John Kiriakou's Dead Drop

THE BLURB: Everything must end - including a CIA career. While John had planned to make a lifetime career of the agency, circumstances dictated otherwise. So, to a large degree, did his new immediate boss-from-hell. In this episode, John begins to suss out a new, post-CIA life just over the horizon. The problem will be getting out of the CIA in one piece.

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THE BLURB: Returning from the mission in Pakistan, John decided his kids needed him to stay closer to home for a whie. He applied for and got a domestic assignment. The problem? His new boss, a pencil-pusher named Mary Margaret hated him and did everything she could think of to prove it.

SHOW NOTES
For more great podcasts like Dead Drop, please visit https://costardandtouchstone.com/
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

THE BLURB: If this story has a heart of darkness, this is it. How did American policy find its way to legitimizing torture? In this episode, we'll take you down that terrible road. America became a torturer because certain people - including then Vice President Dick Cheney - wanted us to be that thing. We'll also describe how the Bush Administration's wordplay, dancing around the word "torture", made torture inevitable.

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For more great podcasts like Dead Drop, please visit https://costardandtouchstone.com/
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

THE BLURB: After John watched Abu Zubaydah's plane rendition him to what turned out to be a black site in Thailad, he still had lots of other terrorists to interrogate. He felt contrite after getting overly physical with a detainee - but no one else in the chain of command felt John had been out of line. Returning stateside, John is approached by the agency. They want to know if he's interested in learning enhanced interrogation techniques. He wasn't. And, so began the fracture that would ultimately set John apart.

SHOW NOTES
For more great podcasts like Dead Drop, please visit https://costardandtouchstone.com/
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THE BLURB: For 70 hours, almost three days, John was responsible for handling Abu Zubaydah, the terrorist the agency believed was Al Qaeda's number three. Though their time togeter was relatively short - and Zain (Abu Zubaydah's actual name) spent much of it unconscious - John did manage to build a human connection with him and began to appreciate the person inside the nom de guerre. Zain is renditioned elsewhere. John goes back to work interrogating all the other terrorists they'd grabbed alongside Abu Zubaydah while Abu Zubaydah begins to encounter the treatment that would ultimately lead to torture.

SHOW NOTES
For more great podcasts like Dead Drop, please visit https://costardandtouchstone.com/
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.