fb-pixelEx-CIA operative accepts plea deal - The Boston Globe Skip to main content

Ex-CIA operative accepts plea deal

WASHINGTON — Looking back, John C. Kiriakou admits he should have known better. But when the FBI called him a year ago and invited him to stop by and ‘‘help us with a case,’’ he did not hesitate.

In his years as a CIA operative, after all, Kiriakou had worked closely with FBI agents overseas. Just months earlier, he had reported to the bureau a recruiting attempt by someone he believed to be an Asian spy.

“Anything for the FBI,’’ Kiriakou replied.

Only an hour into what began as a relaxed chat with the two agents did he begin to realize just who was the target of their investigation.

Advertisement



Finally, the older agent leaned in close and said, by Kiriakou’s recollection, ‘‘In the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you that right now we’re executing a search warrant at your house and seizing your electronic devices.’’

On Jan. 25, Kiriakou is scheduled to be sentenced to 30 months in prison as part of a plea deal in which he admitted violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act by e-mailing the name of a covert CIA officer to a freelance reporter, who did not publish it.

The law was passed in 1982, aimed at radical publications that deliberately sought to out undercover agents, exposing their secret work and endangering their lives.

In more than six decades of fraught interaction between the agency and the news media, Kiriakou is the first current or former CIA officer to be convicted of disclosing classified information to a reporter.

Kiriakou, 48, earned numerous commendations in nearly 15 years at the CIA, some of which were spent undercover overseas chasing Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. He led the team in 2002 that found Abu Zubaydah, a terrorist logistics specialist for Al Qaeda, and other militants whose capture in Pakistan was hailed as a notable victory after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Advertisement



He got mixed reviews at the agency, which he left in 2004 for a consulting job. Some praised his skills, first as an analyst and then as an overseas operative; others considered him a loose cannon.

Kiriakou first stumbled into the public limelight by speaking out about waterboarding on television in 2007, quickly becoming a source for national security journalists, including this reporter, who turned up in Kiriakou’s indictment last year as Journalist B.

When he gave the covert officer’s name to the freelancer, he said, he was simply trying to help a writer find a potential source and had no iexpectation that the name would ever become public. In fact, it did not surface publicly until long after Kiriakou was charged.

He is remorseful, up to a point. ‘‘I should never have provided the name,’’ he said Friday in the latest of a series of interviews. ‘‘I regret doing it, and I never will do it again.’’

At the same time, he argues, with the backing of some former agency colleagues, that the case — one of an unprecedented string of six prosecutions under President Obama for leaking information to the news media — was unfair and ill-advised as public policy.

His supporters are an unlikely collection of old friends, former spies, left-leaning critics of the government, and conservative Christian foes of torture. Whatever his loquaciousness with journalists, they say, he neither intended to damage national security nor did so.

Advertisement



The leak prosecutions have been lauded on Capitol Hill as a long-overdue response to a rash of dangerous disclosures and are defended by both Obama and his attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr.