Sociopathic Tendencies
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Sociopathic tendencies, per John Kiriakou, is the trait the CIA actively seeks in recruits, not full clinical sociopathy, but the capacity to operate in legal, moral, and ethical gray areas without being paralyzed by regret. Kiriakou described this as his own characteristic and as a trait common among the most successful intelligence officers and CEOs of large corporations.

The CIA selection criterion

Kiriakou described the CIA as selecting for recruits who can read situations, adjust behavior, and operate effectively in environments where conventional moral certainty is unhelpful. Full sociopaths, people with no conscience at all, are too uncontrollable. But people with sociopathic tendencies, who can act decisively in gray areas without being immobilized by guilt, make the most effective case officers. In a separate telling, Kiriakou puts the practical problem with full sociopaths in operational terms: they have no conscience, so they "blow right through a polygraph exam", but they also refuse to take orders, whereas people with sociopathic tendencies still feel regret or remorse and will respond to directives. He has told this virtually word-for-word across dozens of interviews, attributing the formulation to a CIA psychiatrist who told him directly that the agency "actively seeks to hire people who have sociopathic tendencies, not sociopaths", because true sociopaths have no conscience and are impossible to control, even though they pass polygraphs easily.

Kiriakou says the selection process is imperfect: sociopaths without any conscience still "slip through the process" in significant numbers, and because they feel no guilt about stepping on colleagues, they are disproportionately the ones who end up in CIA leadership positions. He compares this to any Fortune 500 company, where the executive suite likewise fills with people who climbed the ladder on the backs of others; he says most CIA directors, like most Fortune 500 CEOs, treat the job as a career waypoint before cashing out as a hedge-fund principal or cabinet official. Because there is no ethics office guiding case officers in the field, nobody at headquarters intervenes to stop a bad call, Kiriakou says officers are left to rely on "your own personal set of ethics," and conscience is what separates a whistleblower from a careerist.

The whistleblower as counter-evidence

Kiriakou offered his own act of whistleblowing as evidence that he does not possess the deeper sociopathic traits that, in his view, characterize the most effective long-haul intelligence officers. His framing: true sociopaths sail through the polygraph because they feel no guilt, advance quickly because they operate without moral friction, and work their way to the top on the backs of colleagues they discard without concern.

Kiriakou's conclusion: "It's clear I'm not a sociopath. That's why I blew the whistle." The implication: conscience, the very trait the agency's selection process inadvertently screens out, is what produces accountability.

Adaptability as the primary spy skill

Kiriakou identified adaptability as the single most important trait for an intelligence officer operating in everyday life, more important than language, area knowledge, or tradecraft. An officer who can read a room, adjust their register, and become whatever a target needs them to be will succeed in environments where technically proficient officers fail.

'You break into the Indonesian embassy'

John Kiriakou illustrates the sociopathic tendencies the CIA screens for, not sociopathy, with an oral-exam scenario: an economic officer proves unrecruitable, but headquarters needs the data. Other candidates suggested spending more months cultivating him or working through the wives; Kiriakou said, "You break into the Indonesian embassy and you steal it." The examiner told him that was exactly right. A true sociopath, he adds, is undesirable because with no conscience they can "blow through the polygraph." In a separate retelling of the same story, Kiriakou identifies the target as an Indonesian economic secretary and the exercise as one posed to a group of new hires just after his own recruitment; the instructor's confirmation was blunt: "That's exactly what you do."

The definition, stated as a checklist

Pressed on what the trait looks like in day-to-day operational terms, Kiriakou gave his most compressed formulation of it: "Somebody with sociopathic tendencies has a conscience, reacts on a polygraph exam, but is very happy to work in legal, moral, and ethical gray areas because he or she believes we're the good guys." The polygraph clause is the diagnostic half, it is precisely what separates the type the agency wants from the full sociopath who feels nothing and therefore registers nothing.

The worked example he offers is a burglary. "if I'm instructed to break into somebody's house and plant bugs by God, I'll break into the house and plant bugs or cameras or do a false flag operation all because it's good for the United States." And then the comparison that makes it a diagnosis rather than a boast: "a normal person wouldn't break into somebody's house and plant bugs and and uh and cameras, but I would. That's a sociopathic tendency."

He puts the same belief structure to a different use when explaining why the institution feels no remorse. Part of it is the shelter of classification; the larger part is that "everybody at the CIA really has convinced themselves that they're the good guys. And that the ends justify the means", so that an action taken outside the law, if it is believed to save American lives, is experienced from the inside as patriotic duty.

The source of the doctrine, and three names

Kiriakou attributes the selection rule to a named professional rather than to inference: "a CIA psychiatrist once told me, and I say this in my speeches all the time, the CIA actively seeks to hire people who have sociopathic tendencies. They try not to hire sociopaths, because sociopaths have no conscience, and with no conscience they easily pass a polygraph exam, but they're impossible to control because they don't feel guilt. People who have sociopathic tendencies do have a conscience and do feel guilt, but are happy to work in moral, ethical and legal grey areas."

In the same account he applies the distinction to individuals, which he does not always do. "Because sociopaths are sociopaths, they're going to slip through the cracks anyway, and like in any corporate environment, it's the sociopaths who work their way to the top, because they're all too happy to just climb over the backs of their colleagues and co-workers to make it to the top. And that's how you end up with a John Brennan, or a Jose Rodriguez, or a George Tenet, because they actually are sociopaths."

Asked whether even such men retain some fragment of conscience, Kiriakou declined to be certain and set out the test he applies: "any normal person, you can only kill so many people, or be responsible for the deaths of so many people, before something gets to you. You've got to end up with PTSD or some kind of psychological malady. Unless you're a true sociopath, and then you can just kill with impunity and go right to sleep at night."

See also

- Asset acquisition cycle
- John Kiriakou
- CIA
