John Kiriakou
👤 PersonAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
I said, yeah, give me an hour.
I need an hour to think about it.
I walked out of the cafeteria.
I went up to the seventh floor, which is the executive floor.
And there was a very, very senior officer up there for whom I had worked 10 years earlier in the Middle East, knocked on his door, no appointment or anything.
And I said, hey, I need some advice.
I was just asked if I wanted to be trained in these enhanced interrogation techniques.
What do you think of that?
And he said, first of all, let's call a spade a spade.
He said, this is a torture program.
They can use whatever euphemism they want, but this is a torture program and torture is a slippery slope.
He said, you know how these guys are.
Somebody's going to be a cowboy.
They're going to go overboard and they're going to kill a prisoner.
And when that happens, there's going to be a congressional investigation.
Then there's going to be a Justice Department investigation and somebody is going to go to prison.
Do you want to go to prison?
I said, no, I don't want to go to prison.
As it turned out, I was the only person who went to prison.
But I said, no, I don't want to go to prison.