Category: Concepts

167 articles in this category

9/11 attribution of responsibility — John Kiriakou's evolving view of who bears ultimate responsibility for the September 11 attacks — that al-Qaeda carried them out but was, in his current view, "allowed" to, amid a distracted Bush administration, an uninvestigated Saudi government, and an Israeli government he believes had a vested interest in the attacks proceeding.
Abolish the CIA — John Kiriakou's position that the CIA should be abolished because its functions are already duplicated by the other 17 U.S. intelligence agencies — analysis by the State Department, human spying by the Pentagon, technology by DARPA, NSA and the private sector.
Afghan Languages — The three major languages of Afghanistan — Pashto, Dari (a form of Persian), and Arabic — as discussed on John Kiriakou's show with NSA whistleblower and former military linguist Reality Winner.
Afghan War Logs — A 2010 WikiLeaks publication discussed on a panel Kiriakou joined; the specific lines about it in the corpus belong to other panelists, not Kiriakou.
Agnes von Kurowsky grave story — John Kiriakou's account of discovering the Washington, D.C. grave of Agnes von Kurowsky, the World War I Red Cross nurse whose four-month wartime romance with a young ambulance driver, Ernest Hemingway, made her the model for the lead female character in six of his books, including A Farewell to Arms.
Ai Whistleblower Initiative — Per Kiriakou, AI Whistleblower Initiative.
Al Qaeda Software — A claim raised on a Kiriakou-appearance podcast that "Al-Qaeda" is also the name of a terrorist-tracking software, alongside its use as the name of the terrorist organization.
Al-Qaeda training manual interrogation-resistance tactics — A captured al-Qaeda training manual instructing operatives on how to resist interrogation, including feigning illness — a technique John Kiriakou says he saw a detainee use, and recognized, during a capture and interrogation in Pakistan.
Akrotiri Village Evacuation — Per Kiriakou, the Cypriot village of Akrotiri was evacuated due to British base operations; Kiriakou separately says a 2026 drone strike on the same UK base was likely a staged Israeli operation, initially and falsely blamed on Iran.
Albert Stubblebine — Per John Kiriakou, General Albert "Bert" Stubblebine was among the Army Intelligence figures behind the original Project Stargate remote-viewing program; Kiriakou interviewed the program's top people and says Stubblebine, like remote viewer Lyn Buchanan, had to sign non-disclosure agreements with the NSA and CIA.
Alexa — Per John Kiriakou, Amazon's Alexa smart speaker reports directly to the NSA, one example he gives of the surveillance trade-off built into modern smart-home technology.
Andrew Feinstein — Referenced on the same WikiLeaks-conference panel as John Kiriakou; the description of Feinstein's talk on the multiple factors that ended apartheid was given by another panelist putting a question to Kiriakou, not by Kiriakou himself.
Kiriakou's personal anecdotes — Three personal stories John Kiriakou has told in interviews — tracking down and meeting Andy Warhol as a college senior, a Congolese vice president's remark that Americans promise democracy while the Chinese provide food, and Kiriakou's own Zelle account being suspended over Cuba-sanctions compliance after a paid article about his Cuba trip.
Bay Path University — Per John Kiriakou, he teaches in the graduate intelligence-studies program at Bay Path University in Massachusetts, covering introduction to intelligence, the history of terrorism, and intelligence and cybersecurity.
BDS movement — The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel; John Kiriakou notes that some 40 U.S. states now have anti-BDS laws that can require a speaker at a publicly funded university to sign a pledge of support for Israel — which he refuses to do.
Belmarsh Prison — Per Kiriakou, Belmarsh Prison.
Benjamin Netanyahu — Israeli prime minister, per John Kiriakou an unpopular but politically durable figure whom Kiriakou says has spent decades pressing successive U.S. presidents to bomb Iran, presided over escalating land seizures in the West Bank, and used the October 7 attack and its aftermath to entrench his own political survival.
Below World's End — Film in which John Kiriakou made his acting debut, filmed entirely in Mexico during October 2025; Kiriakou's performance earned him a Screen Actors Guild membership card, and Sean Penn told him after a private screening that he had unknowingly been acting throughout his entire CIA career.
Big Assawoman Bay NASA launch — John Kiriakou's account of being taken, as a junior CIA analyst, to watch a NASA rocket launch near the village of Big Assawoman on Virginia's Eastern Shore, where he was startled to find foreign space-agency officials present unsupervised.
Bilderberg and weapon sales — John Kiriakou's claim, sourced to someone he knew who attended, that elite gatherings like Bilderberg and the Shangri-La Dialogue are — beneath the talk of global issues — fundamentally 'all about weapon sales' and defense-contractor deals.
Bill Barr — Per Sean Davis, speaking on the same Megyn Kelly panel as Kiriakou, the attorney general under the first Trump administration, seen as competent but not fully loyal, whose relationship with Trump ended in a "breakup."
Bob Trout — Per Kiriakou, Bob Trout.
