Kiriakou and Cenk Uygur
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Kiriakou and Cenk Uygur describes a decade-long grievance that turned out to rest on nothing, and which the two men resolved on air in July 2026.

The occasion Kiriakou remembered was the second thing he did after blowing the whistle that drew wide press coverage: an open letter to his supporters written from prison, the first of what became his letters from FCI Loretto. It was that letter, he says, that brought Jake Tapper to the prison to interview him. "The response was universally positive and interested, except for Cenk Uygur. Cenk Uygur just for 30 minutes just ripped me."

What made it stick was that Kiriakou could not account for it. "I never understood that, because back then I probably agreed on 95% of the issues with Cenk Uygur. Like, why is he attacking me like this?" Uygur's account of the relationship from the other side was similar in shape: he had wanted the friendship and never got a reply. "It's like an unrequited romance where you're sort of like, we should be buds, we agree about a lot of stuff, and then they never call, they never write."

The resolution came from the archive. Uygur said he had become obsessed with identifying the segment, searched the show's records, and found that "no such thing exists", concluding it must have been mistaken identity, and that "maybe there is a Cenk Uygur out there somewhere who did attack you." Kiriakou apologised: "I want to apologize for that, because I think I must have been temporarily insane or something."

The episode is a small illustration of a point Kiriakou makes at length elsewhere about manufactured or misremembered antagonism, and it framed an interview in which the two found themselves in agreement throughout. Uygur closed it by noting the composition of the panel, "here's a Turk, a Greek, and an Armenian", all arguing not for Turkey, Greece or Armenia but for the United States.

See also

- FCI Loretto
- Jake Tapper
- John Kiriakou
