(20.11.2014) On the floor of House of Representatives on November 17, Virginia Democratic Representative Jim Moran put forward a stinging rebuke of the “selective prosecution” of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou. He asked President Barack Obama to pardon Kiriakou and called the fifteen-year CIA veteran “an American hero.”

Kiriakou was the first member of the CIA to publicly acknowledge that torture was official US policy under President George W. Bush’s administration. He was convicted in October 2012 after he pled guilty to violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA). He was sentenced to two and a half years in jail in January 2013, and reported to Federal Correctional Institution Loretto in Pennsylvania on February 28, 2013, where he has been serving his sentence. (Firedoglake has been publishing Kiriakou’s letters from prison written as “Letters from Loretto”.)