Bob Woodward's CIA headquarters access — John Kiriakou's account of watching Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward walk the halls of CIA headquarters unescorted while researching a book, after the CIA director ordered staff to cooperate with him — an episode Kiriakou cites as evidence of how close the relationship between senior CIA officials and favored journalists really is.
British Bases in Cyprus — Per Kiriakou, British bases in Cyprus.
Chaos Computer Club Wikileaks — Per Kiriakou, Chaos Computer Club.
Charlie Kirk shooting — Per Kiriakou, the killing of Charlie Kirk, in which he questions the official case against suspect Tyler Robinson — including a court filing claiming the recovered bullet did not match Robinson's rifle, unclear grounds for federal FBI involvement, and suspicion that Robinson may have been "duped or tricked or recruited."
Chelsea Manning — Former U.S. Army intelligence analyst who provided WikiLeaks its 2010 trove of military and diplomatic documents. Per John Kiriakou, Manning meets the legal definition of whistleblower for exposing war crimes, was a torture victim of prolonged solitary confinement with forced nudity, and was sentenced to 35 years in prison before Barack Obama commuted — not pardoned — her sentence. Kiriakou says Manning later refused a grand jury's offer of immunity and chose renewed jail time rather than testify against Julian Assange.
Chinese illegal fishing — John Kiriakou calls Chinese overfishing one of the world's biggest under-discussed problems, citing the near-extinction of Chilean sea bass and heavy overfishing of Alaskan and Atlantic cod, and recounting personally seeing Chinese fishing vessels in Antarctica on his honeymoon.
China as economic threat — John Kiriakou's argument that China is the real threat to the West not militarily — it has one aircraft carrier to America's two dozen and rarely invades — but economically, buying friends worldwide while the U.S. spends a trillion dollars a year on weapons.
Christopher Steele dossier — The 2016 opposition-research dossier alleging Trump-Russia ties, compiled by former MI6 officer Christopher Steele. Per John Kiriakou, who worked directly with Steele on an MI6 operation in London in the 1990s, Steele was so respected at MI6 that other officers wanted to be like him — a reputation Kiriakou says the dossier episode reduced to caricature, because in private practice there was no team of analysts to vet the raw intelligence before it reached the Clinton campaign.
CIA adultery culture — John Kiriakou's recurring characterization of the CIA officer corps as riddled with adultery and casual sex — which he frames not as gossip but as a systemic counterintelligence vulnerability that makes officers easy to recruit.
CIA Car Hacking — Per Kiriakou, CIA.
CIA disguise program — John Kiriakou's account of the CIA's disguise and forgery specialists — including a master disguise maker recruited from a beauty academy who built him a custom bald-head mask over six weeks, and a master forger recruited off his college newspaper cartoons.
CIA Democrats (2016) — John Kiriakou's term for a wave of 2016-era congressional candidates with intelligence or military backgrounds who ran for office opposing Trump from the right on Russia — including former CIA officer Abigail Spanberger, who won a one-term-limited Virginia governorship, and former DIA official Elissa Slotkin, who moved from intelligence into Congress and the Senate — both of whom Kiriakou suggests are positioning for future presidential runs.
CIA cash room — John Kiriakou's description of the rooms at large CIA stations stacked floor-to-ceiling with cash — tens or hundreds of millions of dollars — from which an officer can sign out whatever an operation needs, as when he took $2 million to buy safe houses for the Abu Zubaydah capture.
CIA–FBI interagency rivalry and 9/11 — John Kiriakou's account of the historical CIA–FBI rivalry, dating to J. Edgar Hoover's opposition to the 1947 National Security Act, and how it manifested before September 11 when Cofer Black's Counterterrorism Center withheld from the FBI that hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar had been granted U.S. visas.
CIA and FBI ties to organized crime — John Kiriakou's survey of documented U.S. intelligence partnerships with organized crime — the FBI securing wartime ports with the Genovese family, the CIA's Castro plots with the Trafficantes, its work with the Escobar cartel against Colombian communists, and a mob hitman deployed against the Klan.
CIA/FBI Budget Fearmongering — John Kiriakou's account of how the FBI, under J. Edgar Hoover, pioneered the tactic of citing a shifting parade of enemies before Congress to justify annual budget increases — communists, anarchists, gangsters, beatniks, anti-war protesters — a tactic the CIA later adopted wholesale, citing "communism" until 2001 and "terrorism" since, without needing further explanation to win budget increases.
CIA and FBI embedded at social media firms — John Kiriakou's claim, citing the Twitter Files, that active-duty CIA and FBI officers were placed undercover inside Twitter, Facebook and other platforms — which he argues can only mean they were spying on Americans.
CIA liaison relationships — John Kiriakou's critique of CIA intelligence-liaison relationships with foreign governments — sharply expanded after 9/11 — arguing that officers do not consider the long-term risk that disclosing sensitive operations to foreign services hands those governments leverage, including potential blackmail material, over the United States, and that no one left in Congress has the will to provide real oversight of the practice.
CIA media revolving door — John Kiriakou's proposed reform to bar CIA officers from becoming paid media personalities without a cooling-off period, and to strip the security clearances of retirees who go straight from the agency to cable-news punditry.
