Former CIA officer presents “Ethics in Intelligence Operations” March 14

John Kiriakou, former CIA officer, noted author and commentator, presents “Ethics in Intelligence Operations” 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 14, in St. John’s Episcopal Church on Wick Avenue in Youngstown.

The free lecture is open to the public and sponsored by the James Dales Ethics Center at Youngstown State University, WYSU 88.5 FM and the church. Attendees should park behind church off Walnut Street. Those planning to attend should call 330-743-3175.

Kiriakou, born in 1964 as the grandson of Greek immigrants in New Castle, Pa., and the son of teachers in the New Castle school system, earned both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Middle Eastern Studies and Legislative Affairs at George Washington University. He was recruited to join the CIA in 1990, where he served as a Middle Eastern analyst, from 1994 to 1996. The day after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, Kiriakou volunteered to go to Pakistan as the head of an Anti-Terrorist Operation Unit. There he formed a combined CIA/FBI group of 40 agents. In 2002, the group participated in 13 simultaneous raids late at night that resulted in the capture of Abu Zubaydah, thought then to be the third highest ranking al Qaeda leader.

Two years later, he retired from the CIA and he joined the Deloitte and Touche accounting firm. He also was a counter-terrorism expert for ABC News and a senior investigator for U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

He disclosed in a TV interview that torture was a sanctioned practice of the government, approved by the president, and became known as a whistleblower. Years of investigation followed. In 2012, he pled to violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. He had inadvertently mentioned a fellow officer’s name in recounting a CIA story in another interview. He served two years in a low security federal prison in Loretto, Pa.

Kiriakou today is an author and lecturer. He recently was honored at American University in Washington by the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity with the Sam Adams Award for Integrity.