Days before John Kiriakou, a former CIA officer convicted of a classified leak, is scheduled to be sentenced to thirty months in jail, support for him is growing. Ralph Nader, consumer advocate and former presidential candidate, Joan Claybrook, a lawyer who once served as president of Public Citizen and Bruce Fein, lawyer active on civil [...]

(update below) Ahead of the confirmation of Deputy National Security Advisor John Brennan to the position of CIA director, US Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon has sent a letter to Brennan asking him to provide Congress access to “secret legal opinions outlining the government’s ability to target and kill Americans believed to be involved in [...]

The Oscar-nominated film Zero Dark Thirty depicting the hunt for Osama bin Laden opened everywhere in the United States this weekend. Coincidentally, the date it opened was also the eleventh year anniversary of the opening of the Guantanamo Bay prison. Much has been written about the film throughout the past month, particularly how it shows [...]

Former CIA officer John Kiriakou is not only the first CIA officer to be convicted of a classified leak but he also can be considered the first successful leak prosecution by the administration of President Barack Obama. A few days ago, I posted videos of a discussion I had with NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake on [...]

On Sunday, New York Times journalist Scott Shane published a feature story on the Justice Department’s prosecution of John Kiriakou, a former CIA officer convicted of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA) by revealing the name of an undercover officer. It was the first successful conviction of someone for a disclosure since President Barack Obama was [...]

(updated below)  John Brennan, who served as President Barack Obama’s counterterrorism advisor throughout his first term, has been nominated to head the CIA. It not only signals Obama’s intent to continue to employ an extrajudicial targeted killing program, particularly in countries like Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia, but also is further indication the global War on [...]

(update below) The Washington Post has published a story that spotlights how the administration of President Barack Obama has embraced the practice of extraordinary rendition, highlighting the rendition of two Swedish men and one British-Somali man who had his British citizenship revoked. It details what is known about the men who had been missing and [...]

Members of militant groups in Pakistan may not be able to do much to prevent the United States from launching drone strikes in Pakistan, but, as the New York Times‘ Declan Walsh reports, militants conduct witch hunts against people they suspect of being informers and often torture them before shooting, hanging or beheading them. From Walsh’s [...]

The British High Court has refused to review whether intelligence agencies in the United Kingdom have been involved in passing on information that has been used by the CIA to carry out drone attacks.The Pakistani man, Noor Khan, whose father was killed by a US drone strike, intends to appeal the decision. On March 17, 2011, [...]

The Senate Intelligence Committee recently adopted a six thousand page report on CIA torture and abuse. The report, a product of a three-year review of CIA practices, including its rendition, detention and interrogation (RDI) program, remains classified. It stems from at least six million CIA documents and could be the most comprehensive record to-date of [...]