CIA media relations — John Kiriakou's account of how the CIA shapes press coverage in the 2020s without needing an Operation Mockingbird-style infiltration program — because corporate media now recites CIA messaging willingly, most journalists simply rewrite emailed statements from the agency's Office of Public Affairs, and the CIA allegedly manipulates algorithms and backs podcasts to spread its point of view.
CIA political action group — The CIA's most secretive clandestine propaganda arm — successor to the Cold War 'active measures group' — which John Kiriakou says places and funds propagandists worldwide; no officer of it has been publicly identified since 1982, and he encountered its work funding the DNC's and RNC's international arms in post-war Kuwait.
CIA record deniability — John Kiriakou's account of how senior CIA officers occasionally decide to keep an event out of the written record — illustrated by a recruited asset who committed a public murder, after which the Deputy Director for Operations told Kiriakou, on second thought, 'let's not put that in writing.'
CIA Remote Vehicle Control — John Kiriakou's account, corroborated by Forbes' Andy Greenberg's real-world demonstration, that the CIA can remotely take over a car's systems and cause a fatal crash disguised as an accident.
CIA Smart TV Surveillance — Per John Kiriakou, a CIA technical capability — disclosed publicly by the 2017 Vault 7 leaks — to convert a smart television's speaker system into a covert listening microphone even while the television appears to be switched off.
CIA sexpionage — John Kiriakou's account of the CIA's use of sex in espionage — routine from its founding through the early 1980s, including MK-Ultra and honey-pot operations — and why the agency largely abandoned it: coercion cannot build the trust a long-term source requires.
CIA spy tech from Amazon — John Kiriakou's account that roughly 95% of the CIA's spy technology is purchased commercially from Amazon.com rather than custom-built, illustrated by a $10 leather briefcase he had rigged into a listening device in a Pakistani market.
CIA Torture Program Whistleblowing — In December 2007, John Kiriakou became the first former CIA officer to publicly confirm the agency's post-9/11 torture program, telling ABC's Brian Ross that torture — including waterboarding — was official U.S. government policy personally approved by the president. Per Kiriakou, the decision followed a slow, incremental disillusionment dating back to a hooding incident in the field, years of waiting for someone else to come forward first, and culminated in prosecution under the Espionage Act after the program's congressional overseers publicly denied knowledge of what they had authorized and funded.
CIA Training Doctrine — Per Kiriakou, the doctrine taught to CIA case officers — "our job is to break the law" overseas, but never inside the United States.
CIA and the UFO question — John Kiriakou's consistent answer that UFOs and alien technology are a Pentagon matter, not a CIA one — though he says nearly every former fighter-pilot friend of his has seen something inexplicable, sometimes emerging from the ocean.
Classification compartments — John Kiriakou's explanation of the U.S. secrecy tiers above 'top secret' — the TS/SCI/TK/gamma clearances everyone at the CIA gets, and the additional compartments that mean even senior officials can be barred from a single cable.
Collateral Murder Video — The 2010 WikiLeaks release of gun-camera footage from a 2007 U.S. Apache helicopter attack in Baghdad; part of the trove of Iraq and Afghan war logs, Guantanamo files, and State Department cables leaked by Chelsea Manning, which John Kiriakou credits with corroborating major abuses and helping to touch off the Arab Spring.
Cory Booker — Per John Kiriakou, he was "especially furious" with Democratic senator Cory Booker for running through the halls of Congress to get to a photo op standing behind Benjamin Netanyahu, which Kiriakou cites as an example of Democratic silence in the face of AIPAC pressure.
Daniel Ellsberg — Per Kiriakou, Daniel Ellsberg.
DARPA LifeLog — A Pentagon research program meant to track every email, photo, location and purchase of a person; John Kiriakou notes it was killed on February 4, 2004 — one day before Mark Zuckerberg filed the Facebook LLC.
Daniel Domscheit-Berg — A WikiLeaks associate discussed on the same panel as John Kiriakou; the anecdote about meeting him via the Chaos Computer Club was told by fellow panelist John Goetz, a Der Spiegel journalist — not by Kiriakou himself.
Deloitte Consulting Career — John Kiriakou's post-CIA career at Deloitte Consulting (2004–2008), covering two corporate acquisitions he says he drove — India Tiger Analysis and, in effect, Bering Point — and ending in his effective firing weeks before his ABC News whistleblower interview aired.
Der Spiegel — Per Kiriakou, Der Spiegel.
Doing Time Like a Spy — Prison memoir by John Kiriakou, full title Doing Time Like a Spy: How the CIA Taught Me to Survive and Thrive in Prison; winner of two literary awards and reissued in a second edition by Simon and Schuster.
Economic roots of terrorism — John Kiriakou's argument, drawn from interrogating young al-Qaeda fighters in Pakistan, that jihadi recruitment is driven by poverty and hopelessness rather than religion — illiterate villagers paid $300 a month who could not find the U.S. on a map and had never read the Quran.
