Steve Coll’s “The Spy Who Said Too Much,” in this week’s
issue, is a marvel of concision, logic, and analysis. It’s an account of the
chain of events that led to the imprisonment of C.I.A. officer John Kiriakou
for disclosing classified information to the press. There’s not much enjoyment
in reading about Kiriakou’s downfall. He’s not a clear-cut whistleblower hero.
As Coll says, “one person’s whistle-blowing is another’s grandstanding gadfly.”
It’s not clear which category Kiriakou falls in. The pleasure of Coll’s piece
is in seeing how Coll neatly and clearly structures his narrative, using
Kiriakou’s case to illustrate the challenges that the press faces in
investigating the Bush Administration’s abusive interrogation methods. What I
like most about Coll’s approach is his refusal to judge Kiriakou. After setting
out the government’s rationale for prosecuting him, Coll says, in the piece’s
most thrilling passage, “But one might ask a different question. Which matters
more: Kiriakou’s motives and his reliability, or the fact that, however
inelegantly, he helped to reveal that a sitting President ordered international
crimes? Does the emphasis on the messenger obscure the message?” Right there,
in the posing of those cogent questions, “The Spy Who Said Too Much” separates
itself from conventionality (leaker brought to justice) and becomes
significantly profounder – an argument for “torture accountability.”
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