Original subtitles

- Come on! [Telephone rings]

- in january of 2012,

the fbi called me at home and said,

"can you come to the washington field office thursday at 10:00?"

I said, "absolutely."

So, i went down to the washington field office,

and they began asking me questions.

Well, i've spent my entire adult life working with the fbi.

So, the fbi needs my help, i'm happy to help.

It wasn't until i was about

an hour and 45 minutes into this interview

that i realized, "wait a minute.

They're investigating me."

- We need to be honest with you.

- And they said, "well, we need to be honest with you.

We're executing a search warrant on your house

right now as we speak,

and we're seizing all of your electronics."

- What i experienced as a whistle-blower

sends the most chilling of messages

about what the government can, and i will emphasize, will do

when one speaks truth to and of power.

- There is information that the public

in a functioning democracy has a right to know.

- What does it do?

So, your whole body rails against it?

- Warrantless wire-tapping, torture --

we only know about that because of whistle-blowers.

[Thunder rumbles]

- i knew i could not remain silent.

If i remained silent,

i'd be complicit to the subversion of the constitution.

If i remained silent

as a senior executive assigned to the national security agency,

i would be an accessory to a crime.

- Historically, such people were forced

to choose between their conscience

and their career,

but now the stakes are much higher --

they risk their freedom and their lives.

- I did not commit a crime.

I'm going to trial,

and i'm gonna prove myself innocent.

I'm not the pushover that these guys think i am.

I'm as tough as they are, and i'm gonna fight.

["Twinkle, twinkle, little star" playing on piano]

- no, i'm sorry.

They're all metals.

John, did you get her? - Yeah.

- Okay. - Where's max?

- He's sleeping. - Okay.

- Sorry to wake you up, but it's dinner time.

- Mnh.

- Bless us, oh, lord, and these thy gifts,

which we are about to receive from thy bounty.

Through christ our lord, amen.

- Father, son, holy spirt. Amen.

- In my heart, i believe i'm gonna win.

My wife tells me every time i start to feel

a little depressed,

"you have the truth on your side."

[Laughs]

and she's right.

I haven't done anything wrong.

- His name is john kiriakou,

a cia undercover officer for 15 years.

- Did you feel comfortable with the techniques?

- Uh, frankly, no.

And i elected to, uh, to forego the training.

- I was the first cia officer, or former cia officer,

to confirm the use of torture techniques

against al qaeda prisoners.

- What is it like?

- Uh, you feel like

you're choking or drowning.

It was already in the news.

The washington post, for example,

had reported that the cia had used torture techniques,

and human rights watch had reported it

and amnesty international had reported it.

So, in the back of my mind,

i didn't think i was saying anything new.

- Would you call it torture? - Um...

i had never been on television in my life.

I truly expected this to be a 10-minute interview

that they whittle down to 15 seconds.

Instead, he asked me about abu zubaydah and about torture.

And i think that waterboarding is probably something

that we shouldn't be in the business of doing.

- Why do you say that now?

- Because we're americans, and we're better than that.

- That interview became a major international story.

I ended up getting calls from every network in america.

The cia filed a crimes report against me,

saying i had leaked classified information

by admitting that waterboarding had taken place.

Thank goodness that the justice department said

that it was not classified

and declined to pursue a case against me then.

And i think it's good that we're having

a national debate about this.

We should be debating this.

And congress should be talking about it

because i think as a country,

we have to decide if this is something

that we want to do as a matter of policy.

With that interview, i became a cia dissident.

Whether i knew it or not, whether i liked it or not,

i was an outsider from that day onward.

[Keyboard clacking]

- i'm fighting to have my september 10th country back.

It's a very, very dangerous direction.

The pendulum swung after 9/11,

and instead of swinging back to some kind of equipoise,

it just swung even further in the direction of secrecy.

And that includes over-classification.

That includes the crackdown on whistle-blowers.

That includes secret signing statements.

It includes shutting down lawsuits

with the state secrets privilege.

I mean, there is a whole bevy

of secrecy tactics

that the government uses.

Every time you bring up civil liberties

that have deteriorated

or been tossed out completely

in the name of national security,

people think somehow you're siding with the terrorists --

"oh, you want our country to suffer."

Quite the opposite.

People want our country

to continue to live up to the ideals

on which it was founded.

[Thunder rumbles]

- it's not something you aspire to.

This is not a career goal to become a whistle-blower.

It's not.

It doesn't matter whether it's in the public interest or not.

They can pejoratively say it's leaking, unauthorized leaking.

So, whistle-blowers, it's clear,

have become an endangered species,

to say it that way,

and you have a government who's decided

that they need to become extinct.

The last thing they want is people spilling the beans

on what the government's doing under the rubric of secrecy

and national security behind the scenes.

To use the espionage act,

it is the harshest thing you can charge someone with.

They were sending, deliberately sending,

the strongest possible message.

They set the target.

They put the bull's-eye on me

and said, "we're gonna make an example of him."

[Thunder rumbles]

i was born in louisiana.

My father was an officer in the u.s. air force.

But the bulk of my growing up was actually in vermont.

And that's where i went to high school,

that's where i became a young adult.

- I was born and raised in a small town

in western pennsylvania,

north of pittsburgh, in amish country.

I always had a fascination with international affairs.

I was an avid ham radio operator when i was a kid, for example.

- I grew up in columbia, maryland.

I grew up in a somewhat dysfunctional family,

and therefore, at a very young age,

the concept of justice became very central to me.

- The attorney general had the authority to authorize it.

- I remember sitting in social studies class,

watching the watergate hearings.

- I authorized wire tapping and other related activity.

- Seeing these incredible violations

of law and the fourth amendment,

high crimes and misdemeanors as specified in the constitution --

no one was above the law,

not even the president of the united state of america.

- I went to college in new england, and law school.

I dreamed of working at the justice department.

You go into court and you have the imprimatur

of the united states behind you.

And you get to wear the white hat,

and you get to always be on the right side

of whatever you're arguing.

So, when i got the job

at the justice department right out of law school,

for me, that was my dream job.

- I was mostly interested in the middle east

because when i was in high school,

the iran hostage crisis was ongoing.

And i thought, "i'm gonna go to george washington university.

It's two blocks from the white house."

- I made a choice that i would join the air force

for a few years as a cryptolinguist.

And a cryptologic linguist is someone

who listens to communications of other countries

in different languages.

And the country that i specialized in was east germany.

- My advisor, it turned out,

was undercover as a professor.

He was actually a cia officer

acting as what was then called a spotter.

And he asked me if i was interested

in working at the cia.

I said, "sure. Why not?"

And i went through the process and found myself at the cia.

- I went to the cia for a short stint.

And then i became a government contractor,

systems software engineering,

from mid '89 all the way through until 2001.

February of 2001, i just happened

to be going through the sunday edition of the washington post.

And it's like, "oh. Interesting."

Nsa was actually looking to hire people in from the outside.

Well, it's the call to serve your country.

And here was an opportunity at a very senior level,

so i applied.

I was offered a position.

Took the oath to support and defend the constitution

for the fourth time.

And the first day that i reported

to the national security agency,

to my duty station, was 9/11.

- I ended up joining a newly created ethics unit

called the professional responsibility advisory office.

We were there to keep you out of trouble.

