[THS] Ex-CIA Official Reveals New Details About Torture, Plame Leak

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http://www.truthout.org/interview-with-former-cia-officer-john-kiriakou59396


INTERVIEW: Ex-CIA Official Reveals New Details About Torture, Plame Leak

Wednesday 12 May 2010

by: Jason Leopold, t r u t h o u t | Video Interview

photo
Former CIA officer John Kiriakou. (Photo: Troy Page / t r u t h o u t)

In a wide-ranging video interview with Truthout, former CIA counterterrorism official
John Kiriakou reveals new information about the capture and torture of "high-value"
detainee Abu Zubaydah and discloses, for the first time, his role in the events that led
to the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame.

On March 28, 2002, at exactly 2 AM, CIA, FBI and Pakistani intelligence agents raided
14 houses in Faisalabad, Pakistan and captured 52 alleged terrorists, including one
who the Bush administration had wrongly claimed was the No. 3 person in al-Qaeda
and one of the planners of the 9/11 attacks: Abu Zubaydah.

The CIA official who led the team that resulted in Zubaydah's capture was, at the
time, a 12-year agency veteran named John Kiriakou, who was sent to Pakistan just
two months earlier to take charge of counterterrorism operations there.

Kiriakou made headlines in December 2007, when, during an interview with Brian
Ross of ABC News, he became the first CIA official to publicly confirm that agency
interrogators had waterboarded Zubaydah and that Zubaydah broke after 30 to 35
seconds, revealing actionable intelligence about a terrorist attack that "probably"
saved American lives. Kiriakou said he believes waterboarding is torture.

Kiriakou was interviewed just a few days after The New York Times broke the story
that the CIA had destroyed videotapes made between April and August 2002 that
showed Zubaydah and another "high-value" detainee, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the
alleged mastermind of the USS Cole bombing, being interrogated and tortured.

The details Kiriakou disclosed during his interview with Ross, which he said he
obtained from a classified CIA cable he read, was picked up by dozens of other news
organizations around the world and reignited the debate over the efficacy of torture,
leading many right-wing pundits, Republican lawmakers and Bush administration
officials to declare that "enhanced interrogation" methods worked.

But Kiriakou, who at one point was being pursued by federal prosecutors for
revealing classified information to ABC News, was wrong.

Government documents declassified in the years since Kiriakou was interviewed by
ABC News showed that Zubaydah, in addition to being subjected to other brutal
torture techniques, was waterboarded at least 83 times in a single month. And, as
Truthout first reported, newly declassified Justice Department documents stated that
the government does not contend, as the basis for his continued detention, that
Zubaydah "had any direct role" in or "advance knowledge" of 9/11 or was aware of
any impending terrorist attacks as numerous Bush administration officials had
maintained.

Last week, during a wide-ranging interview with Truthout, Kiriakou, who recently
published a book, "The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA's War on Terror,"
was confronted with these facts and he acknowledged that the intelligence that
asserted Zubaydah was involved in the planning of 9/11 and a was a major figure in
al-Qaeda was "obviously flawed."

The Invasion of Iraq

In addition to new details he disclosed about Zubaydah and torture in general,
Kiriakou said after he returned to Langley in late spring 2002 following his capture of
Zubaydah and dozens of other alleged terrorists, he was "absolutely convinced" he
would receive a promotion. But he was passed over by Jose Rodriguez, head of the
CIA's Counterterrorist Center. Rodriguez is now the subject of a federal criminal
investigation over the destruction of torture tapes, which he ordered purged.

Kiriakou said he was instead given a "field promotion" and by August 1, 2002 - the
month in which the CIA maintains Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times - he was
working on top-secret issues related to the administration's Iraq invasion plans. So
secret was his new job, Kiriakou wrote in his book, that he had to sign six separate
"secrecy agreements."

After he and his boss, Robert Grenier, the CIA's associate deputy director of
operations for policy support who was later promoted to Iraq mission manager,
signed the secrecy agreements they were briefed on their new assignment.

"Okay, here's the deal," the CIA's unnamed director of Iraq operations told Kiriakou
and Grenier. "We're going to invade Iraq next spring. We're going to overthrow
Saddam Hussein. We're going to establish the largest Air Force base in the world and
we're going to transfer everybody from Saudi Arabia to Iraq. That way, al-Qaeda
won't have that hanging over us, that we're polluting the land of the two holy cities."

Kiriakou wrote that he and Grenier were stunned.

