John Kiriakou

In an interview with ABC News, I said that the CIA was torturing its prisoners, that torture was official US government policy, it was not the result of a rogue, and that the policy had been personally approved by the president.

Within 24 hours, the CIA filed a document with the FBI called a crimes report saying that I had disclosed classified information to the media.

That's a crime under the Espionage Act.

The FBI investigated me from December of 2007 until December of 2008.

And in December of 2008, they sent my attorneys something called a declination letter, declining to prosecute me.

They said that torture was a crime,

and that we have a law in the United States that says you cannot classify a crime for the purpose of keeping the information from the American people.

And so I was not charged with a crime.

Three weeks later, Barack Obama became president, and he named John Brennan Deputy National Security Advisor for Counterterrorism.

John Brennan was one of the godfathers of the CIA's torture program.

And he sent a memo to Eric Holder saying, charge him with espionage.

Eric Holder wrote back and said, my people don't think he committed espionage.

And Brendan wrote back again to Holder saying, charge him anyway and make him defend himself.

I had no idea.

that my phones were tapped, that my emails were being intercepted, or that teams of FBI agents were following me everywhere I went for the next three years.

And finally, in January of 2012, I was arrested by the FBI and charged with five felonies, including three counts of espionage, which in many cases is a death penalty charge.

In a perverse way, 9-11 is one of the best things that ever happened to the CIA for a number of reasons.

A handful of teams that were sent to Afghanistan were sent there specifically to liaise with the Northern Alliance, to push the Taliban out of power and to capture or kill every Al-Qaeda fighter they could encounter.

that extended then to Pakistan by the end of the year 2001.

In the mid 90s,