Rather than opr,

the office of professional responsibility,

that disciplines you when you do something bad,

we were there to render advice prospectively

to help keep you from doing something unethical.

The first couple of years were really amazing,

to get to form and grow this office,

but after 9/11, there was definitely a sea change.

- There's pre-9/11...

[people screaming]

...there's post-9/11.

And what took place

in those weeks and months just after 9/11

established the basis for everything else that happened.

Everything.

- Everything changed in the intelligence community

on september 11th.

- It took a few years for it to unwind,

and much of what was going on inside the country

was done in absolute secrecy

for the first four-plus years.

No one knew.

[Radio chatter]

- "we're gonna kill all of them."

That was very much the feeling in the cia after september 11th.

Now, for many people, that wore off after a period of time,

but for others inside the cia, they never lost that feeling,

that belief that this was a war to the death,

that there was no gray area between black and white.

- There was a lot of cutting corners.

There were a lot of shortcuts going on.

There were a lot of creative gymnastics going on.

And that can be seen in, like, the torture memos

and the reasoning in those

by my law school classmate john yoo.

- After 9/11, it became even more important for nsa

just to get all the data it could, no matter where it was.

"We just need it."

And i was told that.

"We just need it, tom.

We just need the data."

It was crisis.

But it became clear within the space of a few days

that this was not a normal crisis.

I was in a meeting with...

with the person i reported to,

said that 9/11 was a gift to nsa.

"9/11's a gift.

We're finally gonna get

all the money we've ever wanted from congress --

all of it and more."

Their whole counterterrorism effort,

which was extraordinarily small prior to 9/11,

all of a sudden grew by leaps and bounds after 9/11.

George tenet, who, at the time,

was the director of central intelligence,

he issued an intelligence- community-wide memo,

said, "whatever you got in the labs --

it's a prototype, test bed --

put it into the fight 'cause we need it."

So, i was tasked

to go out to the ends of nsa

to find those systems,

bring them to the attention of senior leadership

so we could actually deploy them.

One that i brought to their attention shortly after 9/11

was called thinthread.

Thinthread, i have to say, was an extraordinary program.

They had a system ready for operational deployment

well prior to 9/11,

which, by the way, had built into it the fisa rules

that absolutely protected u.s. person information.

Absolutely.

Okay?

It was designed that way.

That solution was rejected.

And i said, "why is nsa rejecting

the thinthred solution?"

And i wasn't gonna give up

'cause i knew something was amiss.

I wrote a formal memo

expressing my greatest alarm.

I also had informed her

that i was hearing very disturbing information

that nsa could be in probable violation

of fisa and the fourth amendment.

I had people who came to me in private,

who were telling me, "tom,

why are we taking equipment that we use to monitor

the communications of foreign nations

and turning it on ourselves?

I thought we can't surveil americans without a warrant."

I was told, "if you have a problem,

speak to the office of general counsel."

- Yes.

- I have a phone conversation

with the senior attorney

assigned to the office of general counsel.

And then i heard the following words --

"nsa has become the executive agent for the program.

It's been reviewed by all the attorneys.

The white house has approved it.

It's all legal."

As soon as he said, "it's all legal,"

the hair stood up on the back of my neck.

What i didn't know at that time

is that nsa, under general michael v. Hayden,

had entered into a secret agreement with the white house.

A very small number of people even knew about it.

But what's crucial here is that equipment

that was traditionally foreign-facing, outward-facing,

was now being turned on our own country,

that pandora's box had been opened up.

We would now instrument the united states of america,

and we would treat this nation

as the equivalent of a foreign country

for the purposes of dragnet, blanket electronic surveillance

on a vast scale.

- When i was arrested,

it was national front-page news.

Fox news even put on their ticker,

"ex-cia officer gives intelligence to al qaeda."

- This morning, a former cia officer

is accused of repeatedly leaking classified secrets to reporters.

- Investigators say he potentially put the lives

of covert officers at risk.

- These are very serious charges for the ex-cia intel officer.

- Prosecutors say he told three journalists

the role of a cia officer

and the capture of a top al qaeda leader.

- Abu zubaydah,

reportedly waterboarded more than 80 times,

a controversial interrogation technique.

- A senior person at the heritage foundation

called me a traitor in an op-ed

in the san francisco chronicle.

I forced myself to read some of these articles,

and in every one of these articles,

jesselyn radack was quoted.

And i thought, "wow, this woman gets it,

that there's a difference between leaking

and whistle-blowing,

that what i blew the whistle on

was government illegality."

And i thought, "i have to meet this woman."

- You become a whistle-blower by operation of law

when you make a disclosure

that you reasonably believe evidences fraud, waste, abuse,

or illegality.

When you look in the dictionary

and the synonyms for whistle-blower

are things like snitch, back-stabber,

there are all these negative connotations

that go with you bucking the system --

you're not a team player,

you're a traitor,

because that is the ultimate label.

What's even more interesting

is that they brought up

the word whistle-blower.

- I'm not a criminal defense lawyer.

What i do is represent whistle-blowers

and often work in tandem with criminal defense lawyers

on these espionage act cases.

- Judge brinkema specifically warned them

not to dump discovery on us on the eve of the trial.

- In kiriakou's case,

the government's ticked off that he called waterboarding torture,

that he revealed torture as a program

and not some rogue pastime,

and that he wrote a book

in which he's very critical of cia's torture

and the behavior of the fbi.

That's what the government's really mad about.

- John kiriakou was a cia intelligence officer

from 1990 to 2004.

He is charged with violating the espionage act

by passing classified...

- a journalist called john

and asked him to confirm a name, which he did,

which is routinely done by former agency officials,

and for that, they charged him with the espionage

and intelligence identity protection act counts.

The espionage act is this arcane 1917 law

that is meant to go after spies, not whistle-blowers.

It was inconceivable that you would use such a heavy-handed,

out-of-scope, arcane law to go after someone.

I thought we figured that out 40 years ago

with dan ellsberg and his case.

When tom drake was indicted under the espionage act,

i thought it was a strange one-off.

Though, four months later,

stephen kim, an analyst at the state department,

was also indicted.

At that point, i looked back

and realized this guy, shamai leibowitz,

the year before, had plead guilty.

It was under a different part of the espionage act,

but there was starting to be a pattern.

When you look at the totality of it,

you have shamai leibowitz of the fbi, contract linguist,

tom drake of the nsa,

stephen kim of the state department,

jeff sterling of the cia,

john kiriakou of the cia,

and bradley manning, army,

and you realize

for obama to have six of these on his watch

and they are all people

who are in the national security or intelligence fields...

- a breach at the nation's top security agency.

- A young army private is now being formally charged

in connection with leaked video.

- There are common threads

of government overreach, secrecy,

and trying to cover up some of our worst sins as a country

whether it was a war crime

or whether it was secret domestic surveillance

or whether it was torture.

- Stephen jin-woo kim accused of violating the espionage act.

- Charged with repeatedly leaking classified secrets.

- Leaking classified information.

- Top-secret information.

- Disclosing classified information.

- According to the federal indictment, thomas drake was...

- it's the most serious charge

that can be leveled against an american.

It's saying, "you are an enemy of the state."

Why use that?

To send a very chilling,

chilling message to people

to keep quiet.

- After september 11th,

i became the chief of counterterrorism operations

in pakistan.

I was told on my first day

to come up with the standard operating procedure

for taking down a terrorist safe house.

