Business class after 9/11
=========================

John Kiriakou tells the story as a punchline to a longer argument about money nobody counts.

'Just do it'

A couple of days after September 11, he says, he went up to Cofer Black, who was the director of the CIA's counterterrorism program, and said he had an idea for an operation that he wanted to pass by him. Black put up his hands and said: listen, whatever it is, just do it. I have so much money, I can't possibly spend it all.  

The travel policy

One of the things the CIA did right after the attacks, Kiriakou says, because there was so much money, was that everybody went business class. No matter where you were going, anywhere in the world, business class, knock yourselves out.  

The point of the contrast

Kiriakou sets this immediately against his own experience of being reprimanded for economising, related in 'don't try to save the government money', and against the observation that in an organisation like the CIA nobody cares about the money and the money is the last thing you should worry about. 

His interviewer supplied the moral, that this is where American money goes while most Americans work two jobs to survive, and Kiriakou agreed with it.  The influx itself is treated in post-9/11 supplemental appropriations, and Kiriakou's related point about the difficulty of hiding a multi-billion dollar supplement inside an already secret budget is discussed in CIA budget concealment. 

See also

- Cofer Black
- Post-9/11 supplemental appropriations
- 'Don't try to save the government money'
- Concealment of the CIA budget
- Counterterrorism Center
- Security, medical and finance
