Kiriakou is charged with disclosing classified information to journalists; in this case the identity of two of his former colleagues who took part in interrogating detainees. If he is found guilty, Kiriakou could face up to 30 years in prison. His wife, who was working as a CIA analyst was also let go from her job, while she was on maternity leave.
Kiriakou was part of the team that captured Abu Zubaydah, a high ranking Al Queda leader in a raid in Pakistan in 2002. He later said in a 2007 interview with ABC that he saw how Zubaydah was tortured using waterboarding, which did turnout useful since Zubaydah cooperated with them after that. But his claims did not hold up, because later records revealed that Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times and he admitted that he had personally not seen the waterboarding sessions.
After the controversy caused by his ABC interview, he lost his job with the private firm he was working in as a security consultant. Kiriakou wrote a memoir that he published in 2010, “The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the C.I.A.’s War on Terror.”
Kiriakou is also in trouble with the CIA’s Publication Review Board over the book that he wrote. The agency vets all books being published by its current and ex-employees and Kiriakou is alleged to have lied about the details of his book, by presenting real life accounts as fiction to pass CIA’s vetting process. Then he claimed to his co-author that the fictional accounts were real.