So, i literally sat at a desk with a legal pad, thinking,

"well, how am i gonna do this?

What would be the first thing i would want to do

if i was gonna take down a safe house?"

Well, i would want it to be dark.

So, let's say 2:00 in the morning we'll do it.

So, i wrote 0200 at the top of the page.

And then little by little, i came up with this plan.

Finally, we got a report from headquarters

that abu zubaydah was somewhere in pakistan.

Now, at the time, we thought that abu zubaydah

was the third-ranking person in al qaeda.

And all we knew was that he was somewhere in pakistan,

but pakistan's the size of texas.

He made one mistake that allowed us

to narrow his location down to 14 different sites.

So, we brought in a large team from headquarters,

half cia, half fbi.

We brought in weapons and electronics and walkie-talkies,

and we hit all 14 sites

at exactly the same time.

And he happened to be in one of the houses.

He tried to escape by jumping from the roof of his house

to the roof of the neighboring house,

and the pakistanis shot him three times

in the stomach, the groin, and the thigh.

And he was very gravely wounded.

[Helicopter blades whirring]

he was out of it for a day and a half

before he finally came out of a coma,

but i was the first person to speak to him.

At first, he asked for a glass of red wine.

And then, a couple hours later,

he asked me to smother him with a pillow.

Once he sort of had his bearings and he realized,

"oh, my god, the americans have me,"

he wanted to know what was gonna happen to him,

where he was gonna be sent.

He was very frightened, i think of the unknown.

I didn't know where he was gonna go,

and i didn't know that he was gonna be tortured.

I didn't have a need to know.

[Fly buzzing]

he would recite poetry to me that he had written.

- [Speaking in arabic]

- he cried at the thought of, he said,

"never knowing the joy of fatherhood,

never knowing the touch of a woman."

I remember telling him,

"i should hate you and i should want to kill you,

and i don't."

I said, "you're pathetic."

I mean, he was just a young guy.

He wasn't even 30 years old.

And all he did was cry.

And i remember saying to a colleague of mine,

"this is the fearsome al qaeda?

This is what we've been

so worried about and so frightened of?"

It was a revelation to me.

They're just guys.

They're just -- and not even that,

they're just young, illiterate guys

that had nothing else to do.

And believe me when i say 99 % of them had never read the quran.

They weren't true believers.

They hadn't pledged fealty to osama bin laden.

They just wanted to get out of that village in yemen

and maybe make a couple of bucks.

It made me think the mission wasn't all

it was cracked up to be.

And then, a colleague came in and said,

"headquarters is sending in a private jet

to pick him up and take him to his next location."

At about 3:00 in the morning, we wheeled him out.

He was so upset, he asked me to hold his hand.

He asked if we were going to kill him,

and i said, "no.

No, we've been looking for you for a long time.

In fact,"i said,"you're gonna get the best medical care

that the u.s. government has to offer."

And so, the doctor gave him a shot of demerol,

and it knocked him out.

And we loaded him onto this private jet.

[Jet engines whirring]

one of the guys who had flown out

to escort him to his onward location

got off the plane.

The guy was dressed completely in black --

black mask, black hat, black sweater.

And he said my name. He said, "john?"

And i said, "who are you?"

And he lifted up his mask,

and he was a former supervisor of mine at headquarters.

And he said, "what are you doing here?"

And i said, "oh, i'm chief of counterterrorism."

I said, "what are you doing here?"

He said, "i'm gonna take your prisoner onward."

He said, "who is he, anyway?"

And i said, "i'm sorry, man. You don't have a need to know."

And i said, "where are you taking him?"

And the guy said,

"i'm sorry, man. You don't have a need to know."

And i said, "well, safe flight."

And the plane took off, and i never saw him again.

[Jet engines roar]

when i returned to headquarters from pakistan,

i was told that the cia had begun a program

that they were calling enhanced interrogation techniques,

and did i want to be trained

in the use of these enhanced interrogation techniques?

Uh, i had a visceral problem with it.

First of all, let's call it what it is --

it's torture.

They can call it whatever euphemism they want,

but it's torture.

So, i went back to the counterterror center,

and i said, "i have a problem with this,

and i don't want to be involved."

And then i heard rumors that we had created

this system of secret prisons around the world,

that even the heads of state in these countries

didn't know that we had these secret prisons there,

that these were deals struck between the head of the cia

and the head of whatever that country's service was.

These weren't meant to be permanent facilities.

They were just meant to extract information...

[muffled shouting, water dripping]

- ...where we didn't have to worry

about laws or human rights.

But, you know, those of us who weren't read into these programs

only got this in bits and pieces.

I had no idea how extensive

this secret prison system was

until a couple of years after i left the agency

and i read about it in the press.

Because we're americans and we're better than that.

- But at the time, you didn't feel that way.

- At the time, i was so angry

and i wanted so much

to help disrupt future attacks on the united states

that i felt it was the only thing we could do.

- And with zubaydah, you think that was successful.

- It was.

I had been misinformed

by the cia.

The cia told those of us in headquarters

that they had waterboarded abu zubaydah one time,

that he had cracked,

and that he had provided actionable intelligence.

- He answered every question

just like i'm sitting here speaking to you.

- So, in your view,

the waterboarding broke him.

- I think it did, yes.

- And did it make a difference

in terms of...? - It did.

The threat information that he provided

disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks.

That turned out to be untrue,

and we know it was untrue because in 2009,

the cia inspector general's report was released,

indicating that abu zubaydah had been waterboarded 83 times

and still did not provide actionable intelligence.

[Water pouring]

believe me, for the life of me, i wish i could take that back.

But i talked about the issue

with the information that i had at the time,

and the information was just simply incorrect.

Abu zubaydah may never have been an al qaeda member,

now, in retrospect, we're finding out.

He may have been somebody who supported al qaeda's goals,

he may have been someone who was a professional logistician,

where he was helping them procure medicine

or false documents.

We don't really know.

But he was not the senior al qaeda official

that the cia and nsa

and the white house wanted us to believe.

- So, i actually, like --

everything was vacuumed, i laid down the stuff.

- My husband was incredibly supportive.

And so, i think that was a saving grace.

When all this horrible stuff was going on,

i could go home and there was sort of this safe haven.

[Laughs]

give me a kiss.

Bye. - Bye.

- You know, i promised myself when i was going through this

that if i ever got out of this mess,

i would dedicate my life to representing whistle-blowers.

Whistle-blowers come in here

and they all say to me,

"you will not believe what i'm going through."

And i can actually look them in the eye and say,

"yes, i will, and i do

because i know what the government's capable of doing."

My becoming a whistle-blower...

began on december 7th of 2001.

[Telephone rings]

and i got a call from the criminal division

saying that the fbi on the ground in afghanistan

had captured an american fighting with the taliban.

And my counterpart wanted to know,

could the fbi interrogate him without a lawyer?

And i was told unambiguously that this american,

a guy named john walker lindh, was represented by counsel.

Now, for my office,

this was a bread-and-butter kind of question.

I said, "no.

It would be a pre-indictment interview

of someone who was in custody,

and it was not an undercover operation."

I went home over the weekend, not thinking about it.

And i came back on monday.

And the gentleman from counterterrorism called back,

and he said, "oops, we did it anyway.

"The fbi went ahead and interrogated him.

What do we do now?"

