- 01/28/2013 by Andrea Sears (WBAI)

On Friday former CIA officer John Kiraikou was sentenced to thirty months in prison for revealing the name of a covert CIA operative to a journalist.  The sentence was determined by a plea agreement that ended government attempts to prosecute Kiriakou under the Espionage Act, and it makes him the first CIA official to be sentenced in connection with the agency’s program for torturing terrorism suspects.  But Kiriakou was not a participant in that program.  Rather he was a whistleblower.  And his prosecution is not the only attempt to silence someone who has exposed government misconduct. WBAI's Andrea Sears spoke to Kevin Gosztola, a journalist covering civil liberties & national security issues for Firedoglake