John Kiriakou Author

Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specializing on the U.S. national security state. He has covered dozens of exclusive investigative stories about U.S. policy in U.S. wars and military operations in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Syria and U.S policies toward Iran. He is author of five books, including Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam (University of California Press, 2005) and Manufactured Crisis: the Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare (Just World Books, 2014).  

John Kiriakou is a former CIA counterterrorism officer, former senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and former counterterrorism consultant for ABC News. He was responsible for the capture in Pakistan in 2002 of Abu Zubaydah, then believed to be the third-ranking official in al-Qaeda. In 2007, Kiriakou blew the whistle on the CIA’s torture program, telling ABC News that the CIA tortured prisoners, that torture was official US government policy, and that the policy had been approved by then– President George W. Bush.  He is the author of multiple books on intelligence and the CIA.