Abigail Spanberger
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Abigail Spanberger is the governor of Virginia elected in November 2025, a former CIA officer and member of Congress, and one of the few serving American politicians with whom John Kiriakou can claim a working relationship inside the agency.

The colleague

Kiriakou states the connection plainly and repeatedly. "I've taken a couple of swipes at Abby Spanberger, and I mentioned yesterday: Abby and I worked together in the CIA's Counterterrorism Center."

The personal assessment is warm and the political one is not. Casting his early vote at the Arlington courthouse a fortnight before the election, he described her as "a perfectly nice person, but she would, in the 1970s and 80s, be kind of a middle-of-the-road Republican."

He repeats the placement without softening it: "So Spanberger, in my view, is very conservative. She's from the conservative wing of the Democratic party."

How she ran

On the campaign itself, his description matches his placement of her. "She ran as a moderate, a right-of-centre Democrat, a conservative Democrat."

The debate he watched turned less on her positions than on her opponent's conduct, which he says was so relentless that "Spanberger couldn't get a word out." Her central line of attack, in his account, was that Winsome Earle-Sears supported discrimination.

The victory speech

Kiriakou's assessment changed, at least in tone, on the night. "In her post-election victory speech last night, she said all the right things. And man, I hope, for the sake of having a viable Democratic party, that they listen to what she said."

The list he gave: constitutional amendments to guarantee abortion rights and to recognise same-sex marriages in perpetuity, and a first bill guaranteeing a $15 minimum wage plus paid parental leave. He noted the significance of the list in one clause, "none of which has ever been done in Virginia before", and predicted that a handgun registration measure would probably fail.

His approval was for the method rather than the person: "real ideas for a change, instead of: oh, vote for me because I'm not Donald Trump."

See also

- Winsome Earle Sears And The Machine Gun
- Jason Miyares
- Central Intelligence Agency
- John Kiriakou