You know, i was trying to work with the criminal division

and saying, like, "okay, look,

i understand you're on the battlefield,

heat of war,

and they interrogated him anyway.

So, let's figure out how to do cleanup."

So, i advised that they should seal off

the interview of john walker lindh

and use the information

only for national security and intelligence-gathering purposes,

but not for criminal prosecution.

Meanwhile, pictures were circulating

worldwide by that time

of this guy, naked, bound to a board with duct tape,

blindfolded, hands tied in front of his genitals.

It was pretty clear this guy was not being treated well.

In fact, this looked very much like what we saw

years later at abu ghraib.

[Camera shutters clicking]

- today i'm announcing the filing of criminal charges

against john walker lindh.

- The attorney general, ashcroft,

was into these very flashy press conferences.

And he held one, saying that they were

going to be filing charges against john walker lindh.

And a reporter asked if he had been permitted to have a lawyer.

And ashcroft said...

- i think it's important to understand that the subject here

is entitled to choose his own lawyer

and to our knowledge has not chosen a lawyer at this time.

This afternoon, a grand jury in the eastern district of virginia

returned a 10-count indictment against walker lindh.

- A couple weeks later, again,

he was asked about the treatment of john walker lindh.

And he said that john walker lindh's rights...

- ...including his rights not to incriminate himself

and to be represented by counsel

have been carefully, scrupulously honored.

- So i felt, like, he's flat-out lying.

Any human can read the newspaper

and see pictures of this guy being tortured.

- And his defense argues

that his statements to the fbi

are unreliable

because he made them after being held

for two or three days in this metal container.

- And more information was coming out...

- ...blindfolded, his hands and feet

painfully bound to a stretcher.

- ...that he had a bullet in his leg,

that he was being held in a box.

I was getting very much a vibe from my boss to drop it,

and i was concerned there was an ethical violation here.

We still have not resolved this with the criminal division

about how to deal with it. And she said...

- i want you to close the file.

- ..."I want you to close the file."

It was clear that there was another plan

that was being put into place,

and it was to prosecute this guy and make an example out of him.

- He's accused of conspiring to murder american citizens,

supporting terrorists,

and supplying services to the taliban.

- The government was now

filing a criminal complaint against this guy.

He was the first terrorism suspect

to be prosecuted after 9/11,

and there was literally

a national hysteria around the case.

- He tried to kill american troops.

- 1950s, what he did would have been called treason,

and he would have been sentenced to death.

- He's a traitor. He should have been executed.

- Two and two didn't add up to four until march.

The prosecutor in the john walker lindh criminal case,

the case i advised against bringing,

contacted me directly.

And he said, "as you know,

there is a federal court discovery order

for all justice department correspondence

related to the interrogation

of the american taliban john walker lindh.

And i have two of your e-mails,

and i wanted to make sure i have everything."

And i knew i had written way more than two e-mails.

So, immediately, i became very concerned.

And, you know, i went upstairs,

and i'm like, i'm gonna straighten this out

because i know the file was like an inch thick."

And i went and looked in the file, the hard copy file,

and there were two pieces of paper in there.

I mean, there was a fax cover sheet

and two very innocuous e-mails.

[Sighs]

and i had a knot.

I felt like i was gonna be physically ill.

I consulted with a colleague of mine

who was a very seasoned attorney on the verge of retirement.

He worked in the ethics division with me.

And he looked at the file

and said, very matter-of-factly,

"this file has been purged."

And i thought, "what? We're the government.

Like, we're prosecuting enron and arthur anderson right now

for destruction of evidence

and obstruction of justice.

What do you mean it's been purged?"

The stuff in that file was very damning

because it said that the fbi had committed an ethical violation

in its interrogation of john walker lindh.

And if that confession could not be used at trial --

that was central to trying him --

they would have no case.

I called tech support.

I'm like, "look, is there any way

to get any of this stuff back?

It's really important."

She said that there was,

and we were able to recover 14 e-mails

that had the substance of what happened.

And i wrote a memo to my boss and said,

"i don't know why they weren't in the file."

And i made a copy of that memo with the attachments

in case it "disappeared" again,

and i gave it to my boss.

And she said, "why weren't these e-mails in the file?"

And it felt like a rhetorical question.

And i said, "look, i don't know what's going on here,

but this is not right and you know it.

And i'm giving my two weeks' notice.

I'm resigning."

I think people very high up at justice

wanted to cover up the fact

that the ethics office at the justice department

didn't want to follow the rules

and were not going to follow the rules

and were going to conceal this from a court of law.

I could not live with myself

knowing that another human being could be put to death

because i kept my mouth shut.

- Michael isikoff is a newsweek magazine investigative reporter.

- One morning, i heard michael isikoff saying,

"well, the department says

john walker lindh was never represented by counsel

and has never taken that position."

And i picked up the phone and i called him,

and i said, "you're wrong.

I don't know who's feeding you this line of crap,

but it's completely wrong,

and i have the e-mails to prove it."

And i went to a local kinkos,

and i faxed him the e-mails.

He said he would write an article about it,

and he asked if i wanted to be quoted in the article.

And i said, "wouldn't that be

a big red flag pointing right at me?"

And he said, "yeah." And i said, "well, then, no,

i don't want to be quoted."

A lot of whistle-blowers,

that's why they report anonymously --

they don't want to get in trouble for it.

But then, my e-mails that i had sent to him

were published in full on newsweek's website

with my name.

- I decided i had had enough.

The agency wasn't what it had been before september 11th.

So, i resigned and truly did not look back.

And then i got a job

with the senate foreign relations committee.

And in that job, i got a call once from a journalist.

He had developed information

that the cia was misusing

its formal agreement with the state department

to provide cover

by putting people who had been involved

in the torture program undercover

so that their names couldn't be exposed in the press.

So, i wrote a letter to the agency asking for clarification.

Something like six weeks passed,

and finally, a colleague of mine came in the office and said,

"uh, hey, you got a response from the cia to your letter."

I said, "i haven't seen any response."

He said, "well, they classified it top secret sci" --

sensitive compartmented information --

and i wasn't cleared for top secret sci

in that senate job.

I said, "well, what'd the letter say?"

He said, "the letter says to go fuck yourself."

And so, i thought, "wow. They're still mad."

And then my book came out,

and that [scoffs] really made them mad.

- His new book is "the reluctant spy:

my secret life in the cia's war on terror."

Why would you keep doing the torture

if you got information that you thought was --

- 'cause i think people were panicked at the time

and they just couldn't bring themselves to stop

in case that information came out.

In the case of khalid sheikh mohammed

and the third prisoner who was waterboarded, nashiri,

it turned out that the information they provided

was not true.

They simply provided what they thought

the interrogator wanted to hear

to stop the waterboarding.

I have applied for every job i can think of,

everything from grocery stores to toys r us to starbucks.

You name it, i've applied there.

Haven't gotten even an e-mail or a call back.

I'll be honest with you -- i really miss working,

and so, regardless of what the job is,

i'm gonna be happy, i think, just passing eight hours a day.

[Insects chirping]

[dog barking in distance]

there were things i said in that book

that really bothered them.

And i used a lot of true names in the book, too,

people who weren't undercover.

[Engine turns over]

i wanted to be on the record

as saying that i thought they were wrong.

This was the wrong thing to do.

This is something that the u.s. government and the cia

should not be involved in.

