John Kiriakou is a former CIA analyst,  case officer, and senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He is currently an activist for the whistleblower community, a radio host, and the author of the recent book The Convenient Terrorist: Two Whistleblowers’ Stories of Torture, Terror, Secret Wars and CIA Lies, with Joseph Hickman.

Kiriakou was the first to confirm the agency’s secret waterboarding program and publicly describe it as “torture.” The government responded by charging him with leaking classified information to a reporter after which he was convicted and spent 30 months in a high-security federal prison from 2013 to 2015.