May 17, 2017
PRISONERS-OF-DISSENT: Locked Up for Exposing Crimes. The 11th Event of the Disruption Network Lab Keynote: Doing Time Like a Spy. On Prison Survival and the CIA's War on Terror. With John Kiriakou(CIA anti-torture whistleblower, USA). Moderated by Magnus Ag (Senior Programm Officer, Freemuse, DK/DE) CIA anti-torture whistleblower John Kiriakou is considered the first US intelligence officer to reveal information about the US intelligence community’s use of torture techniques. A long-time former CIA official and case officer, John Kiriakou became an anti-torture whistleblower and activist when he told ABC News in December 2007 that the CIA was torturing Al Qaeda prisoners. Immediately after John’s interview, the Justice Department initiated a years-long investigation, determined to find something–anything–to charge him with. John eventually was charged with three counts of espionage, one count of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act and one count of making a false statement as a result of the 2007 ABC News interview. On February 28, 2013, after pleading guilty to violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, Kiriakou began serving his prison sentence. During this keynote presentation, Kiriakou will talk about the effects and costs of national security whistleblowing in the United States, as well as his book, Doing Time Like a Spy: How the CIA Taught Me to Survive and Thrive in Prison, to be released May 3, 2017 (published by Rare Bird Books, pre-order here (http://www.rarebirdbooks.com/new-products/doing-time-like-a-spy-by-john-kiriakou)). The book is Kiriakou’s memoir of his twenty-three months in prison. Using twenty life skills he learned in CIA operational training, he was able to keep himself safe and at the top of the prison social heap. What were improper and inappropriate manipulations of Kiriakou, through maneuvers that were designed to break him, came an end result that only made him stronger. www.disruptionlab.org/prisoners-of-dissent (http://www.disruptionlab.org/prisoners-of-dissent) Photo: Thomas Schmidt Produced by Voice Republic For more podcasts visit http://voicerepublic.com