And a lot of people at the cia disagree with me,

and i don't care.

Not anymore.

I don't care.

[Air brake hisses]

[birds chirping]

[toy playing "brahms' lullaby"]

- when he's awake inside the house,

you know, it's almost an obsession.

[Music continues]

- "ruby puts..."

- you know, he's always on the computer,

he's always on the phone.

There's really no moment of normalcy inside the house.

The kids know nothing about what's going on.

And i try and just protect them

and give john the space to do what he needs to do.

He does put on, i think, a really good, optimistic face,

but i know it bothers him deep down.

- We're in the middle of what are called cipa hearings,

stands for the classified information procedures act.

We have identifies 100, maybe, documents that are classified

that we believe are critical

to my ability to defend myself.

- Ultimately, in this case,

judge brinkema makes a determination

as to what will actually be admissible and relevant

at trial before a jury of his peers.

So, it's a critical phase.

- The judge is gonna come down on one side or the other

or maybe somewhere in the middle.

So, i'm serious when i say

i've read every one of these documents

and i can't defend myself without them.

In the very beginning,

it would not be untruthful to say that i felt suicidal.

I gave serious thought one day

to jumping in front of a subway train.

That's how --

that's how...

how depressed i was and how hopeless i felt.

- Hello!

- In my very first meeting with my attorneys,

they told me that if i took a plea,

my bill would probably be

somewhere in the $50,000 to $100,000 range.

But they said, "if you elect to go to trial,

we're talking about a bill that's gonna be

closer to $500,000."

So, here we are, my bill is already $1 million,

and if we go all the way through trial,

they told me to expect it now to be as much as $2 million.

I can't pay that kind of money.

Yeah, we don't need that anymore.

I don't know how i'll ever have that kind of money

to pay that bill.

[Baby giggles]

what?

- I knew that the white house and hayden

had placed themselves above the law,

and instead of choosing to follow the constitution,

they had chosen to not follow the constitution,

that they were now in violation of the oath that they took

to support and defend

and, for the president, to also protect.

I blew every whistle there was internally.

Early 2002,

i am a witness for this 9/11 congressional investigation.

I gave them incredibly classified information

that was given to me.

And what's important to understand is,

not only did i share everything i knew about thinthread,

i also was given information during this time period,

information that nsa had,

information that if it had been shared

with the proper authorities,

what is called national command authorities,

could have stopped 9/11.

I shared all that with the committee.

Prima facie, al qaeda and associative movement information

that would have gone a long ways to rolling up the plot.

It was in the database.

It was there.

No one knew it was there

because the systems they had in place were abysmal.

Nsa had abysmally failed the nation.

Now, i was charged with putting together

the statement for the record

to find out everything we could

about what nsa knew, should have known,

or could have known prior to 9/11.

And i was given some extraordinary information

as a result of that -- the team.

[Inhales deeply]

that information was put into the statement for the record --

the draft.

And then, while i was in england on another assignment,

got this frantic phone call saying,

"tom, we've been taken off the effort."

I said, "why?"

"When you come back, you'll have to find out."

[Big ben tolls]

they did not want to tell the truth to congress.

So, as soon as i got back,

i was pulled aside, and in no uncertain terms,

i was told, "be careful. They're looking for leakers."

This was not leakers to the press.

They were looking for leakers

to the congressional 9/11 investigations.

- They're coming down.

- They're in violation of fisa.

They're in violation of the fourth amendment.

They're now engaged

in an active coverup at the highest levels.

I knew that i had been tagged

as someone who was a threat to their ability

to keep from congress

what they knew about 9/11.

And, in fact, there was an edict that went out

from the highest levels of nsa,

through the deputy director,

to bury all the critical truth

about what nsa actually knew about 9/11

and never let any investigator

ever get their hands on it, period.

So, you know, here i am, seeing all this,

the massive fraud, waste, and abuse.

I had blown all the whistles i knew per statute,

followed that all to the t.

Nothing had happened.

It was clearly, congress, institutionally,

had become complicit.

The primacy of national security

was now trumping the constitution.

And so, i made a fateful decision in february of 2006

to make contact anonymously with a reporter,

detailing with her over a series of mailings --

and i was doing so in an encrypted fashion --

for a period of a year.

An article was written by her

in which, for the first time as public reveal,

the existence of a legal alternative

to the secret program called thinthread.

The set of people that knew about the secret program,

whether they were read into or not, was very, very small.

They began to target anybody associated with the program,

even if they were peripheral.

I had been told by very well-placed sources

that cheney personally said to the department of justice,

"find and fry the leakers.

Whoever -- i don't care.

Make an example of them. Burn them."

So, i get a phone call from a former colleague, kirk wiebe,

saying, "tom, we need to meet."

And we met,

and he proceeded to tell me

that we had just been raided by the fbi.

And i knew, sitting there in that tavern, i was next

because they were asking them about me.

I was now clearly the primary target.

Somehow, i had become --

i was considered the ringleader,

that somehow i was now the source.

It was just a matter of time.

It was not if. It was when.

I had already been put under

extraordinary electronic surveillance.

I was also physically tailed, physically surveilled.

It was not unusual at all

to see two unmarked cars at the end of the street.

So, the morning of 28 november, 2007,

i'm getting ready to go to work.

It's just after 7:00.

I'm about to get into my car.

[Vehicle approaches]

[vehicle door opens]

[radio chatter]

and there's this very, very loud knock on the door.

[Pounding on door]

spouse was there.

She was about to take our son, zachary, to middle school.

I mean, i sit here right now --

the look on her face.

[Radio chatter]

they served me with a warrant.

But i did cooperate with them.

That was for like eight and a half, nine hours.

And they're asking questions,

and they had one of the fbi agents

just simply taking notes.

Your miranda rights are read to you

'cause they said, "anything you say will and can be

used against you."

Well... it ultimately was.

So, every room had, like, a number in it

just kind of hanging.

And they began to go through everything.

It was clear that they were looking for headers

or anything that showed, you know, classification stamps.

And they actually removed several books

that were actually listed on the warrant.

That included james risen's "state of war" book.

That, they actually -- that became evidence.

Words and phrases, and those words and phrases

would have included "the secret program"

that i had disclosed to the congressional investigators.

My understanding is, sometimes,

they will catalogue things

and they will actually, they'll --

but they didn't do that.

I mean, they just had stuff everywhere.

'Cause this is -- it's so odd.

Every single drawer...

...and cabinet.

They were down here looking at the pots and pans.

Reaching behind here,

they were underneath the sink.

Seeing your entire life

and sort of the daily things that you have in your life

and the things you touch,

and now they're being touched by, you know, fbi agents

because you're up to no good

and they're inside all of your cabinets and --

yeah, there's a distinct --

more than just a passing feeling of being violated.

All these questions --

"are you gonna end up indicting me?

What charges will they file?

What else will happen to me?"

I was separated not long after this

and ended up having to move out of the house...

and did so in january of 2008

and was living...

was living north of here

for almost the next year.

So...

yeah, that's part of the price you pay as... it's...

that evening, i got a phone call to report to nsa,

the special h.r. department,

and they suspended my clearance.

I had to turn my badge in, they suspended my clearance,

put me on administrative leave.

- They ended up charging me with three counts of espionage,

and it turned out that they had been investigating me

since the abc news interview in 2007.

