- Former CIA officer John Kiriakou revealed Pakistan pressured him to apologise for his war analysis
- Kiriakou said Pakistan would lose a conventional war against India
- He responded to PTI’s letter by refusing to apologise and mocked their demand
A controversy has erupted after former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou revealed that former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan's party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), tried to coerce him into apologising for comments he made on the conflict between New Delhi and Islamabad.
In an intentionally crude reply, Kiriakou wrote that he would use their letter demanding an apology as toilet paper.
Kiriakou made an assessment of the conflict while speaking to ANI in October. He warned that "Pakistanis will lose" and that nothing good will come out of a war between the two countries.
"Nothing, literally nothing good will come of an actual war between India and Pakistan because the Pakistanis will lose. And I'm not talking about nuclear weapons. I'm talking just about a conventional war," he said.
READ | 'No Benefit In Fighting India': Ex-CIA Officer Who Led Pak Operations
His analysis did not sit right with the people of Pakistan as a result of which he received online abuse and death threats.
"I said, in a conventional conflict, India would beat Pakistan because it has five times the people. The death threats... I've lost count of how many death threats I received", he recalled in a a YouTube podcast with Julian Dorey uploaded on November 18.
PTI's letter condemned his remarks "in the strongest possible terms" and demanded "an immediate apology" to "his excellency, the former prime minister [Imran Khan], to the members of the party [PTI], and to the people of Pakistan."
Kiriakou said that the letter had come from the president of the PTI. Former Punjab Chief Minister Chaudhry Parvez Elahi has been leading the party since March 2023.
The former intelligence officer claimed that his lawyer had advised him to "keep a low profile" and to be aware of his surroundings. However, he mailed them back and wrote, "In regards to your demand for an apology, I wipe my a** with your demands for an apology."
He has not heard back from the party to date.
Kiriakou spent 15 years with the CIA and played a significant role in anti-terror operations after 9/11. He also led the 2002 raid that captured Abu Zubaydah, a high-ranking al-Qaeda official at the time.
Kiriakou had turned a whistleblower in 2007 and exposed the CIA's "torture programme" in a television interview. He spent 23 months in jail. The charges against him were later dropped, with the former CIA officer remarking that he has "no regrets, no remorse."
