Daniel J. Jones

Jones is originally from Pennsylvania and has degrees from Elizabethtown College, Johns Hopkins University, and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. After college, he worked as a middle school teacher with Teach For America, an AmeriCorps national service program. Jones spent four years with the Federal Bureau of Investigation working on international terrorism investigations. After the FBI, Jones joined the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence under the leadership of Senator Jay Rockefeller. Jones subsequently worked for Senator Dianne Feinstein when she became Chairman of the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Jones was the lead investigator and author of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture, the largest investigation in U.S. Senate history at 6,700 pages with over 38,000 footnotes. He devoted thousands of hours to the investigation alongside Alissa Starzak, a former CIA lawyer, who then left the committee in 2011, a year before the report's completion. The report was initially launched to determine whether lawmakers were fully aware of the agency's controversial interrogation tactics. Jones stated that "the CIA misrepresented the success of the program to the president of the United States, the Congress and the United States people.” The report details actions by CIA officials, including torturing prisoners, providing misleading or false information about classified CIA programs to the media, impeding government oversight and internal criticism, and mismanaging of the program. Forms of torture included waterboarding, hypothermia, prolonged isolation, sensory deprivation, and “rectal rehydration.” It also revealed the existence of previously unknown detainees, that more detainees were subjected to harsher treatment than was previously disclosed, and that more forms of torture were used than previously disclosed. At least half of the 39 victims of CIA torture tactics have displayed long-term psychological damage. It concluded that torturing prisoners did not help acquire actionable intelligence or gain cooperation from detainees and that the program damaged the United States' international standing. Republican Senator John McCain noted that the report "is a thorough and thoughtful study of practices that I believe not only failed their purpose -- to secure actionable intelligence to prevent further attacks on the US and our allies -- but actually damaged our security interests, as well as our reputation as a force for good in the world."

The investigation lasted more than six years and found that the CIA’s torture was far more brutal than the agency had told the Bush administration or Congress. It unequivocally found that torture produced no valuable counter-terrorism intelligence. Following the completion of the report in 2014, it was revealed that the CIA had been surveilling the work of the committee. The Obama Department of Justice did not prosecute the officials involved in the CIA torture program after the report's release. Due to public outcry to release the full findings of the report before the inauguration of pro-torture businessman and television producer Donald Trump to the US presidency, the Obama administration agreed to preserve the findings of the report in his presidential library; however, the entire 6,700 page report will be restricted from public view for 12 years (2028). A heavily redacted 500 page summary of the report is public.

The completion of the report and Jones' departure from the Intelligence Committee was heralded by former Intelligence Committee vice chair Dianne Feinstein in a tribute submitted to the congressional record. Jones has been interviewed on the record regarding his work on the investigation and the subsequent controversy of the CIAand DOJ's inadequate response to the report.

During Jones' participation in the Americorps program Teach For America, he was named to People Magazine's 100 most eligible bachelors, alongside George Clooney and Matt Damon. He is on the Board of Advocates for Human Rights First, currently works for the Daschle Group, and leads his own research of investigative consultancy, The Penn Quarter Group.