John Kerry
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John Kerry is a U.S. Senator from Massachusetts who served as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during John Kiriakou's 2009 service as the committee's senior investigator, and subsequently as U.S. Secretary of State during the second Barack Obama administration. Kiriakou's overall assessment is unfavorable: "I was so excited to work for John Kerry, and he turned out to be a coward. Just a mainstream nobody."

Recruitment to the Foreign Relations Committee

Kerry called Kiriakou in January 2009 to say he was becoming committee chairman and reconstituting its investigative function, which had been phased out in 1974, and asked if Kiriakou wanted to be lead investigator. The recommendation came from two Vietnam War veterans Kiriakou knew. Kerry's pitch: "The Senate Foreign Relations Committee used to have an investigative function, but it was zeroed out in 1972, and I'm going to bring it back, and I want to do hard-hitting investigations." Kiriakou accepted on that basis. He has given the pitch in stronger terms elsewhere, "with your reputation as a whistleblower, I want you to come here and head investigations and I want you to go hard", and says he was hired to "root out wrongdoing."

Kiriakou dates the call to around the time he believed he had been exonerated of the CIA leak case, just as Kerry was about to become committee chairman; Kerry offered him the senior investigator post with a promise of "carte blanche to investigate anyone and anything," which Kiriakou says "turned out not to even vaguely be true." Kerry told him he took him on partly because Kerry knew what it was like to "take it on the chin" from the media, and because he believed torture was wrong "under any circumstances."

Kerry's office

The shadow box and the medals

Kerry's famous 1972 act, throwing his Vietnam War medals over the White House fence in protest of the war, is, per the Foreign Relations Committee staff director (a member of the Kennedy family who told Kiriakou directly), historically inaccurate. The medals Kerry threw were duplicates purchased at the post exchange; the original medals were displayed in a shadow box on a credenza in his Senate office. "He goes, 'The medals?' He didn't throw the medals over the White House fence. He went to the PX and bought copies of the medals and threw the copies over the White House fence. ... Those medals are the most important thing in his life.'"

Kiriakou noticed the shadow box on his first visit to Kerry's office in the Russell Senate Office Building. He describes it as holding two bronze stars, a silver star, and a purple heart, which Kerry told him were replacements bought at the PX that same morning, the real medals kept in the office. He separately describes Kerry's decorations as a Silver Star, a Bronze Star, and a Purple Heart, adding "I think he had three bronze stars and a purple heart." In the fullest telling he says he learned of the substitution only afterward, from Kerry's chief of staff; "those medals are the most important things in his life."

The photographs

Retelling that first visit on the PBD Podcast in April 2026, Kiriakou added two details he had not emphasised elsewhere. The wall behind Kerry's desk was covered, floor-to-ceiling, with framed photographs of Kerry with world leaders "from Gorbachev to the Dalai Lama, everybody that matters." On the credenza by the door sat three items: a photograph of Kerry in an embrace with John Lennon, a photograph of Kerry with Peter, Paul and Mary, Kerry gave the eulogy at Mary Travers's funeral, and the shadow box.

Kiriakou notes that Kerry lost his 2004 presidential race to George W. Bush by Ohio alone, an outcome "that close," and that Bush's Yale grades were reportedly better than Kerry's, "an inside joke for us", even though the two men were both members of Skull and Bones.

The fixation on the Secretary of State job

The Christmas-dinner promise

Kerry was, per Kiriakou, openly bitter that the position of Secretary of State in Obama's first term was given to Hillary Clinton rather than to himself. "All he ever talked about was how desperately he wanted to be Secretary of State and how he got ripped off and Hillary Clinton stole his job from him." Kerry related to Kiriakou the conversation with then-candidate Obama in which the post had allegedly been offered to him in exchange for endorsing Obama and delivering the Kennedy-family endorsement, a transaction Kerry believed Obama had reneged on. Kiriakou: "I said, 'Bill Richardson tells exactly the same story.' I said, 'Obama promised half a dozen people in Washington that they would be Secretary of State.'" Kerry told Kiriakou the offer was made on a walk around the neighborhood after a Christmas dinner at Kerry's house, Obama's arm around his shoulder: "John, if you endorse me first, before even the Kennedys, Secretary of State." Kerry noted he did endorse Obama first, a week before the Kennedys, and, years later, was still bitter that Clinton got the job instead.