They've had it out for me since december of 2007,

in part because of the official work i was doing

as a senior staff member

of a congressional oversight committee,

and they're trying to make it look as though

i provided classified information to the press.

- I worry very much about john's well-being --

not just on a professional level,

on a personal level, on a human level.

It's hard for any single individual,

no matter how strong you are,

to deal with this and come out on the other side of it intact.

- When we were in our last hearing,

called the cipa hearing,

the government asked

for what they call a rule four conversation.

I had never heard of this.

But rule four, wherever this is written,

allows the government

to have an in-camera conversation with the judge,

meaning they get a private conversation

about the case with the judge without the defense attorneys

or the defendant being present,

and we don't have the right to know

what that conversation is about.

So, they had one of these in-camera

rule four conversations.

The next thing i knew, the judge came out

and ruled against us on all of our motions.

So, where we thought

we were gonna have this declassified information

with which i could defend myself,

at the end of the day, we ended up with nothing.

- There are pleas out there that would be fine.

I would bless a plea for one year of jail

to a "making false statement" charge.

That's a tack-on charge that they put on every indictment.

It's very different to plead guilty

to an intelligence identity protection act charge

and be the second person in the entire country

who's ever plead guilty to that.

- My defense attorneys claim that they reached out

to the prosecution unofficially,

just to see if there was any room for negotiation.

And so, within 24 hours,

we had this offer on the table.

- For people who are facing such life-altering decisions,

they deserve the straight dope on what's going on.

- We are going to virginia.

I'm looking for the address, which i have here.

- One of the lawyers,

the one that i like and respect the most,

leaned over and said, "if you were my brother,

i would tell you to take the deal.

You're not gonna get a better deal.

And if you don't take it, you're gonna risk

spending most of the rest of your life in prison."

- I feel like we're about to stage an intervention,

which is really pathetic

that it's come to this.

But he e-mailed one of the criminal defense attorneys

that, you know,

"i'm having second thoughts about saying

i'd take the plea last night."

I told him, "unless you convey that

to the lead attorneys,

they can go into this hearing

in exactly one hour from now

and say, "judge brinkema, no need to have the hearing.

Our guy has decided to plead guilty."

- I thought about it all weekend.

I changed my mind several times.

And then, we had a hard deadline of 5:00 yesterday afternoon.

Finally, at 6:00, they called me and said,

"it's time to fish or cut bait."

I have two choices right now, it seems to me.

One is to fire them and find somebody else,

and the other is to take this deal.

- Okay. - They said that they will mount

the most vigorous defense in court that they can,

but they believe that i'll lose and i'll get 6 to 12 years.

I feel like they've come to the conclusion

that it doesn't matter

that there are different layers of cover

because nobody's gonna care, and so i violated it.

- Okay, well, let me tell you why it matters,

because this is why they want you to bargain on this count.

They know that they are weak.

They know that iipa is written so narrowly

that it's virtually impossible to prove.

- We talked about this all night long.

That's why i come home,

i take the kids to school,

i come back, and i sleep on the couch for an hour,

'cause i've been up all night long.

She doesn't make enough money

to support our household.

We can borrow enough for two years to keep her going,

probably without filing for bankruptcy,

but if i were to be found guilty and got more than two years,

i mean... we think we're ruined now,

we'd be ruined permanently after that.

"L."

"M."

- And i'm missing two, but...

- tom drake thinks i should fight it,

and, you know, in my gut, i want to fight it.

But i have kids, and i just can't risk...

...them losing me for 6 to 12 years.

- Good afternoon. I just have a brief statement.

John kiriakou is a loyal american

who loves his country deeply.

He served for many years in the cia

as an agent in challenging

and often dangerous assignments.

And nothing that happened today

and this plea does not diminish in any way

the value of his service to the country

or the contributions he made

to the security of our nation.

- Mr. Kiriakou, are you at least happy that it's resolved?

- Obviously, i'm persona non grata

within the government

if you don't have a security clearance.

And so, i'm unemployed.

So, i did look for work.

I spent a lot of time looking for work.

I applied for a part-time position with apple,

and several months later, i actually got a phone call.

You know, i ended up working

at an apple store in the greater d.c. area

as an expert.

- A number of retaliatory steps were taken.

I was made the target

of a federal criminal leak investigation.

I was referred by the justice department to the state bars,

in which i'm licensed as an attorney.

It is a big deal if you're referred to the bar.

You could lose your license to practice law.

They referred me based on a secret report

to which i did not have access.

A justice department investigator

called my new law firm,

a private law firm where i worked,

and told them that they had just hired a criminal,

that i was going to steal attorney/client files,

and that they should really think about firing me.

So, they put me on administrative leave,

which was paid, briefly,

and then suddenly, they stopped paying me.

So, i applied for unemployment.

[Cellphone rings]

soon afterwards, the investigator called me

and started asking questions about the newsweek article.

He grew very antagonistic.

He said, "did you ever send e-mails to michael isikoff?"

And he's like, "if you don't tell me,

we're gonna search your computer."

And i'm like, "well, you know what?

I have to go. I'll call you back later."

And instead, i called a lawyer.

I mean, i was devastated.

I had lost my dream job and what i wanted to do.

I was incredibly anxious

'cause i felt like i was now under attack

and under investigation.

I also have multiple sclerosis,

which is a neurological disease exacerbated by stress.

- Part of the purpose of doing

what they've been doing for the last several years

is to destroy you.

- Prosecutors charged him with...

- the stress is hard to describe.

They leak information, for example, to the press

that puts you in the worst possible light.

- The justice department called me a traitor and a turncoat

in the new york times.

- You're not loyal,

you're not a good american,

you're a terrorist sympathizer.

- 10 felony charges filed against a former executive...

- it was at the top of the news at 6:00,

it was at the top of the news at 11:00 locally,

and it was at the top of the news the next morning.

- Coworkers would not talk to me,

and a few of them said,

"do not call me at work."

- "You've betrayed your country.

Where there's smoke, there's fire.

You did something.

Why would the government raid your house?

Why would they do that?"

- I was caught up in this kafkaesque nightmare.

- I have to try to protect my children

from being exposed to it.

I've got the fbi surveilling me

on and off for the last seven months.

They followed us grocery shopping.

They followed me into church on sunday morning

and sent fbi agents

to sit behind me in church and watch me.

I had neighbors calling me, saying,

"you know, there's a car at the end of the block,

and the guy's looking at your house with binoculars."

One woman who was parked and just watching my children,

and i went up to her van and i knocked on the window

and i said, "what do you want?"

And she kind of got nervous

and put the car in gear and took off.

- I was trying to be honest.

I was trying to do things by the book.

And yet, i'm the one who ends up

having to hire a team of lawyers.

- You have to mortgage your house.

You have to empty your bank account.

I went from making well over $150,000 a year

to a quarter of that.

- The groups that i thought

would want to get involved in helping me,

like the aclu, did not.

So, i was paying for private counsel on my own.

- The cost alone, financially --

never mind the personal cost --

is approaching $1 million in terms of lost income,

expenses, and other costs that i incur.

- I was told that i was blacklisted.

- My wife resigned because the agency

threatened her with a security investigation.

And so, both of us have been out of work

for seven months, at this point.

It's surreal, is the word.

A couple of weeks ago, my wife and i had this conversation --

it was on a sunday night, and she said,

"we can't afford food for the next week."

