John Kiriakou is a CIA veteran who headed counterterrorism operations in Pakistan after 9/11, organized the team operation that captured suspected al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah, and refused to be trained in enhanced interrogation tactics. In 2007, Kiriakou gave an on-camera interview to ABC News where he disclosed that Zubaydah was waterboarded, explicitly calling it torture – making him the first CIA officer to publicly label the action as torture. His words also exposed the CIA’s torture program as policy, rather than the actions of rogue agents.
