The clear and present danger finding
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The clear and present danger finding is the authorisation John Kiriakou describes as standing between the CIA's paramilitary capability and its use, set out in answer to a viewer who asked whether CIA paramilitary officers were already on the ground in Iran in early 2026.

The answer

Kiriakou's estimate was that they were not, hedged with a caveat about his own currency. "I would say probably not. Now, granted, my my information is dated."

The requirement

What he offers in place of current knowledge is the procedure. To have CIA paramilitary officers on the ground carrying out targeted killings, "the president would have to um assert that a person is uh what's called a clear and present danger to the United States, to an American installation, um and to or to an American person."

The finding is therefore person-specific rather than theatre-wide: it attaches to a named individual and to a category of American interest that the individual is said to endanger. A war does not supply it automatically.

The inference

Kiriakou reasons from the absence of the finding to the absence of the officers: "And I I don't think we're there." The claim is not that the capability is unavailable but that the legal predicate has not been laid.

Why the standard matters to him

The threshold is the same one that underlies Kiriakou's broader moral objection to the agency. Asked in a separate session whether the CIA was the world's most moral intelligence service, he answered that most other countries' services are more moral, and located the disqualifying conduct precisely in killing "people whose politics you don't don't like, but who pose no threat to the United States."

The clear and present danger finding is the formal expression of the distinction he is making: a requirement that lethal action be tied to a demonstrated threat rather than to a disliked politics. His criticism of the CIA is not that the requirement exists but that, in his account, it has not reliably constrained what the organisation does.

See also

- "Most other countries are more moral than the CIA"
- The CIA as a paramilitary organization
- Covert action programs
- Marco Rubio and Iran policy