Elizabeth Rouser — Named only in a producer/narrator voiceover on a Kiriakou interview episode, not in Kiriakou's own words; not attributable to Kiriakou in the corpus.
Eric Swallwell — Per Kiriakou, Rep. Eric Swalwell — named once in passing as one of the only Republicans (sic) to serve on a House weaponization committee.
Ethan Mccord Collateral Murder — Per Kiriakou, Ethan McCord.
F-35 avionics dispute with Israel — John Kiriakou's account of how Israel demanded F-35 fighters without the deliberately degraded avionics the U.S. installs on export models — and, refused, allegedly worked through American defense contractors to steal the technology instead.
Family Jewels — The CIA's internal catalogue of its own abuses, demanded by the Church and Pike Committees in the mid-1970s; per John Kiriakou, MK-Ultra and associated assassination programs were the first things to surface.
FBI apologies to Kiriakou — John Kiriakou says three FBI agents who worked on his prosecution have written to apologize since his conviction — one saying the case was 'directed and driven by seniormost officials' while mid- and street-level personnel objected, but 'we just followed orders.'
FBI Arrest Strategies — Per John Kiriakou, the FBI deliberately times arrests for Thursdays or Friday evenings because no federal arraignments happen on Fridays, forcing detainees to spend the weekend in jail before facing a judge on Monday — a tactic he says he saw applied to January 6 defendants as well as to himself.
Federal plea coercion — John Kiriakou's argument that the federal justice system coerces guilty pleas by stacking charges and winning 98.2% of its cases — so that even innocent defendants take deals, as he did, told by his own attorney that the system is 'not about justice; it's about mitigating damage.'
FISA court — John Kiriakou's account of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court — created under Carter, sitting atop the Justice Department, issuing warrants that are never public — which he says was abused against Carter Page as part of what he believes was John Brennan's plan to deny Trump the presidency.
Gail Slater — Per Sean Davis, speaking on the same Megyn Kelly panel as Kiriakou, the head of the DOJ antitrust unit under Pam Bondi who was stripped of authority and then fired.
Kill the Messenger (Gary Webb) — The 2014 film about journalist Gary Webb, on which John Kiriakou served as script advisor; when Kiriakou was arrested in January 2012, the FBI seized his electronics, including a draft of the unclassified Hollywood script, and stamped every page "top secret" despite Kiriakou having no role in writing it.
Gulf security bargain — The decades-old arrangement — traced by John Kiriakou to FDR and the Saudi king, and originally British — under which Gulf Arab monarchies host U.S. bases and sell oil in dollars in exchange for American protection; a bargain Kiriakou says collapsed when those bases failed to shield them during the war on Iran.
Intelligence Agencies — Per Kiriakou, the roughly 19 publicly known US intelligence agencies — their duplication, lack of secrecy, and record of missing major world events.
Iran strike factions (2026) — John Kiriakou's reporting, sourced to a former colleague at the White House, that a 2026 decision to strike Iran pitted an anti-war camp of JD Vance and Tulsi Gabbard against a pro-war camp led by Marco Rubio — with the Joint Chiefs newly compliant because Trump had replaced them all.
Israel Boyd and the Wonder Bread story — John Kiriakou's account of finding the grave of Israel Boyd, one of two brothers forced by their parents into the family bakery business, who went on to invent the first industrial dough mixer and dough-cutting machine, pioneer adding milk to bread dough, and build the largest bakery in America before World War I — before selling the business, whose flagship "Mrs. McGill's Delicious Bread" was renamed Wonder Bread by its buyer.
Israel-United States relations — John Kiriakou's account of the U.S.-Israel relationship, including his own first visit to Israel as a tourist in 2022 and his characterization of Israel's willingness to destroy an entire city block to kill a single target, confident that the United States will not object.
Israeli False Flags — Per John Kiriakou, the Mossad has been carrying out false flag operations since the founding of the state of Israel and is "usually very good at it"; he says his first suspicion on hearing of attacks on Saudi oil fields, Azerbaijan, and Cyprus was that they were Israeli false flags, and he fears a false flag against the Al-Aqsa Mosque blamed on Iran or the Arabs.
Israeli intelligence presence in the United States — John Kiriakou's account of Israeli intelligence activity inside the United States — dozens of undeclared Mossad and Shin Bet officers identified by the FBI, a critical-threat counterintelligence classification alongside Russia, North Korea and Cuba, and a pattern of harassment and intimidation directed at declared CIA officers posted to Israel.
James Jesus Angleton — Per Kiriakou, James Jesus Angleton.
Joe Kent — Per Kiriakou, a former director of the National Counterterrorism Center who resigned over the Iran war, was awarded the Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence, and was later removed from the Charlie Kirk shooting investigation.
Jordanian al-Qaeda detainee — The subject of John Kiriakou's first-ever interrogation in Pakistan — a Jordanian who had gone to Afghanistan to run an orphanage, joined al-Qaeda for its funding, and told the truth about his escape route because 'I'm your prisoner; what good would it do to lie?'
