The Office of Security arrangement
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The Office of Security arrangement is John Kiriakou's account of a disclosure made at a custody hearing in January 2020 concerning his second wife, herself a senior CIA officer.

The 2007 interview

Kiriakou has consistently described his wife as having accompanied him to the ABC News interview of December 2007 and sat just off camera. He has said that when the interview ended he asked her how he had done, and whether he had said anything classified; she told him he had done great and that he had not. 

The hearing

By Kiriakou's account, in January 2020, the marriage having ended and a custody dispute being under way, he was on the stand and his lawyer asked him whether she had been a good wife. He answered that she had been an amazing wife, that she had been so supportive when he blew the whistle on the torture programme, and told the story of her sitting off camera. 

She then took the stand. Her lawyer asked whether it was true that she had gone with him to ABC News for the whistleblowing interview. She said yes. Asked why she had done it, she answered that she had been instructed to do so by the CIA's Office of Security, and that she had continued to report back to them on his activities. 

Kiriakou's reaction

Kiriakou has spoken about the disclosure in terms of trust rather than tradecraft. Asked in the same conversation whether he trusts anyone now, he answered that he does not, and that he cannot imagine ever marrying again. He has said that she was the love of his life, that he had never been in love with anybody as he was with her, and that the betrayal is something one cannot get past. 

He places the episode alongside that of the NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake, whose wife, also an NSA officer, was approached by the FBI on the day of Drake's arrest and told she was either with them or with him. In Kiriakou's account she answered that she was with them.  Drake's charges were subsequently all dropped, which Kiriakou offers as the point: the marriage could not be recovered either way. 

How it came out, in his own words

The disclosure happened in open court, and Kiriakou's account of it turns on the order of the two testimonies. He was on the stand first, in a custody hearing in August 2022, when his attorney asked him a simple question: "was she a good wife?" His answer was unreserved, "oh, she was an amazing wife. She stuck by me like a rock when I got in trouble. She toughed out my two years in prison. She took care of the kids and the household, she was great."

As proof of that support he offered the detail that undid it: she had gone with him to ABC News on the day he blew the whistle, sat just off camera, and told him afterwards that he had done well and had said nothing classified.

She then took the stand. Her own attorney asked whether it was true that she had gone with him to ABC News, and why. Her answer: "the CIA's Office of Security instructed me to go with him, to report back to them on his activities." Kiriakou's reaction: "I was dumbstruck when she said it. My lawyer actually kicked me under the table."

Asked afterwards by his own lawyer whether she had said it to wound him or meant it literally, Kiriakou thought about it and concluded she meant it, because it explained the Los Angeles Times Iran op-ed call he had never been able to account for.

He dates the collapse of the marriage separately and does not conflate the two: about eighteen months after he came home from prison she began a relationship with someone at work; he caught them and filed for divorce, and they have been fighting over custody since.

See also

- Brian Ross
- Thomas Drake
- John Kiriakou