"We're going to invade Iraq?" Grenier asked the unnamed director of Iraq
operations, Kiriakou wrote. Kiriakou added that Grenier had later told him that one of
his bosses had briefed him "on the executive branch's thinking a couple of months
earlier," meaning the war had been in the planning stages for some time, which
supports similar claims made by other former Bush administration officials.

"It's a done deal, Bob," the director said. "The decision's already been made ... . the
planning's completed, everything's in place."

Kiriakou wrote that the Iraq director explained to him and Grenier that the ruse the
Bush administration cooked up was "ratchet up the pressure on weapons of mass
destruction ... go to the United Nations toward the end of the year to make it look as
if we wanted to ask the UN Secretary Council to authorize force. We expected
Russian, Chinese and French opposition ... and we were prepared to go it alone."

Kiriakou said he was told the public and Congressional debates surrounding the
invasion of Iraq had no bearing on the administration's plans.

"We were going to war regardless of what the legislative branch or what the federal
government chose to do," he wrote. The CIA's role would be one of "support ... not a
rerun of Afghanistan where [the agency] was running the show."

The Plame Leak

During his interview with Truthout, Kiriakou also for the first time revealed details
about his role in the events that lead to the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame
Wilson, an episode he did not write about in his book.

He said that in June 2003, a month before columnist Robert Novak had disclosed
Plame's name and undercover status in a column he wrote attacking her husband,
former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who called into question the veracity of the Bush
administration's claims that Iraq attempted to purchase uranium from Niger for use
in building an atomic bomb, Kiriakou was present at a "Deputies Committee" meeting
where officials from the departments of State, Defense (DoD) and the CIA were in
attendance.

For the office of the vice president "it was Libby. For CIA it was Grenier [who was
standing in for Deputy CIA Director John McLaughlin]. For DoD it was [Deputy
Secretary of Defense Paul] Wolfowitz. For State, to the best of my recollection, it was
the guy who was Undersecretary for Political Affairs [Marc Grossman]" because
Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was out of town.

Kiriakou said he was the "note taker" at this meeting, which took place on June 10,
2003, when I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, former Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of
staff, "entered the room furious, putting on a big show, arms flailing around,
swearing and demanding to know why nobody at the CIA told him that Valerie Plame
was married to Joe Wilson."

Kiriakou said it was clear to him that when Libby "entered the room" on June 10,
2003, he had already known that Plame was an undercover operative. However,
Libby claimed that he first learned about Plame's status and the fact that she was
married to Ambassador Wilson after Kiriakou sent his email.

After Libby's outburst, Kiriakou said he "went back to headquarters and I wrote an
email  to all of the executive assistants of all the top leaders in the agency saying, this
meeting took place, Libby is furious, we believe that he was conveying a message
from the vice president. I wanted to know when did we know that Valerie was
married to Joe Wilson, sent it around, nobody ever responded to my email."

"I later learned because [CIA] General Counsel [John Rizzo] said we're going to
handle it at our level not at the executive assistant level," Kiriakou said.

Kiriakou said he believes Rizzo took over because Rizzo and "others realized from the
get-go that this was going to be way over our pay grade."

"I remember my boss at the time, Grenier [head of the CIA's Iraq Issues Group],
telling me I don't think you realize what a big deal this is. And frankly I didn't."

Kiriakou said the "big deal" in question was the fact that "the agency dropped the
ball."

"It was an agency officer, specifically Bob Grenier, who told administration officials
that Valerie was an undercover CIA case officer. We thought it was just someone
leaked something to Bob Novak. It was probably, who knows, Karl Rove, Scooter
Libby, [Deputy Secretary of State] Rich Armitage, we didn't know. We didn't know
that it had come from the CIA. Now I think Grenier accidentally did that. And I think
he probably didn't believe the administration was going to do anything with it. But he
knew early on that the agency was involved even if accidentally."

Kiriakou said he could not recall if Grenier told Libby or Armitage that Plame was
"undercover," but his "guess is that the scenario was that Grenier told Armitage, who
told Libby, who told Grenier."

Kiriakou appears to have muddled the details of his story on this important point. It's
clear that it was Libby who first told Grenier about Plame's covert status.

Attempts to reach Armitage and Grenier for comment were unsuccessful.

Grenier never testified during Libby's trial that he spoke to Armitage about Plame. To
the contrary, Grenier, who had originally stated during his grand jury testimony that
he did not recall having a conversation with Libby about Plame, testified during his
second appearance in January 2007 that, on June 11, 2003, a day after Kiriakou sent
out the email, he recalled that he told Libby that Plame worked at the CIA's
Counterproliferation Division.