Julian Assange — Per Kiriakou, Julian Assange.
Katherine Gun — UK whistleblower named once in an unlabeled multi-speaker panel transcript; not safely attributable to Kiriakou in the corpus.
Kiriakou and third parties — John Kiriakou's advocacy for viable third parties, and his 2016 experience touring the West with Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson — including the disorganization that convinced him the party would never break through, epitomized by a colleague who ignored an airport page thinking it was 'NSA tracking my movements.'
Kiriakou's Cuba trip — John Kiriakou's account of his first visit to Cuba, where his books sit in the national library and officials treated him warmly — and a Cuban vice president told him every U.S. president is 'the same,' blaming Cuba while it cannot keep the lights on. He was invited as a guest of the Havana international book fair after his first two books were translated into Spanish, and later wrote about how the U.S. embargo shapes daily life there, from a dengue-fever hospital bill he had to pay in euros to a diet dominated by squash.
Kiriakou's daily news diet — John Kiriakou's account of the wide range of mainstream and alternative outlets he reads each morning to compare competing angles, the two outlets — the Associated Press and ProPublica — he singles out as exceptional, and his broader habits of media consumption, from an admitted addiction to political polling to his distrust of AI chatbots after they repeatedly fabricated his own biography.
Kiriakou Introduction to WikiLeaks — Per Kiriakou, John Kiriakou.
Kiriakou's Iran trips — John Kiriakou's account of his own visits to Iran and his Iranian-American partner's regular travel there — noting Tehran's status as the cosmetic-surgery capital of the Middle East, a warning to Iranian state TV viewers about American fast food rather than American generals, and his own repeated but unfulfilled invitations to visit.
Kiriakou's money-laundering tip — John Kiriakou's account of taking a chief operating officer job at a boutique investment firm early in the COVID pandemic that he came to believe was an international money-laundering operation possibly backed by Iran — downloading 15,000 pages of supporting documents before an FBI agent told him the bureau would only take interest if the case involved Russia, China, terrorism, or January 6th.
Kiriakou prison manipulation tactics — John Kiriakou's account of applying CIA tradecraft — including deliberate deception, forged paperwork, and manipulating other inmates into violence — to protect himself and control his environment during his federal prison sentence.
Kiriakou's Russian media work — John Kiriakou's account of hosting a daily Sputnik radio show for seven and a half years with full contractual freedom to criticize anyone, including Putin — which he did on the morning of the Ukraine invasion — offered as a rebuttal to claims that Russian outlets are mere propaganda.
Kiriakou's serial-killer letters — John Kiriakou's account of writing letters, as research for a planned book, to several well-known serial killers — including David Berkowitz ("Son of Sam"), Gary Leon Ridgway (the Green River Killer), the BTK killer, the "co-ed killer," and Manson family member Tex Watson — and the uniformly evangelical, Jesus-focused responses he received instead of the interviews he wanted.
Lebanon-Israeli Conflict — Per John Kiriakou, no Israeli government will allow Lebanon to flourish as a nation; he expects continued Israeli attacks and forced displacement of civilians, citing a statistic of up to 700,000 Lebanese internally displaced, and links the war to the "Greater Israel" rhetoric of US ambassador Mike Huckabee.
Lee Zeldon — Per Megyn Kelly's opening monologue, the EPA administrator reportedly considered by Trump as a possible replacement for Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Letter from Loretto — Prison newsletter written by John Kiriakou from FCI Loretto, modeled on Martin Luther King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail," which exposed two crimes committed against him by guards and went viral after being relayed to the Huffington Post, drawing national press to the prison.
LSD Mind Manipulation — Per Kiriakou, LSD.
Lynn Buchanan — Per Kiriakou, a Fort Meade-trained Army intelligence veteran involved in remote-viewing programs who signed non-disclosure agreements with the NSA and CIA.
Mark Levin Iran Policy — Per Sean Davis, speaking on the same Megyn Kelly panel as Kiriakou, radio host Mark Levin was among the "outside voices" — alongside Senator Lindsey Graham — who effectively made the real policy call to invade Iran. Separately, per John Kiriakou, Levin is one of the very few prominent commentators who consistently defends Israel publicly online.
Mass Surveillance — Per Kiriakou, Mass Surveillance.
McCain-Feinstein Amendment — 2015 amendment, sponsored by Senator John McCain, that formally and permanently banned torture by U.S. government personnel, codifying the Army Field Manual as the single interrogation standard for all agencies. Per John Kiriakou, it restored the original language of the 1946 Federal Torture Act after U.S. policy had drifted from it through post-9/11 reinterpretation — and passed, he says, in part because of his own 2007 whistleblowing.
Meredith Whittaker — Per John Kiriakou, Meredith Whittaker is developing a new, and by his account successful, business model for the encrypted-messaging app Signal, an alternative he cites alongside ProtonMail's compromised attempt at the same thing.
Mexican 9 Month Work Visas — A George W. Bush-administration proposal, negotiated with Mexico in the six to eight months before 9/11, to give undocumented Mexican workers renewable nine-month U.S. work visas requiring federal income tax payment — killed by the September 11 attacks before it could be ratified.
