CIA Torture Whistleblower to Resume Letters from Prison

Says prison broke promise to let him complete sentence in halfway house

Former CIA officer John Kiriakou, who is serving a thirty-month jail sentence in the federal correctional institution in Loretto, Pennsylvania, has resumed writing letters from prison after the Bureau of Prisons failed to give him nine months in a halfway house to finish out his sentence.

Kiriakou was the first member of the CIA to publicly acknowledge that torture was official US policy under the George W. Bush administration. He was convicted in October of last year of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA) when he provided the name of an officer involved in the CIA's Rendition, Detention and Interrogation (RDI) program to a reporter and sentenced in January of this year. He reported to prison on February 28, 2013.

Firedoglake had been publishing Kiriakou's "Letters from Loretto." The last letter published, however, was in August of last year.

Now, in a new letter, thanking several groups and individuals who have supported him while serving his sentence in prison, he writes, "I'm sorry I've been out of touch so long. After my last letter, I thought I had come to an understanding with the prison administration: stop writing 'Letters from Loretto' and be put in for nine months of halfway house. Nine months would have seen me leave here on August 1, 2014. So I stopped writing."