April 1, 2013 Issue

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.”