Military Ethics — Per Kiriakou, Military Ethics.
Miranda Rights — Reality Winner, interviewed on Kiriakou's show, says she was never read her Miranda rights during her 2017 arrest by the FBI.
Monroe Doctrine — John Kiriakou's history of the Monroe Doctrine — ignored for decades after 1823, humiliated in the Falklands and Venezuela, and only made real by Teddy Roosevelt in 1905 — which he sees revived today in the seizure of Maduro as a message that the hemisphere is America's.
Mormons in intelligence — John Kiriakou's observation that Mormons are heavily overrepresented in the CIA and FBI — because their clean-living record lets them pass the polygraph easily, and their missionary years leave them fluent in rare languages the agencies need.
Myanmar's civil war, per Kiriakou — John Kiriakou's account of Myanmar as the only country in the world continuously at war without a single day of peace since World War II, its Buddhist-majority persecution of Muslims, Christians, and Hindus, his view that Aung San Suu Kyi should have her Nobel Peace Prize stripped, and his argument that the world ignores the country's atrocities because it has gems rather than oil.
National Archives declassification — John Kiriakou's exposé of why U.S. records go undeclassified: the National Archives runs a 20-year-old computer with no connectivity, its head has asked for a smaller budget, and Freedom of Information Act requests face what he calls a 500-year backlog.
National Bird — Award-winning documentary on the U.S. drone program featuring whistleblower Daniel Hale; John Kiriakou calls it essential viewing, noting its footage of drone operators debating on audio whether the figures in their crosshairs are children before firing.
National Security Agency — The U.S. signals-intelligence agency that NSA whistleblower Tom Drake says treated post-9/11 America as a foreign country for the purposes of bulk electronic surveillance, and which he says "abysmally failed the nation" ahead of 9/11.
National Security vs Civil Liberties — Kiriakou's recurring argument that invoking "national security" is used to excuse the erosion of civil liberties and that the secrecy regime cannot coexist with constitutional democracy.
NewsGuard — A media-rating organization, founded by the former head of Court TV and a former Wall Street Journal publisher, that scores news outlets 0-100 for reliability. Per John Kiriakou, NewsGuard docks any outlet that takes a position on Ukraine or Syria contrary to its preferred line, is subscribed to mostly by government entities (chiefly the Pentagon), and singled out Consortium News, the Grayzone, Antiwar.com, and ScheerPost over their criticism of U.S. policy — prompting a First Amendment lawsuit.
NSA Surveillance — Per Kiriakou, the NSA's bulk collection of Americans' phone calls, texts, emails, and metadata without warrants, and its data-sharing arrangement with the FBI.
OnlyFans — Per John Kiriakou, the man who owned OnlyFans — whom he describes as Ukrainian-American rather than Israeli — was a major donor and strong supporter of Israel, part of a broader claim Kiriakou makes about Israeli involvement in the porn industry.
Overcriminalization — John Kiriakou's argument that the United States criminalizes too much — locking up 25% of the world's prisoners with 5% of its population, and adding roughly 50 new felonies a year — illustrated by a NOAA employee prosecuted for whistling at a whale.
Kiriakou's Pakistan-Islam economic critique — John Kiriakou's controversial view that Islam has held Pakistan back economically, contrasting Pakistan's stalled development since the 1960s with South Korea's — which had the same GDP as Pakistan in 1964 — and citing lost productivity from prayer breaks and holy days, resentment over partition, and spending on nuclear weapons instead of infrastructure and education.
Pam Bondi — Per Kiriakou, Pam Bondi, Jeffrey Epstein.
Permanent wartime economy — John Kiriakou's thesis that since 9/11 the United States has run a permanent wartime economy so large that cutting the defense budget would trigger a depression — likening the dependency to crack addiction and warning it makes war almost inevitable.
Pete Hoekstra — Named once in an unlabeled multi-speaker panel transcript; not safely attributable to Kiriakou in the corpus.
Kissinger and the petrodollar — John Kiriakou's endorsement of the theory that Henry Kissinger deliberately structured the 1970s petrodollar to tie the U.S. to Middle Eastern oil — creating a standing rationale for policing the region, even as America exports its own fracked oil.
Plus 972 — Per Kiriakou, an Israeli internet platform that published several whistleblowers from the IDF.
Podcast Bros — Per Sohrab Ahmari, speaking on the same Megyn Kelly panel as Kiriakou, podcast bros.
Presidents and the CIA — John Kiriakou's observation that some presidents actively lead the CIA while others are led around by it — citing George H.W. Bush's ongoing "love affair" with the agency after his 11-month stint as director, and Richard Nixon's close relationship with the CIA, which Kiriakou says was one of the things that brought down his presidency.
President's Daily Brief — Per John Kiriakou, the President's Daily Brief (PDB) is a roughly 16-page, top-secret intelligence document produced daily for the president, written in a uniform CIA house style, briefed each morning, and — in his account — used partly to gauge and flatter incoming presidents.
