Get better enough to go back
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Asked about the psychological cost of intelligence work, John Kiriakou ended his answer with a piece of advice framed as a warning about the employer rather than the work.

The screening, and its limits

There is turnover in the profession, he says, because some people "literally lose their minds" doing some of these things. The Agency tries to filter for it: if you are mentally fragile, "you're not going to be cut out for a CIA job," and the application process is meant to weed such people out. "But sometimes it's just too much."

Where responsibility sits

From that he draws a duty that falls entirely on the individual. You have to be able to recognise when your mental health is in danger, he says, and you have to be willing to act on it to protect yourself.

The reason he gives is the sharp part. "Because the CIA doesn't care if you have a mental breakdown. You have to care if you're having a mental breakdown. The CIA doesn't care if you get better. They just want you to get better enough so they can send you back overseas to do more work. So, you really have to worry about yourself. That's the advice I would give."

His own case

The warning is offered by someone who says the work itself never touched him. Many of his colleagues suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, he says, and he never did, he does not know how or why, but he was able to separate the danger and risk of the job from his personal life.

He attributes his own PTSD instead to the end of his marriage, and reports the reaction of a doctor he knew from the Agency, who told him it was amazing that he had come back from Islamabad with no signs of it. Kiriakou's answer was that he had loved Islamabad, the job, the work, the operations, the people. "It was like a vacation for me." The breakup of his marriage was the thing he never saw coming.

See also

See also

- John Kiriakou
- PTSD
- Central Intelligence Agency
