Eight years ago I blew the whistle on the CIA’s torture program. I knew there'd be trouble, but I never could’ve predicted the years-long ordeal that followed.
My revelations led to a four-year-long FBI investigation and five felony charges—against me, not the torturers. Facing a lifetime in prison, I pled guilty to a lesser charge of confirming the name of a former CIA colleague to a reporter who never published it.
That may sound familiar to you. It’s exactly what former CIA director David Petraeus did when he exposed the names of multiple undercover officers to his girlfriend. Petraeus took a plea to a misdemeanor. I didn’t have four stars on my shoulder, and I wasn’t a friend of the president’s, so I'd gotten stuck with a felony.
At sentencing, my judge gave me 30 months in prison and three years of probation, and she took away my federal pension. I left for prison believing that was the totality of my punishment. I was wrong.