Prison pedophile accounts — John Kiriakou's account of encountering convicted pedophiles for the first time in federal prison, drawing on advice from a psychiatrist friend and his own work running the chapel library — one of only two safe spaces in prison for inmates convicted of child sex crimes.
Prison racial segregation — John Kiriakou's account of the rigid racial and ethnic division of American prisons — a cafeteria split like the 1950s South — and his argument that segregating and hardening inmates for years, then releasing them with no skills, makes society less safe.
Private prison system — John Kiriakou's account of the U.S. private prison industry as an incentive to keep beds filled and cut costs on food and medicine — illustrated by the 'sewer trout,' dog-food, and dead-rat-in-the-Kool-Aid stories from his own incarceration.
Project Stargate — Per Kiriakou, United States, Project Stargate.
Public-interest defense — The affirmative defense the Espionage Act does not allow: John Kiriakou explains that a defendant cannot tell a jury he acted in the public interest, and that Edward Snowden's willingness to come home hinged on getting that chance — which the Justice Department refused.
Rand Paul Eric Holder — Per Kiriakou, Rand Paul.
Recruitment attempts on Kiriakou — A series of episodes in which foreign intelligence officers tried to recruit John Kiriakou himself — an over-eager Hungarian during his CIA application, a French counterterrorism officer who staged a car pickup in Islamabad, and a Shin Bet officer at his first liaison briefing.
Restraint Camp — A term for foreign-policy conservatives who favor ending forever wars and regime-change interventions; not attributable to Kiriakou in the corpus.
Russell Targ — Named in a post-produced narration segment appended to an interview featuring John Kiriakou, describing Targ as an original Stanford Research Institute scientist behind government remote-viewing protocols — not a claim made by Kiriakou himself, who elsewhere expresses skepticism that remote viewing ever worked.
Russia-Ukraine war origins — John Kiriakou's account that the war began in 2014, not 2022 — rooted in broken U.S. promises that NATO would not expand to Russia's borders, the 2014 removal of a pro-Russian Ukrainian leader, and the seizure of Crimea; he says Russia is now winning and has no reason to negotiate.
Russiagate — John Kiriakou's rebuttal of the claim that Russia swung the 2016 U.S. election: the Mueller report found no interference, the DNC emails were leaked in person rather than remotely hacked, and Russia's roughly $50,000 in Facebook ads — half spent after the election — was trivial against billions in campaign spending.
Sanctions Effectiveness — John Kiriakou's assessment that U.S. sanctions have been so overused against disfavored countries that nations like China now route around them entirely, and that sanctions work only when reserved for the worst actors and imposed in concert with other countries — citing apartheid South Africa as a success and Cuba/Venezuela as failures that instead entrench nationalist narratives.
Saudi-Iran diplomatic rivalry — John Kiriakou's account of the roots of Saudi-Iranian hostility — Iran's bloody 1979 infiltration of the Hajj, Saudi Arabia's suppression of its own Shia minority, and the 2023 restoration of diplomatic relations brokered, to Washington's surprise, by China.
Securedrop — Per Kiriakou, SecureDrop.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee — Per Kiriakou, Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Signature strikes — The drone-targeting doctrine, exposed by Daniel Hale's leak, under which the U.S. kills people not for who they are but for patterns of behavior or association; John Kiriakou says operators treat any male over 12 as a legitimate target on the theory that he 'could pick up a gun.'
Sofia, Bulgaria Dead Drop — John Kiriakou's account of a CIA trip to Sofia, Bulgaria, in which he tracked down and debriefed a retired Bulgarian general — a Cold War-era trainee at Fort Polk, Louisiana — about his proximity to the 1975 assassination of CIA station chief Richard Welch in Athens.
Solitary confinement — The prison isolation practice the United Nations calls a form of torture; John Kiriakou, drawing on his own ten days in a six-by-sixteen-foot cell, argues that jailing depressed prisoners like Daniel Hale in solitary 'for their own safety' is precisely what drives them to suicide.
Souda Bay Vulnerability and Nasser on American Decisions — Two observations John Kiriakou has made on U.S. Mediterranean strategy and decision-making — a U.S. military contact's warning that Souda Bay in Crete, the nearest major port able to host a U.S. aircraft carrier like the USS Gerald Ford, is a possible vulnerability; and Kiriakou's favorite quote from Gamal Abdel Nasser, that Americans never make clear-cut stupid decisions, only complicated ones.
Strait of Hormuz transit fees — John Kiriakou's account of Iran's proposal to charge ships up to $2 million to transit the Strait of Hormuz, payable in yuan rather than dollars, and of the U.S. Navy's subsequent announcement that it had taken control of the strait and closed it — reversing decades of U.S. policy that the strait must remain open.
Sweat Lodge — Per John Kiriakou, the federal prison where he was incarcerated had a Native American sweat lodge that was shut down after it was misused for sex rather than religious ceremony; he says he has never personally been in a sweat lodge.
