The green room with Hayden
==========================

The green room with Hayden is John Kiriakou's account of the only occasion on which he and former CIA director Mike Hayden were booked to appear together on television. He told it on the DeProgram programme in August 2025.

The booking

Kiriakou dates it precisely by reference to his own case: "In 2008, this is right after I blew the whistle on the torture programme, but before my arrest, I was invited to be on Bill Maher's show." He could not recall the programme's title and the host supplied it.

Both men travelled for it. "I was going to be on with Mike Hayden, and I flew out there. He flew out there."

The greeting

The exchange Kiriakou reports was brief and consisted almost entirely of forms of address. "In the green room we're sitting there and I said, 'Hi, Mike.' And he said, 'General Hayden.' I said, 'I'm not in the military, Mike.'"

Kiriakou says the point registered immediately: "I realised, of course, instantly that it bothered him very much that I wasn't calling him General Hayden. And I refused."

The walkout

By Kiriakou's account the disagreement ended the booking. "And he walked out. He walked out of the show. And I was on by myself."

Kiriakou offers no evidence for the causal link beyond the sequence and his own reading of Hayden's reaction, and treats it as of a piece with the man's character generally, asked what he made of it, he answered only "that's how he is."

Hayden had by then retired from the Air Force and was serving as director of the CIA. Kiriakou's low estimate of that tenure is given elsewhere in the same programme, where he calls him "one of the worst CIA directors in American history."

He returned to Hayden later in the show with an account of seeing him at the National Press Club years afterwards, badly diminished by strokes.

See also

- Mike Hayden
- Hayden At The National Press Club
- CIA Torture Program Whistleblowing
- John Kiriakou
