Trading informants to El Salvador
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Trading informants to El Salvador is John Kiriakou's assessment of reporting that the American secretary of state had agreed to identify United States informants to the Salvadoran government, in exchange for the use of that country's prison system to hold deportees.

The question

A viewer asked about the long-term ramifications of "Marco Rubio agreeing to send US informants to El Salvador, essentially going back on agreements made with the informants."

Kiriakou's reaction was immediate and personal. "Great question, man. When I read that, I was absolutely appalled."

What it amounts to

He declined every euphemism available. "What that is, essentially, is a death sentence."

And he described the transaction without diplomatic packaging. "So he offered to rat out all of our informants in exchange for the El Salvadorans allowing us to lock people up in their gulag. That's really what it came down to."

The verb, rat out, is the language of the prison yard rather than of statecraft, and Kiriakou, who served two years in federal prison, uses it deliberately.

Why it will not stop anything

The host called it chilling and asked whether people might eventually become more sceptical about cooperating with Washington. Kiriakou's answer is the bleakest part of the exchange, because it denies the betrayal even the dignity of a consequence.

"There's always going to be another sucker who's willing to work with the US. But you would think that over time people might become more sceptical."

Where it sits in his thinking

The protection of sources is the one professional obligation Kiriakou treats as close to absolute. He has argued repeatedly that a foreign agent who takes an American case officer's assurance is trading his life against a promise, that the promise is the only thing on offer, and that an intelligence service that breaks it stops being able to recruit, eventually.

What this passage adds is his doubt about that last clause. The market for cooperation, in his account, is not efficient. It clears anyway, at the cost of the people who were in it when the terms changed.

See also

- The El Salvador hotel drill
- Agent inducements
- The asset recruitment cycle
- John Kiriakou