Targeting analyst — A specialized CIA analyst — distinct from an intelligence analyst — who sifts millions of pieces of data, much of it metadata, to physically locate a person for capture or killing; John Kiriakou credits one with finding Abu Zubaydah down to 14 sites.
Terry Aubry — Per Kiriakou, one of the two Intercept journalists he holds responsible for both his and Reality Winner's prosecutions.
The Drone Papers — The trove of classified documents leaked by Daniel Hale and published by The Intercept — later collected in book form as 'The Assassination Complex' — exposing how the U.S. drone program selected and killed targets; John Kiriakou relied on it in his own writing on the war in Afghanistan.
The Reluctant Spy — John Kiriakou's 2009 memoir, The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA's War on Terror, begun in secret months before he blew the whistle and reaching number five on the New York Times bestseller list.
The Sociopath Next Door — Per Kiriakou, The Sociopath Next Door.
Todd Blanch — Per Megyn Kelly, reading Trump's own statement live during her interview with Kiriakou, Todd Blanch was named the incoming acting Attorney General, replacing Pam Bondi.
Trump cartel terrorist designation — Donald Trump's early second-term State Department designation of drug cartels as terrorist organizations, which John Kiriakou says was understood at the time mainly as a paperwork exercise to free up agencies like the NSA and DIA to spend money on intercepting communications and training foreign nationals — but which Kiriakou says Trump has since treated as license to attack any vessel he personally deems cartel-linked.
Trump Dni Replacement — Per Kiriakou, Trump privately queried cabinet members about replacing the Director of National Intelligence, and — in the transition itself — Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy had not yet received the security clearances needed to access CIA information via DOGE.
Trump Iran Ceasefire Efforts — Per John Kiriakou, Donald Trump reached out behind the scenes twice in ten days seeking a ceasefire with Iran and was rebuffed; Kiriakou also says Benjamin Netanyahu called the White House to check reports of the outreach, and that on foreign policy Netanyahu "has just as much authority as whoever happens to be president of the United States."
Trump — Per Kiriakou, Donald Trump — discussed in connection with a proposed guest-worker visa program, Kiriakou's own pardon application, and the January 6 pardons.
Tulsi Gabbard — U.S. Director of National Intelligence; a longtime family friend of John Kiriakou's, who has known her since she was 12; Kiriakou calls her appointment "an inspired choice" despite disagreeing with her decision to join the Republican Party, and says she appears to have given up her opposition to Section 702 surveillance to secure Senate confirmation.
UK secrecy laws — John Kiriakou's view that Britain is even harsher on whistleblowers and dissent than the United States, using the Official Secrets Act and Terrorism Act to stop people at airports and threaten arrest merely for supporting Palestinian rights.
U.S. diplomatic vacancies — John Kiriakou's account of how the mass dismissal of career U.S. ambassadors — never replaced — left the Gulf without American envoys as war with Iran loomed, so allied royals had to ask him personally whether the U.S. would attack.
U.S. foreign policy process — Three foreign-policy observations from John Kiriakou — the narrow legal basis for U.S. military presence abroad, which he says does not cover American special forces in Syria; the formal congressional travel-clearance process that undercuts Pentagon and White House claims of no advance knowledge of Nancy Pelosi's Taiwan trip; and the depth of U.S.-China economic interdependence that Kiriakou says makes antagonizing Beijing strategically unwise.
US Military Venture Capital — Per John Kiriakou, the U.S. military now purchases technology using a venture-capital investment model, a shift he cites as a warning sign about how national-security institutions acquire emerging tech.
USAID as a CIA cover vehicle — John Kiriakou's account of USAID's use by the CIA as a channel for covert operations and money laundering rather than as an undercover posting for individual officers — including a declassified 1972 exchange in which Henry Kissinger confirmed the CIA had paid Laotian mercenaries through USAID payroll checks.
Walk-in — In John Kiriakou's telling, someone who walks into an embassy offering information; 95% are lunatics or liars, some are 'intelligence peddlers' or hostile 'probes,' and about 1% are 'the real McCoy' — a framework he used to see through a supposed 'walk-in' tip during the Abu Zubaydah hunt. A genuine walk-in — a witness to a terrorist assassination — was later hypnotized by CIA psychologists in a London hotel room and read back a stolen van's license plate, verifying his account.
Watching naval movements — One of the first lessons John Kiriakou says he learned at the CIA: to read American military intentions, watch naval movements — one carrier strike group means business, two means war. He used it to correctly predict the 2026 strike on Iran days in advance.
Watermark — Reality Winner, on Kiriakou's show, describes the printer watermark that let the NSA trace her leaked document to a specific office.
Wikileaks as a System — Per John Kiriakou, WikiLeaks functions less as a single leader than as a durable system — one that protected whistleblowers, helped popularize the term "whistleblower" itself, was credited with contributing to the Arab Spring, weathered pressure to become a defanged NGO, and outlasted the political fallout of its 2010 cable releases (including, in Kiriakou's account, an unintended assist to Donald Trump's election).
Zbigniew Brzezinski — Per Kiriakou, Zbigniew Brzezinski.