"Admit nothing, deny everything, make counter-accusations"
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"Admit nothing, deny everything, make counter-accusations" is one of the twenty life lessons John Kiriakou says the CIA taught him in training, some of them serious, some tongue-in-cheek, all of which he found mattered later. Inside the agency it was also merchandise: the line was printed on coffee mugs and t-shirts in the headquarters gift shop. "It was kind of a joke, but it was kind of not a joke, and they were by far the most popular coffee mugs in the whole place. Everybody had them on their desks."

Among the twenty rules

Kiriakou lists it alongside the others in the same set, recruit spies to steal secrets or anything else you need; if calm is not to your benefit, chaos is your friend; eliminate potential problems using dirty tricks; let others do your dirty work; trust no one; always maintain plausible cover for action; seek and utilize available cover; you're stronger than you realize you are. In his account of prison, the most practically important of them was the cover rule: at the first sign of trouble, get off the X, because everyone still standing there when the guards arrive goes to solitary while the investigation runs.

Asked how a whistleblower squares an idealistic act with a rulebook this cynical, Kiriakou's answer is that the two coexist by being switched on and off: the ethical core is the constant, and the rules are what he reaches for when he is in danger.

The fight at Loretto

The rule earned its keep at FCI Loretto. After a fight that ended up involving a dozen men and blood on the floor, Kiriakou was called down and asked about it. "I thought to myself: admit nothing, deny everything, make counter-accusations. I said, 'What fight?'" Told there were witnesses placing him at the start of it, he answered that maybe they had been there when it started, maybe they were the ones who started it, "what the hell do I know about any fight? I think you're the only ones who pick fights around here." After several minutes of this the guards became frustrated enough to tell him to get out. They got nothing. He treats the outcome as double-edged: he came out ahead of the investigation, and the yard learned he was not a snitch, part of why, he says, the Italians adopted him.

The transfer from one institution to the other is the point he keeps returning to: a slogan the agency treated as an in-joke turned out to be "a serious rule for me in prison. I used it a lot." Prison, in his summary, is a combination of seventh grade, Lord of the Flies and a mental institution, with eighty-five per cent of American prisoners suffering from some form of mental illness, leaving the rules as what keeps a person safe.

Merchandise, again

In 2019 Kiriakou raised the slogan again while discussing merchandise as a fundraising route for Julian Assange's legal defence, proposing that the CIA's own line could be printed and sold to pay for "the best lawyers in Washington", "there would be nothing better than to have that actually work."

See also

- Central Intelligence Agency
- FCI Loretto
- Three Felonies a Day
- Julian Assange
- John Kiriakou
