Safe Housekeeper
================

John Kiriakou described the need for a safe housekeeper arising from a specific operational-security problem: he needed to meet a sensitive source without using hotels or restaurants, and even meeting in a deserted parking lot at two in the morning carried risk from passing patrol officers. He wanted to rent a dedicated apartment.

A CIA officer with diplomatic accreditation cannot rent an apartment without raising immediate red flags, an accredited diplomat renting a private apartment is a marker for intelligence activity. The solution is a safe housekeeper: someone with no visible CIA connection whose name goes on the lease. The housekeeper's operational responsibilities are minimal: rent the apartment, keep it clean, keep it stocked with water. The officer uses it one night a week for two hours.

Kiriakou recounted recruiting a woman for this role overseas. She refused repeatedly. He cajoled, argued, and "sweet-talked" her until she finally agreed. Shortly afterward, she had what he described as "some kind of nervous breakdown" and had to leave the country and return to the United States, where her family cared for her. Kiriakou said he never knew whether the breakdown was caused by the pressure he applied, but the question has stayed with him.

He described the institutional answer to this kind of doubt, that CIA officers are the good guys, doing God's work, keeping Americans safe, and should not question themselves, as the psychological armor the agency provides, and as something he has come to examine more critically.

Institutional cover for personal harm (Bopst v2)

Kiriakou connected the willingness to pressure the safe housekeeper into a role she did not want to the broader CIA institutional culture: officers were trained to believe they were doing God's work for Uncle Sam, keeping Americans safe, and should never question themselves: "We're all the good guys."

See also

- Asset acquisition cycle
- John Kiriakou
- CIA