And she said, "i don't know what we're gonna do."

So, very reluctantly, we went to the county welfare office.

We explained our situation.

And they said, "yeah, you guys qualify for everything --

food stamps, medicaid,

cash payments, job training.

Everything."

- The pregnancy, in a way,

kept me really grounded,

like the kids did...

because i knew there was something so much larger

than all this crap that was going on.

And it was something i could focus on protecting.

And somehow, by protecting the baby,

i could protect myself in some kind of way.

I had gone... to work.

I was still -- i had gone into hawkins delafield & wood,

the law firm where i worked.

And my boss told me, he's like,

"you should know that the managing partner

in new york and agent powell

are walking around the office right now,

and agent powell had said,

'something really big is gonna happen.'

It sounds like you're gonna be arrested tonight."

And so, i was just...

so scared by that.

And nighttime, it was the worst time for me.

That's when i always kind of had my night demons.

You know, i'm imagining doing the perp walk

in front of all the neighborhood moms

and, you know, having to go in the police car and be booked.

All of this stuff would really, like, be in my mind,

and i couldn't turn it off.

And, you know, i just woke up the next morning,

and my night gown was just --

was totally just blood everywhere.

And i just...

[voice breaking] i just knew that...

i knew i wasn't pregnant anymore.

- You know, sometimes, if i'm driving around the area

and there's an orthodox church,

if i notice some cars in the parking lot,

i go over to church, sit through the service,

light a candle, and go on my way.

I take strength in that.

It comforts me.

One thing that's very important to me

is the personal story of a 20th century saint

in the orthodox church, saint nectarios.

Saint nectarios went through his entire life

trying to correct or rebut lies

that had been told about him by people who coveted his office.

He was personally ruined by these rumors.

He was stripped of his position, he was demoted.

He lost everything.

And he never -- he never accused anyone.

He forgave them, and he moved on with his life.

- The only place left,

the only other check on the secret side of government,

the only other place to begin to articulate

what was really at stake,

both for me personally as an american --

but what were the larger stakes for america

was the court of public opinion.

And the person that led that effort was jesselyn radack.

- I read about tom's case in the newspaper,

and i was immediately alarmed.

Clearly, a line had been crossed

because as unmercifully

as the bush administration treated me,

at least i was never prosecuted.

And here, they were going to prosecute someone.

I stayed up that night.

I started an op-ed

about the difference between leaking and whistle-blowing.

And i submitted it, and, luckily,

the los angeles times published it.

I often will write about something

and put it out there almost as a beacon...

...for someone to grasp on to.

- She not only got who i was as a whistle-blower.

She realized what was at stake because she, herself,

had experienced what it meant

to be on the receiving end of a government

who wanted to punish her

for simply standing up and telling the truth.

- I needed to do an educational campaign.

I needed to do a whistle-blower reprisal complaint

because he had gone through proper channels

and complained to the inspector general.

And this was the ultimate retaliation.

They sold him down the river

and gave his name to the justice department to prosecute.

We had an article by jane mayer of the new yorker,

who did an in-depth,

long-form investigative journalistic piece.

- The government says he betrayed his country.

- And that was followed the next week

by a "60 minutes" piece.

And then, there were editorials

by the l.a. times and the washington post,

saying that tom drake is a whistle-blower

and it's ridiculous to be using the espionage act against him.

That media was, i think, a saving grace.

- Federal prosecutors today

dropped nearly all of the charges against thomas drake.

The former u.s. intelligence official,

who walked out of the baltimore courthouse today

had been charged under the espionage act

with mishandling sensitive information.

It's a high-profile failure for the justice department,

which is cracking down on government leaks.

- You know,

i'm not sure anymore exactly who the good guys are.

So much has changed since september 11th in our country

that what a decade ago

would have been insanity in terms of policy

is now the norm.

And it's as though if you don't buy into the policy,

you're an enemy.

- Dad? - Yep.

- There's batman, eats a hot dog,

and this hot dog eats batman.

- Gross!

- Is that the one that cookie monster eats a cookie?

- This past weekend, news came out of general petraeus' affair.

More news followed that his alleged girlfriend

may have had classified information on her computer.

And then the fbi issues a statement

saying that it's not a criminal investigation.

Well, just a week ago, they charged a translator in bahrain

with two counts of espionage

for sending a classified document

to stanford university's archives.

Uh, if this woman had classified information on her computer,

she obviously had to have gotten it from petraeus.

Well, why aren't they being charged with espionage?

Okay. Let's see what i have here.

Phone.

Glasses 'cause i'm blind.

Okay.

In this case, it looks like

if you're a general

and you're buddies with the president

or if you're the girlfriend of the general,

you're gonna get a pass.

- [Babbles]

- if you're a nobody,

you're gonna go to jail on something,

whether it's an espionage act count

or some reduced penalty.

You're gonna go to jail.

- Good to see you again.

Thanks for the speech.

- You don't have another one, do you?

- [Speaks indistinctly] - it was okay.

There was one line where it said,

like, something like,

"this has been immensely hard on my kids..."

- yes. My family.

- I forgot to add in,

"and my wife." - Yeah.

"See my kids..."

- "...grow up."

- 23rd annual joe a. Callaway award for civic courage

is hereby presented to john kiriakou,

anti-torture advocate on the ramparts,

in recognition of his stand against using torture

to extract information from government prisoners,

his public disclosure that torture,

including waterboarding,

is official policy, not a rogue event,

as the government claims,

his leadership as the first cia officer

to confirm and then condemn this illegal torture policy.

[Applause]

- there's a rumor that they might just shackle me

and take me away tomorrow.

Yeah, so, i'm gonna take off

my crucifix and my wedding ring

before i leave for the courthouse.

I don't know.

Send me to some pri--

yeah, send me to some prison someplace.

Don't worry.

Okay?

No. Don't be.

Don't be.

- When we first told the kids

that i was gonna have to leave for a couple of years,

max took it hard. He cried a lot.

Okay. You want this blanket?

- I'll tell you why i'm going to sleep.

'Cause my hand feels all stiff when i move it.

- Okay.

He was upset that i was not

gonna be around for his birthday.

- I actually might go to sleep.

- I'm gonna miss his first communion.

Cold today.

19 degrees.

Hi. Good morning.

- Hey.

- They don't want me to give a statement.

I said, "i just want to thank people."

So, i'm gonna thank people.

- Today's sentence should be a reminder

to every individual who works for the government

who comes into the possession

of closely held, sensitive information

regarding the national defense

or the identity of a covert agent,

that it is critical that that information remain secure.

- John is the only cia agent

who will be going to prison with respect to the torture program,

and he didn't torture anybody.

He is also the only cia agent

going to prison for leaking something to the press,

when we've had numerous top-level disclosures

of classified information,

including sources and methods to hollywood

for the production of the movie "zero dark thirty,"

and no one seems to have a problem with that.

- This morning, i was sentenced to 30 months in prison

for a crime to which i had pleaded guilty.

I want to say that i come out of court

positive, confident, and optimistic.

I would like to thank several...

- [giggles]

- today, i have an audience of one,

and it's barack obama.

We're at the point now where this is between

barack obama and me.

He's the only person who can help me,

if he's so inclined,

and i have to try to reach him today.

- Not in 2004, not in 2000,

jeb was talking about this in 1997.