''It wasn't as though I suddenly, you know, had this flashing revelation that, 'Oh my
God, I did say it,' '' Grenier said. ''But again, as I thought about it over time and as I
remembered specifically, again, those sort of mental gymnastics that I went through
immediately after the conversation, I developed a growing conviction that, in fact, I
had said it. I mean, at a certain point, I said, 'You know, wake up and smell the
coffee - you must have told him.' ''

Kiriakou said after Libby was indicted and his trial began he "was called as a witness
for the defense ... something that was deeply upsetting to me."

"So I hired an attorney, Lanny Breuer," who is presently assistant attorney general at
the Justice Department's criminal division. "And I told Lanny I really don't know why I
am being subpoenaed. We speculated it was to impeach Bob Grenier's testimony. I
had no idea [Grenier] told the Special Prosecutor that he had inadvertently leaked
Valerie's status. So Lanny Breuer told Special Prosecutor [Patrick Fitzgerald] and
Libby's attorneys that there is nothing I am going to say that is going to help Scooter
Libby in this trial. So I went on the final day [to Libby's trial]. I sat with other CIA
officers called to testify and they didn't call any of us to testify on the stand."

In 2007, Libby was convicted of four counts of perjury and obstruction of justice and
was sentenced to 30 months in jail. George W. Bush later commuted the sentence to
spare Libby any jail time.

The foggy memories and apparent lies revolving around who told what to whom and
when in early June 2003 and why it's a crucial piece of the puzzle was explained in
detail by Marcy Wheeler, who wrote a book about the Plame leak, "Anatomy of
Deceit," and covered Libby's criminal trial.

In a June 6, 2007, blog post, Wheeler said that on June 11, according to Libby's
calendar, he "called Robert Grenier in the presence of Cheney and [Cheney's press
secretary Cathie] Martin, looking for information he likely already knew from
[Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Marc] Grossman and almost certainly
from Cheney. That suggests Cheney, Martin and Libby discussed how to respond to
[Washington Post reporter Walter] Pincus [who queried Libby about Ambassador
Wilson's claims about bogus intelligence related to Niger] and that (presumably not
telling Martin of the details they were after) they called Grenier for the missing piece:
An on-the-record statement saying that State and DoD had been interested in the
intelligence as well.

"Libby didn't get Grenier immediately. Instead, Grenier called back ... learned what
Libby was looking for, did some research and prepared an answer: Valerie sent Joe,
Plame worked in [the Counterproliferation Division] and [the Department of Defense]
and State were also interested in the intelligence," Wheeler wrote. "Will CIA be willing
to say the last bit publicly? Libby asked. I don't see why not, Grenier said, have your
press person speak to my press person. This leads to a conversation between [CIA
spokesman Bill] Harlow and Martin. Perhaps Harlow agrees to make a statement - but
if he does, it comes too late for the Pincus article [published July 12, 2003]. Also,
such a statement doesn't make it into Martin's talking points on Wilson that she was
still using almost a month later.

"There seem to be two explanations for this: either the Cheney note is actually a note
from Libby's conversation with Grenier (remember, he wrote 'VP' sometime after he
wrote the note itself). Or, [the Office of the Vice President] already had the talking
points set up - and they had just called Grenier to try to solicit this information out of
him. Perhaps, even, they were trying to make sure Cathie Martin learned of the
information Cheney already knew, but via a third party source that couldn't be traced
back to the Vice President.

"I lean toward the latter - it seems highly unlikely that Libby would have made up the
conversation with Cheney and stuck to that story over four years and a trial. Which
means the Libby-Cheney conversation happened sometime before the [June 11,
2003] Grenier conversation (and therefore further suggests that, as has been
assumed all along, Cheney was indeed Libby's first source for Plame's identity),"
Wheeler continued. "And the Grenier conversation was simply an attempt to set
somebody up to tell Libby, Martin and the press the same information via a different
source."

Although Kiriakou is fuzzy on the details surrounding the events in early June leading
up to the leak of Plame's identity to a handful of reporters, the information he did
provide supports arguments Wheeler and others had made over the years that Libby
knew Plame was married to Wilson and was a covert operative before he spoke to
Grenier and Grossman about it. This revelation also calls into question the
truthfulness of Grenier's testimony, suggesting that he ignored Libby's outburst when
he entered the meeting on June 10, 2003, when Kiriakou was present and instead
focused simply on the phone call he received from Libby inquiring about Plame after
the fact.

While Kiriakou could not recall the exact details of the June 10, 2003 episode
meeting, one thing seems crystal clear: there was an important meeting that took
place that day, a meeting where Libby made it abundantly clear that he had already
learned that Plame was married to Ambassador Wilson and that she was an
undercover operative.