Mike Baker
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Mike Baker is a former Central Intelligence Agency case officer. He was John Kiriakou's direct predecessor at the Athens station during the period in which the CIA was working the Revolutionary Organization 17 November problem. "Mike's a great guy. He was a good officer. He was uh, he doesn't really talk about his work a lot. Maybe it's cuz a lot of years have passed, but he was the real deal." Much of the preliminary intelligence groundwork on 17 November had been completed by Baker before Kiriakou inherited the position, and Kiriakou went on to work with Baker's wife for several years afterwards, in London.

The van in Athens

Asked directly whether Baker was a genuine former officer, Kiriakou's answer was that he was a legitimate counterterrorism operations officer who "did something that was really really like really stupid."

Baker and another colleague were running surveillance on a terrorism suspect from a van. In Kiriakou's telling the best security in the world is an old Greek lady peering through her drapes, and one of them kept seeing the same two men sitting in the same van day after day, and called the police. The police surrounded the van; the two officers could not get out; when they finally opened the door, the police pulled them out and found three separate changes of disguise for each man and six identity cards in different names from different countries. They fell back on what Kiriakou calls the get-out-of-jail-free card, "call my boss" at a particular section of the embassy, and were expelled from Greece.

Back at headquarters Baker was called into the office of the director of the Counterterrorist Center. He had been telling people he expected a commendation for standing up to the Greeks. Instead he was told the agency wanted his resignation by the end of the day. "And that was the end of Mike ... he just made a really stupid mistake and he paid for it with his career."

After the agency

Kiriakou cites Baker as one of his examples of an intelligence officer who tried to convert the career into screen work. In one telling Baker went to Hollywood for bit parts, could not make a living as an actor, and moved into news and commentary, spending years as a Fox News commentator. In another he went into male modelling, Baker was a good-looking man, Kiriakou notes, and this was well before the events that ended his cover, made a few thousand dollars at it, and tried and failed to get his own show at Fox News. He then paired up with a former KGB officer to open a security consulting firm in London, which among other jobs handled security for Madonna's wedding to Guy Ritchie. He never made the money he expected, and never went back to the agency.

On the Rogan show

Asked by a viewer whether Baker had come up on Joe Rogan's show, the questioner wanted to hear how Baker had been fired, Kiriakou answered "yes and no." The first thing Rogan said to him walking into the studio was "Hey, do you know my friend Mike Baker?" Kiriakou replied that he had known him for years, that he had replaced him in Athens and had worked with his wife in London. Rogan then said "Okay, we're on the air," changed the subject, and never returned to it.

See also

- Revolutionary Organization 17 November
- Joe Rogan
- John Kiriakou
