John Kiriakou: The CIA Program That Destroyed America From the Inside

OR: What the beast machine does to the people who refuse to stop pulling at its wires.

The United States government imprisoned exactly one person for the CIA’s torture program. Not the man who designed the waterboarding. Not the man who signed off on it. Not the deputy director who ordered the destruction of 92 videotapes of interrogation sessions (92, in case you thought maybe he was just tidying up a small backlog). Not the lawyers who wrote the legal memos authorizing the whole operation, memos so tortured in their own logic that calling them legal analysis is a little like calling a ransom note correspondence.

One person went to prison. The one who told a journalist it was happening.