- [Laughs]

- stand by.

15.

- Thanks.

- Coming up, the first cia officer

ever sentenced for leaking classified information.

Why does he consider that to be a badge of honor?

And rare treasures from president kennedy

in our studio before they hit the auction block.

- We want to start this half hour with the former cia officer

sentenced to 30 months behind bars,

the first to ever be sent to jail

for leaking classified secrets.

We're gonna talk to him exclusively in a moment.

But first, with the backstory,

here's nbc's andrea mitchell.

- More one and three. - Interview larry, please.

- ...after turning up in a defense motion

for guantanamo detainees.

- That led the investigators to mr. Kiriakou,

who then admitted in court under oath

that he knowingly, intentionally

outed the identity of his covert agent.

- Kiriakou has portrayed himself

as a whistle-blower for disclosing

the bush administration's controversial

waterboarding campaigns.

- And john kiriakou is with us exclusively.

John, good morning. It's good to see you.

- Good morning. Thanks for having me.

- Depending on who you are, you look at this case differently.

Some people say you've betrayed your former colleagues

in order to raise your media profile,

hoping to sell books

and to get a consulting business going.

Others say you were a whistle-blower.

You spoke out, and now you're being wrongly prosecuted.

You say you wear this conviction like a badge of honor.

- I do. I wear this conviction

as a badge of honor because this conviction

is not about leaking.

This case was about torture from the very beginning.

- Let me just stop you right there

because you acknowledged, you pleaded guilty,

and you admitted that you identified a cia officer

who was, in fact, covert.

That is against the law. - Yes.

- You don't disagree with that. - No.

And i should never have done that.

That was a terrible mistake.

- In fact, in 2007, you told msnbc

you were coming forward then because you thought

that the agency had gotten "a bum rap on waterboarding."

That's somebody who's defending these practices,

not denouncing them.

- I was relying on what the cia

had told cia officers inside the building,

that these methods were effective.

That turned out to be a lie.

- And you've admitted not just

to the leaking of the one name,

but you also acknowledge giving classified information

to yet a second reporter.

Did you ask these journalists,

"hey, what are you gonna do with this information?"

- Well, let me correct you on one thing.

The reporter came to me with a name

and said, "can you talk to me about this?"

- I think specifically the charges said

that you disclosed the connection of that officer

to a classified operation.

And yet, in a recorded fbi interview a year ago,

you said you knew that this officer was always...

one final thing --

you disclosed the name of this officer to this journalist.

The journalist in turn passed it to a defense investigator.

A picture of this officer

ended up in the jail cell of a terror suspect.

How do you feel about that?

- Stay there. - Stay right there? Okay.

- Thank you. Take care.

- Thank you so much for taking the time.

Bye.

- Bye, mr. Kiriakou.

- Wonderful job.

- You don't think i helped myself?

Oh.

[Car door closes]

i'll just keep my fingers crossed, see what happens.

[Clippers buzzing]

[indistinct conversations]

- we've never used the word "prison" with the children.

We told them that,

"you know i've been involved with this fight with the fbi

for the last year."

And i said, "unfortunately, i lost.

And so, because i lost,

i'm gonna have to go to pennsylvania for two years

to teach bad guys how to get their high-school diplomas.

And when i finish that contract, i'm gonna come home,

we're gonna be together again as a family,

and everything is gonna be back to normal."

How were your days at school?

- Good. - It was good.

- Good.

So, guys, this is the last time

i'm gonna pick you up from school for awhile.

- Mm-hmm. - Boo.

I my wish daddy was with me all the time.

- You guys will have a good vacation.

- Yeah, but you're not gonna be with us.

- No.

- [Sighs]

why?

I wish you won.

Daddy, i wish you won.

- What, honey? - I wish you won.

- I wish i won, too.

Hey, max? - Huh?

- You want to play in the backyard?

- Mm-hmm.

- Okay. You have a jacket?

I'm hoping the actual day of my departure

is gonna be as normal a day for the kids as possible.

- I think most of these

match the blue part of the sky.

- I don't want the kids to be disrupted in any way that day.

[Chuckling] oh!

I don't want there to be lots of tears and, you know,

"oh, my god, what are we gonna do for the next two years?"

I don't want any of that.

I want them to think,

"okay. Dad's gonna go.

He's gonna work.

And we'll see him on the weekends,

and everything's gonna be okay."

Ohh.

[Branches snapping]

- i got it! I got it!

- Dad.

- Daddy, now can you help?

- Are you okay? - It really hurts.

- Where did it hurt you?

- [Crying]

- aw. Let me see.

- [Sobs loudly]

- okay.

You gave it a little scrape, honey.

- No, right here! - Yeah.

Daddy!

- Okay? Yeah.

Okay? Just a little scrape.

Man, i'm tired.

How are you? - How are you?

- Oh, i'm all right.

- Hmm. "There he doesn't look like he's telling the truth.

You never get to do anything.

Hey, i've got an idea.

Let's play drive the bus.

I'll go first."

- Bye.

- [Smooches]

- don't throw it.

So, just call me or send me a text,

and then i'll have your number.

- Okay. - Great.

- I think it's gonna take a long time

before people realize

what a mistake we made with this torture program.

I think it's gonna be 20, 30, 40 years before people say,

"we tortured people in this country?

What were we thinking?"

- I have great fears for the future of the republic

because if the trend line continues,

the national security regime, a secrecy regime,

cannot coexist with a constitutional democracy.

Something has to give.

- "Only 10 people in american history

have been charged with espionage

for leaking classified information,

seven of them under barack obama.

The effect of the charge

on a person's life,

being viewed as a traitor,

being shunned by family and friends,

incurring massive legal bills,

is all a part of the plan

of forcing the whistle-blower into personal ruin

to weaken him to the point

where he will plead guilty to just about anything

to make the case go away.

I know.

The three espionage charges against me

made me one of the obama seven."

[Car door closes]

- i think the government's going to launch an investigation.

I think they're going to say i've committed grave crimes,

i've, you know, violated the espionage act.

They're gonna say, you know, i've aided our enemies.

- A disclosure of this kind,

of highly classified material,

gives our terrorist enemies a playbook

for our activities designed to thwart them.

- The longer the snowden saga drags on,

so do the questions about the surveillance programs.

I don't think anything about this

is something the white house wants to deal with.

- The government is desperate

to not deal with the actual content of those disclosures.

- Why is the government spying on its own people?

- Our concern is that they have grabbed these phone calls

and grabbed these e-mails

and have the temptation to listen to them and read them

whether they have the authority to or not.

- The u.s. government has routinely violated

the constitutional protections afforded its own citizens

while disregarding the internal integrity of other states

and the fundamental rights of non-u.s. citizens.

- "Some of the investigations

began during the bush administration,

as was the case with nsa whistle-blower tom drake.

But espionage act cases

have been prosecuted only under obama."

You know, he's my only client

in jail for this right now,

and he completely doesn't belong there.

And he completely gets how politicized this is.

[Voice breaking] and, for me, as an attorney,

i know i did all i could for him,

but on a personal level,

it feels like a failure.

I feel...

l-like i could have --

there's something i could have done more.

In our history, it's been whistle-blowers

who have made the difference,

it's been whistle-blowers who have caused

these major, cataclysmic changes in our society.

And i think freedom can win out over fear.

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