Summer 2002: Later Defender of Waterboarding Transferred to Iraqi Issues

John Kiriakou, a CIA officer who will later make a crucial intervention in the US debate on the ethics of waterboarding (see December 10, 2007), is transferred to Iraqi issues at the agency’s headquarters. He had previously been chief of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center in Pakistan (see Spring-Summer 2002 and Possibly Before). Kiriakou’s job is to act as an executive assistant to Robert Grenier, the CIA’s Iraq mission manager. In this position he will play a part in the Plame affair (see 4:30 p.m. June 10, 2003). [Mother Jones, 12/21/2007]