Category: Agencies

7 articles in this category

• Alex Station — CIA unit that tracked Osama bin Laden beginning in 1995; per John Kiriakou, who served as chief of its counterintelligence branch, the unit kept extremely tight security around its files, limited FBI investigators' access to information about future 9/11 hijackers Khaled al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, and — under a deliberate policy of non-cooperation with the FBI — failed to watchlist participants in the Malaysia summit where al-Qaeda planned the attacks.
• Greek Intelligence Service — Greece's intelligence service, with which John Kiriakou worked closely during his Athens posting; its head of surveillance called off surveillance on him after watching him make a large offering at Saint Nectarios's tomb on the island of Aegina.
• Hamas — The Palestinian movement behind the October 7, 2023 attack; John Kiriakou argues that a case could be made for calling it a freedom-fighting organization dedicated to the liberation of its people rather than simply a terrorist group, notes it is labeled a terrorist organization by only a small minority of UN member states, and has ruled Gaza since Israel's 2005 withdrawal.
• Irish intelligence services — Ireland's intelligence and law-enforcement services, which John Kiriakou toured and met with during a speaking trip to Belfast, Cork, Dublin, and Waterford. Per Kiriakou, Irish intelligence and the Garda are especially strong at anti-money-laundering investigation and counterterrorism — the latter traced, he says, to the large number of Irish militants trained by Carlos the Jackal in Libya and Lebanon during the 1970s.
• Secret Service — The U.S. agency protecting the president; John Kiriakou, who worked alongside it for 35 years, describes a culture of complacency and poor follow-up — from the unguarded roof at the 2024 Trump rally to the case of Sarah Jane Moore.
• Shin Bet — Israel's internal security service; per John Kiriakou, one of the two declared Israeli intelligence officers at the Washington embassy, and the service whose officer, alongside a Mossad officer, he says tried to recruit him at his first CIA liaison briefing.
• Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity — A group of former U.S. intelligence officials, of which John Kiriakou is a member, that issues the Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence — which Kiriakou arranged to give to whistleblower-adjacent figure Joe Kent.