Telling the story in public

The grievance was not confined to private conversation. Kiriakou attributes to Kerry "this bad habit of going off script every time he was in public," in a working culture where every word a principal speaks is scripted in advance. At a Brookings Institution appearance on Yemen, with Kiriakou sitting in the first row reading along with the prepared text, Kerry departed from it to tell the Christmas-dinner story to a public audience, the walk after dinner, Obama's arm around his shoulder, the offer conditioned on endorsing before the Kennedys did, and then carried on to the complaint that he had been robbed of the job. Kiriakou's advice afterwards was that the story was disqualifying if Kerry ever hoped to hold the office: "Senator, you can't tell that story in public."

The investigations Kerry killed

Every investigation Kiriakou opened that touched the CIA was personally shut down by Kerry. Kiriakou's reading of the motive is constant across tellings: "Because he never ever ever wanted to do anything that could possibly jeopardize his chances of becoming Secretary of State. That's all he cared about. It's what he lived for."

Dasht-i-Leili

Kerry, after initially permitting Kiriakou to write an inquiry letter to the CIA regarding the Dasht-i-Leili massacre reopening promised by Obama in 2008, blocked Kiriakou from taking the agency's classified non-response (per Kiriakou's colleague: "go fuck yourself") to the Washington Post. "And now he doesn't [want to get to the bottom of Dasht-i-Leili]." Kiriakou sent the inquiry letter to the CIA under Kerry's own signature; six weeks later a classified top-secret response came back reading only "go fuck yourself," which killed the investigation outright. Kerry backed off, Kiriakou says, because he "wanted desperately to be Secretary of State" and would not risk upsetting the White House.

The Afghan heroin study

Kiriakou proposed the Afghanistan heroin investigation to Kerry while serving as senior investigator, and travelled to Kandahar, Helmand and Lashkar Gah to report it. The finished paper was never published. "Kerry never allowed me to publish it because the CIA told Kerry not to allow me to publish it." See Afghan heroin policy for the field trip and the DEA explanation that preceded the decision.

The passport chips

Kerry also blocked a finding that American passports contain smart chips made in China and are assembled in Thailand. "Are you going to let me do anything?" Kiriakou asked, before resigning after two years.

Afghanistan CODEL and Iran outreach

Kiriakou traveled to Afghanistan as chief investigator on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee with a congressional delegation led by Chairman Kerry roughly ten years into the war. After a military order-of-battle briefing, Kerry remarked, "We may actually win this thing." Kiriakou pushed back on the spot: Hamid Karzai was "the mayor of Kabul," the Taliban held the rest of the country, and the briefing was just "happy talk from the generals" designed to protect their budget. Separately, while Kiriakou was on the committee staff, Kerry sought to approach Iran on counternarcotics cooperation as a confidence-building measure, Kiriakou's idea, prompted by Iran's worsening heroin problem, but the outreach went nowhere after Iran countered with a request for classified equipment including secure telecommunications gear and night-vision goggles.

The Susan Collins debate

In 2010, while serving as senior investigator on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee under Kerry, Kiriakou accepted a think tank's invitation to debate Yemen on Capitol Hill without preparing, his reasoning being that if he did not know the issues by then he never would. He arrived to find his opponent was Senator Susan Collins, who came with an army of aides and note cards.

Kiriakou argued that Yemenis are consistently underestimated and would beat Saudi Arabia, and that the United States did have national interests in Yemen, counterterrorism, counter-piracy and open trade through the Bab al-Mandab, against the official line that it had none. Collins disagreed; he shook her hand and went home.

