Silenced Page #3

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the role of a cia officer

and the capture

of a top al qaeda leader.

-abu zubaydah,

reportedly waterboarded

more than 80 times,

a controversial

interrogation technique.

-a senior person

at the heritage foundation

called me a traitor in an op-ed

in the san francisco chronicle.

i forced myself to read

some of these articles,

and in every one

of these articles,

jesselyn radack was quoted.

and i thought,

"wow, this woman gets it,

that there's a difference

between leaking

and whistle-blowing,

that what i blew

the whistle on

was government illegality."

and i thought,

"i have to meet this woman."

-you become a whistle-blower

by operation of law

when you make a disclosure

that you reasonably believe

evidences fraud, waste, abuse,

or illegality.

when you look

in the dictionary

and the synonyms

for whistle-blower

are things

like snitch, back-stabber,

there are all these

negative connotations

that go with you bucking

the system --

you're not a team player,

you're a traitor,

because that is

the ultimate label.

what's even more interesting

is that they brought up

the word whistle-blower.

-i'm not

a criminal defense lawyer.

what i do

is represent whistle-blowers

and often work in tandem

with criminal defense lawyers

on these

espionage act cases.

-judge brinkema

specifically warned them

not to dump discovery on us

on the eve of the trial.

-in kiriakou's case,

the government's ticked off that

he called waterboarding torture,

that he revealed torture

as a program

and not some rogue pastime,

and that he wrote a book

in which he's very critical

of cia's torture

and the behavior of the fbi.

that's what the government's

really mad about.

-john kiriakou

was a cia intelligence officer

from 1990 to 2004.

he is charged with violating

the espionage act

by passing classified...

-a journalist called john

and asked him to confirm a name,

which he did,

which is routinely done

by former agency officials,

and for that, they charged him

with the espionage

and intelligence identity

protection act counts.

the espionage act

is this arcane 1917 law

that is meant to go after spies,

not whistle-blowers.

it was inconceivable that you

would use such a heavy-handed,

out-of-scope, arcane law

to go after someone.

i thought we figured that out

40 years ago

with dan ellsberg and his case.

when tom drake was indicted

under the espionage act,

i thought it was

a strange one-off.

though, four months later,

stephen kim, an analyst

at the state department,

was also indicted.

at that point, i looked back

and realized this guy,

shamai leibowitz,

the year before,

had plead guilty.

it was under a different part

of the espionage act,

but there was starting

to be a pattern.

when you look at

the totality of it,

you have shamai leibowitz

of the fbi, contract linguist,

tom drake of the nsa,

stephen kim

of the state department,

jeff sterling of the cia,

john kiriakou of the cia,

and bradley manning, army,

and you realize

for obama to have

six of these on his watch

and they are all people

who are in the national security

or intelligence fields...

-a breach at the nation's

top security agency.

-a young army private

is now being formally charged

in connection with leaked video.

-there are common threads

of government overreach,

secrecy,

and trying to cover up some

of our worst sins as a country

whether it was a war crime

or whether it was

secret domestic surveillance

or whether it was torture.

-stephen jin-woo kim accused

of violating the espionage act.

-charged with repeatedly

leaking classified secrets.

-leaking classified information.

-top-secret information.

-disclosing

classified information.

-according to the federal

indictment, thomas drake was...

-it's the most serious charge

that can be leveled

against an american.

it's saying,

"you are an enemy of the state."

why use that?

to send a very chilling,

chilling message

to people

to keep quiet.

-after september 11th,

i became the chief

of counterterrorism operations

in pakistan.

i was told

on my first day

to come up with

the standard operating procedure

for taking down

a terrorist safe house.

so, i literally sat at a desk

with a legal pad, thinking,

"well, how am i gonna do this?

what would be the first thing

i would want to do

if i was gonna

take down a safe house?"

well, i would want it

to be dark.

so, let's say 2:
00

in the morning we'll do it.

so, i wrote 0200

at the top of the page.

and then little by little,

i came up with this plan.

finally, we got a report

from headquarters

that abu zubaydah

was somewhere in pakistan.

now, at the time,

we thought that abu zubaydah

was the third-ranking person

in al qaeda.

and all we knew was that

he was somewhere in pakistan,

but pakistan's

the size of texas.

he made one mistake

that allowed us

to narrow his location down

to 14 different sites.

so, we brought in

a large team from headquarters,

half cia, half fbi.

we brought in weapons and

electronics and walkie-talkies,

and we hit all 14 sites

at exactly the same time.

and he happened to be

in one of the houses.

he tried to escape by jumping

from the roof of his house

to the roof of

the neighboring house,

and the pakistanis

shot him three times

in the stomach,

the groin, and the thigh.

and he was

very gravely wounded.

[ helicopter blades whirring ]

he was out of it

for a day and a half

before he finally

came out of a coma,

but i was the first person

to speak to him.

at first, he asked

for a glass of red wine.

and then,

a couple hours later,

he asked me to smother him

with a pillow.

once he sort of had his bearings

and he realized,

"oh, my god,

the americans have me,"

he wanted to know

what was gonna happen to him,

where he was gonna be sent.

he was very frightened,

i think of the unknown.

i didn't know

where he was gonna go,

and i didn't know

that he was gonna be tortured.

i didn't have a need to know.

[ fly buzzing ]

he would recite poetry to me

that he had written.

-[ speaking in arabic ]

-he cried at the thought of,

he said,

"never knowing

the joy of fatherhood,

never knowing

the touch of a woman."

i remember telling him,

"i should hate you

and i should want to kill you,

and i don't."

i said, "you're pathetic."

i mean, he was just a young guy.

he wasn't even 30 years old.

and all he did was cry.

and i remember saying

to a colleague of mine,

"this is the fearsome al qaeda?

this is what we've been

so worried about

and so frightened of?"

it was a revelation to me.

they're just guys.

they're just --

and not even that,

they're just young,

illiterate guys

that had nothing else to do.

and believe me when i say 99% of

them had never read the quran.

they weren't true believers.

they hadn't pledged fealty

to osama bin laden.

they just wanted to get out

of that village in yemen

and maybe make

a couple of bucks.

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