The anti-semite smear
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The anti-semite smear is what John Kiriakou says follows from making, in public, a claim he regards as simply factual: that Israel conducts espionage against the United States.

The context

The question put to him during the 2026 Epstein disclosures was how the release of the files would affect the US,Israeli relationship, given that the operation was looking increasingly like a Mossad honeypot. Kiriakou agreed with the premise and expected no consequence: "Yeah, it was totally an Israeli honeypot uh operation and I don't think anything is going to change. Nothing."

The cost of saying so

What he describes next is the personal price of the position. "I mean, how I've been out there shouting from the rooftops that the Israelis, you know, spy on us. Uh Alan Dersowitz calls me names and the the Israeli foreign minister's political director called me a noted anti-semite because of it."

Kiriakou's answer to the charge is not a denial of the label's seriousness but a restatement of the underlying claim: "And it's true. They're still out there spying on us."

The pattern

The episode belongs to a recurring feature of Kiriakou's public life. Alan Dershowitz was Jeffrey Epstein's attorney, and had previously confronted Kiriakou on Piers Morgan's programme, alongside the former Mossad chief Danny Ayalon, over Kiriakou's assertion that Epstein was an Israeli spy, calling the claim "outrageous."

The smear is also, in Kiriakou's account, a general technique rather than a personal grievance. On the same programme the observation was made that the Israeli lobby are "spectacularly effective bullies" who "smear everybody", and that until very recently the label had reliably worked, a spell that Kiriakou suggested might finally be breaking under the pressure of a war the United States had been drawn into.

See also

- Alan Dershowitz
- Piers Morgan
- Jeffrey Epstein
- The Epstein files and the Starmer government
