Robert David Steele
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Robert David Steele was a podcaster and former intelligence figure whose death during the COVID-19 pandemic prompted a question to John Kiriakou about whether the circumstances were suspicious. Kiriakou, who knew him and had appeared on his programme a couple of times, rejected the premise.

The death

Kiriakou says plainly that he thinks Steele died of COVID-19. He describes him as an old man with ongoing health issues who knew that he was at risk, then corrects himself mid-sentence, allowing that Steele was not really that old, and putting his age at about seventy. His conclusion is simply that the disease got him.

He offers a family parallel. A cousin of his was in much the same position early in the pandemic: unvaccinated, with a heart condition, feeling unwell on a Friday, who came home from work thinking he could sleep it off over the weekend and died ten days later of COVID-19.

Kiriakou's assessment of his work

Kiriakou is warm about the man and unsparing about the output. He calls Steele a sweet guy, and says he had appeared on his podcast a couple of times.

The judgement follows immediately. Steele, Kiriakou says, found a little niche for himself in the world of conspiracies, and the funny thing was that he did not believe most of these conspiracies, but they got him clicks and they got him listeners, so he would grab onto them and run. Kiriakou's verdict is that this was not an intellectually honest way to make a living.

The assessment is consistent with his response elsewhere in the same appearance to questions premised on hidden plots, including his position that false flag operations are far too labour-intensive to be as common as his correspondents believe.

See also

- False Flags Are Too Hard
- Spotting a CIA impostor