The next morning Kerry walked into his office and asked whether he had debated Collins the night before. Kiriakou said he had, "and if I may say so, I kicked her ass." Kerry did not think that was funny, said only "Don't ever do that again," and walked out. By Kiriakou's own account he did not work for Kerry much after that, "so I did whatever the heck I pleased."

Other recurring complaints

- The yacht tax dodge. Kerry, worth an estimated $750 million, initially registered his roughly $6 million yacht in Rhode Island to avoid paying the Massachusetts luxury tax, prompting a Boston Globe story before he relented and paid the tax.
- The Costco wine. Kerry gave staff Christmas gifts of wine he claimed came from his own cellar and was his favorite; Kiriakou and a colleague looked it up and discovered it was a $10 bottle from Costco.
- Bashar al-Assad. Kerry repeatedly referred in public to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as "my dear friend," citing a personal recollection of riding motorcycles together to the Golan Heights. The Lebanese ambassador in Washington complained to Kiriakou. Kerry's response: "Well, he is my dear friend." Kiriakou says he personally warned Kerry to stop, noting that Lebanese contacts in Washington were calling him to ask what his boss was doing; Kerry's explanation was that he and Assad had bonded riding motorcycles together to the Golan Heights.
- Drinking patterns. Kerry's December 2009 Christmas party, at his $12.5 million Georgetown home, was held in a 20°F side-yard because Kerry would not permit guests inside the house. Joe Biden attended.

The political assessment underneath the anecdotes is one he says he formed early and reported at home. Having worked closely with Kerry for two and a half years and gained "a receipt into John Kerry's thinking on foreign policy," he came home one day and told his wife that "the American people have no idea how conservative John Kerry is. He's no liberal. I saw it with my own eyes."

He files Kerry with Hillary Clinton under a second failing as well: that they "always think that they are the smartest people in the room, and so they don't take advice from any of their advisors", a habit he connects directly to the resulting wars in Syria, Iraq and Libya.

As Secretary of State

Kiriakou says Benjamin Netanyahu went to Secretary of State Kerry three times to reinstate the U.S. visa of Arnon Milchan, a documented Israeli spy, which was eventually restored, becoming the basis of a Netanyahu corruption charge.

After Kiriakou's arrest

Four days before reporting to federal prison, Kiriakou emailed Kerry's private address directly, "Mr. Secretary, I'm begging you, you know me, you know I didn't do this, please ask the president to commute my sentence", hoping a commutation would let him provide for his five children while the conviction itself stood, sparing the Justice Department the embarrassment of a reversal. Kerry's one-sentence reply arrived two days later: "please do not ever attempt to contact me again."

Asked years later for a one-line assessment of his former boss, Kiriakou called him "the stupidest smart guy I've ever encountered. And certainly the most arrogant."

The wine and the yacht

Two smaller episodes from the same period sit alongside the refusal. Kerry, representing Massachusetts, bought what Kiriakou describes as less a yacht than an ocean-going ship and docked it in Rhode Island, because Massachusetts levied a yacht tax. The press punished him for it; staff went to the chief of staff to say it was a very bad look and he should simply pay; and after a couple of weeks he brought the boat home and paid the tax.

The Christmas 2009 present to the office was a bottle of wine. Kiriakou, a long-standing Wine Spectator subscriber who did not recognise the label, looked it up: ten dollars.

The study he asked Kerry for

In an April 2026 retelling Kiriakou set out the origin of the Afghanistan work as a request made to Kerry in his capacity as chairman: "I told the then chairman John Kerry I wanted to go to Afghanistan to do a formal Senate study on the heroin poppy crop." The scale that justified it was that Afghanistan "at the time was producing 93% of the world's heroin."

The paper that came back from that trip was written up, he says, "just as I collected it", and sent first, eyes only, to a friend at the Drug Enforcement Administration for a read before it went to Kerry. The friend's verdict was that it would never see print, for reasons of policy rather than accuracy. "And I never got it published."

See also

- Dasht-i-Leili massacre
- Bill Richardson
- Joe Biden
- John Kiriakou
