Photo: Thomas Schmidt / CC BY-SA 4.0 (source: Wikimedia Commons)
My Take
John Kiriakou represents a question I keep returning to: what does telling the truth actually cost? He exposed the CIA's use of torture in 2007 and paid with his career and his freedom, while the practices he revealed went largely unpunished. Whatever one thinks of his choices, that asymmetry says something uncomfortable about how institutions handle inconvenient honesty. I find his second act — author, radio host, persistent commentator — quietly impressive; he kept his voice rather than retreating into bitterness. The Sam Adams Award he later received feels like history slowly correcting its ledger. People like him are exactly why careful, honest records of whistleblowers matter.
Overview
John Chris Kiriakou ( kee-ree-AH-koo; born August 9, 1964) is an American former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer, author, and whistleblower who, in 2007, exposed the CIA's use of torture during the war on terror. He was an intelligence analyst and operations officer for the CIA's Counterterrorism Center and a senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
1. Profile
- Name (English)
- John Kiriakou
- Name (Japanese)
- ジョン・キリアコウ
- Reading
- じょん・きりあこう
- Born
- August 9, 1964 (age 61)
- Zodiac / Chinese zodiac
- Leo / Dragon
- Origin
- Sharon, Pennsylvania, United States
- Blood type
- Private
- Height
- Private
- Agency
- Private
- Occupation
- writer / consultant / intelligence analyst / radio personality
2. Background
- Elementary school
- Private
- Junior high
- Private
- High school
- New Castle Junior/Senior High School
- University
- George Washington University
Awards & achievements
- 2016 Sam Adams Award
- Meritorious Honor Award
- 2012 Joe A. Callaway Award for Civic Courage
3. Relationships
- Spouse
- Private
- Children
- Private
- Parents
- Private
- Siblings
- Private
4. Personality
Motto
Private
6. Links
- Official sitehttps://johnkiriakou.com/
- Xhttps://x.com/JohnKiriakou
- Wikipedia (Japanese)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John%20Kiriakou
Writer — see all → · Consultant — see all → · More people from United States →
7. About this entry
Tags
- Last updated
- 2026-06-11
Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public items are marked "Private / Unknown". English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.