WASHINGTON — Meet John Kiriakou. A married father with a baby and two small children at home, he once had a fulfilling job as a CIA operations officer and spent his early post-9/11 days “hunting down [al] Qaeda figures” in Pakistan for his country.

This is the third profile in an occasional series about individuals taking on the Goliaths of war from inside the belly of the beast — Washington, D.C.

In U.S. Envoy Puts Match to Bridges with Iraq Tell-All , Steven Lee Myers quotes from Kelley B. Vlahos' article on foreign service officer Peter Van Buren.