On January 23, 2012, Kiriakou was charged with repeatedly disclosing classified information to journalists, including the name of a covert CIA officer and information revealing the role of another CIA employee, Deuce Martinez, in classified activities.[23][24][25] In addition to leaking the names and roles of CIA officers, Kiriakou was alleged to have lied to the CIA to get his book published.[26]

On January 25, 2013, Kiriakou was sentenced to 30 months in prison, making him the second CIA officer to be jailed for revealing classified material of CIA undercover identities.[9]

The operative, John Kiriakou, who worked for the agency from 1990 to 2004, admitted that he had disclosed the name of the former colleague to a reporter, identified as Matthew Cole, formerly of ABC News. Mr. Kiriakou, who was a leader of the team that located and captured Abu Zubaydah, a suspected high-level facilitator for Al Qaeda, in Pakistan in 2002, pleaded guilty to violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.

Mr. Kiriakou came to public attention in late 2007 when he gave an interview to ABC News portraying the suffocation technique called waterboarding as torture, but describing it as necessary. The interview prompted reporters investigating the program to reach out to him.

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/1/30/ex_cia_agent_whistleblower_john_kiriakou

...In a statement urging President Obama to commute Kiriakou’s sentence, a group of signatories including attorneys and former CIA officers said, quote, "[Kiriakou] is an anti-torture whistleblower who spoke out against torture because he believed it violated his oath to the Constitution. ... Please, Mr. President, do not allow your legacy to be one where only the whistleblower goes to prison."

<>

AMY GOODMAN: John Kiriakou joins us now from Washington, D.C. He spent 14 years at the CIA as an analyst and a case officer. In 2002, he led the team that found Abu Zubaydah, a high-ranking member of al-Qaeda. He’s father of five. In 2010, he published a memoir entitled The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA’s War on Terror.

And we’re joined by one of John Kirakou’s attorneys, Jesselyn Radack. She’s the director of National Security & Human Rights at the Government Accountability Project, a former ethics adviser to the United States Department of Justice.

Mr. Kiriakou came to public attention in late 2007 when he gave an interview to ABC News portraying the suffocation technique called waterboarding as torture, but describing it as necessary. The interview prompted reporters investigating the program to reach out to him.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/kiriakou_defenders_hope_to_commute_whistle-blowers_prison_sentence_20130123

Kiriakou Defenders Hope to Get Whistle-Blower’s Prison Sentence Commuted
Posted on Jan 23, 2013

...Those who have signed the letters in support of Kiriakou are politically varied. Among them are constitutional lawyer Bruce Fein, consumer advocate Ralph Nader, former Public Citizen president Joan Claybrook, former senior official from the departments of State, Defense and National Security Council Morton Halperin, CNN senior political analyst David Gergen and retired CIA officer Raymond McGovern. Others include 10 former CIA agents and five professors from Liberty University in Virginia.

https://blog.nader.org/2013/01/15/ralph-nader-and-colleagues-call-on-obama-to-pardon-john-kiriakou/

[center]Ralph Nader and Colleagues Call on Obama to Pardon John Kiriakou[/center]

President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave, NW
Washington, DC
20500

Dear President Obama:

We the undersigned are writing to urge that you pardon former CIA officer John Kiriakou. Motivated as a father devoted to his children, Mr. Kiriakou recently pleaded guilty to one count of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1981 to avoid the government’s threat of long-term devastation of his cherished family.

He pleaded guilty to the crime of providing the name of a former colleague to an author who was writing a book and searching for former CIA officers to interview, an act which seems much less censorable than Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage’s disclosure of the CIA’s Valerie Plame to reporter Robert Novak with impunity. Mr. Kiriakou’s disclosure never was made publicly available, and occasioned no harm to the United States. Indeed, it assisted in ending waterboarding, the crime of torture as you and your Attorney General have acknowledged. In contrast, Mr. Armitage’s disclosure was shared to the world by Mr. Novak, and reportedly placed in danger persons who had associated with Ms. Plame. The reporter of Mr. Kiriakou’s information unilaterally shared the name with the American Civil Liberties Union.

We believe that commutation is appropriate in this case for a number of reasons:

First, Mr. Kiriakou is a highly decorated, fourteen-year CIA counterterrorism veteran who has spent his entire adult life in public service, including two years as a senior aide to Senator John Kerry. He was the leader of the team that captured an al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah in Faisalabad, Pakistan in 2002. He is the recipient of twelve CIA Exceptional Performance Awards, the Sustained Superior Performance Award, the Meritorious Honor Award with Medal, and the Counterterrorism Service Medal.

Second, Mr. Kiriakou is an anti-torture whistleblower who spoke out against torture because he believed it violated his oath to the Constitution. He never tortured anyone, yet he is the only individual to be prosecuted in relation to the torture program of the past decade. The interrogators who tortured prisoners, the officials who gave the orders, the attorneys who authored the torture memos, and the CIA officers who destroyed the interrogation tapes have not been held professionally accountable, much less charged with crimes.

Third, there is precedent for leniency. In 2007, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby was granted a commutation after being found guilty of four felony counts – obstruction of justice, making a false statement, and two counts of perjury – related to the Valerie Plame affair. Mr. Libby did not spend one day in prison. Similarly, in 2001 President Clinton pardoned Samuel L. Morison, the only person ever convicted of espionage for leaking classified information to the press.

Mr. President, do not allow your legacy to be one where only the accurate whistleblower goes to prison.

We urge you to take action in this matter. Please do not let this injustice stand. Commute John Kiriakou’s sentence.

Respectfully,

Bruce Fein
Ralph Nader
Joan Claybrook