John Kiriakou | featured news

A former CIA agent who leaked a covert officer's name to the media has been sentenced to 30 months in prison. John Kiriakou, 48, pleaded guilty in 2012 to violating an intelligence law. No-one had been convicted under the statute in 27 years.

In late 2007, there was the first crack of daylight into the government's use of waterboarding during interrogations of Al Qaeda detainees. On Dec. 10, John Kiriakou, a former C.I.A. officer who had participated in the capture of the suspected terrorist Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan in 2002, appeared on ABC News to say that while he considered waterboarding a form of torture, the technique worked and yielded results very quickly.