Category Archives: Current Affairs

CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou: Interview – Part 1

AFL: You were very intensely involved in the anti-Al Queda work after 9-11. The book tells of much derring-do & “operations” in Pakistan. Which of those was scariest? How does that all look from this point 13 years later?

John Kiriakou: It’s funny to me in retrospect that I never felt in any personal danger in Pakistan, at least not until I was supposed to go to Karachi near the end of my tour there. I just had a “feeling” about Karachi. I never liked the place, and I found something to do in Islamabad, rather than to head south. On the day I was supposed to arrive there, the Consulate was bombed and 11 people were killed. I should have been there that morning. I’m glad I wasn’t.
Pakistan-and-terrorThat was the only time that I actually felt fear. I remember thinking, “Wow. If these guys really want to kill us, they’ll kill us. They just needed a slightly bigger bomb.” Thirteen years later, I still have fond memories of the country, which my wife thinks is crazy. I enjoyed Pakistan, I like the Pakistani people. I love their food. The country is beautiful. But the place is a basket case. The economy is in collapse. And, frankly, (and this may be controversial), I believe that religion holds Pakistanis back economically.

AFL: Also in the book, you describe being invited (recruited?) to take the interrogation training for what turned out to be the torture program. And you then turned to an older Agency wise person/mentor (one of many colleagues you don’t name) for advice about what to do. That mentor evidently advised you to steer clear of it. . . .

Exclusive Interview With John Kiriakou – CIA Whistleblower: Prelude

A few weeks later, having returned to Athens from an assignment elsewhere in the region, I was driving down Kifissias Avenue, a straight, ten-mile shot down the hillside from my house to my office. Traffic was always heavy, but on this day, it seemed as bad as anything I’d seen. The radio station was reporting a traffic incident of some sort and urging drivers to take alternative routes. But any alternative would have required a huge detour, so I kept moving forward as best I could. The next radio report described the scene ahead as a “criminal incident” that had closed two of the three lanes on my side of the road. . . .

As I drew closer, I could see the plate was YBH. For a moment, though, I forgot that the letters designated a British car; instead, I assumed a terrorist saw the transposed letters, mistakenly thought it was an American, and popped some innocent Greek instead of his imagined target. A second later, it dawned on me that it was a British car, a white Rover, and that it belonged to Stephen Saunders.

Saunders had been driving to work alone on Kifissias Avenue at eight in the morning when two masked gunmen on a motorcycle opened fire after Stephen stopped in heavy traffic. One of the weapons of choice was a .45 pistol, the Welch .45, and the gunmen got away by snaking their motorcycle through traffic. Saunders died at a nearby hospital later that morning. . . .

“Have You Given Up Bottled Water?” Um, No. Why Not? (See Below.)

Between 1990 and 1997 . . . annual U.S. bottled water sales jumped from $115 million to $4 billion, thanks largely to public concern about obesity and water contamination.”

Note: Bottled water: going UP; Soda: going DOWN; the Twain Are About to Meet. This is a big deal, and I like it.
Obesity & contamination. An uphill slog against the former, and deepening concern about the latter; that’s me.

It’s also reporter John Lingan, summarizing many gallons of industry data. And while the trend he pointed to has had bumps, its overall growth is undeniable:

“Bottled water is poised to overtake soda as America’s foremost commercial drink within the next year. Americans drank 10.9 billion gallons of it in 2014, a 7.3 percent increase over 2013. ”

Lingan’s report was recently confirmed in “The Decline of Big Soda,” in the New York Times.

And you know what? I think this shift is a GOOD thing.

Take Up Obama’s Burden

No more the White Man’s Burden,
That phrase won’t fly today.
It has to be re-packaged
If we’re to make it play.

Let’s speak of “the Imperative,”
And “nation-building” too,
A bow to Nine-Eleven
Should help to push it through.

Be sure to mention brand-new schools,
Young girls who shed the veil;
The sacred war for “hearts and minds’ —
How could we let that fail?

Annals of Homophobia: Don’t Cry For Kim, Rowan County

In all his public, to-the-country statements repeatedly (& honestly) trashed the right wing Catholic political agenda, and the bishops’ alliance with them. If I was scoring all this, it would go: 20 for Francis’s good stuff, 1 (so far) for bad. In sports or politics, that would be a landslide or a rout. And in Vegas, betting on the pope saying progressive things while in the USA would have been a very big, loud winner.

Compare: the Davis meeting was held in private, with no papal aides or Davis’s lawyer; it lasted only a few minutes; the pope’s reported pleasantries were boilerplate; and when asked later, he did not seem well-briefed on her case.

Further, the fact of the meeting was embargoed until the pope was safely back in Rome. And late on September 30, the Vatican was still declining to comment on it, sounding embarrassed and blindsided. Some ballyhoo.

Of course, homophobic crusaders like Davis’s “Liberty Counsel” and the “Alliance Defending Freedom” were ecstatic at the news leak, and insisted that it showed that Francis was on board with their campaigns. They can’t be stopped for grabbing this patronizing shred of recognition.