. He has published three books and is now a columnist for OtherWords and an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies.