Gangstalking claims
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Asked about CIA surveillance targeting programmes, electromagnetic weapons, mind control and "gangstalking on innocent civilians", Kiriakou's answer is flat: "the CIA doesn't do that. The CIA hasn't even experimented with it since 1975. It's my understanding that there is no such thing as gangstalking."

The shape of the claim

He receives the query "almost every day" and describes the one that arrived the day before as representative: a man who said he had been under close-in surveillance for six years, that the CIA followed him everywhere as he drove for Uber, that a man had stared at him in the grocery store, and that at night electromagnetic weapons were used on him, giving him headaches and preventing sleep. Kiriakou's response is short and unsoftened: "It's like, no. That's mental illness. You need to see a psychiatrist, not a former CIA officer."

Asked what the word means, he defines it as described by its believers, "a whole gang of people and they're constantly on you. Like some are following you close in, some are following you from a distance, some are beaming waves at you, some are in cars around you", and then dismisses it: "It's all made up. It's all in their minds."

Why it could not happen

His refutation is operational rather than rhetorical, and turns on cost. Surveillance is expensive and conspicuous; an operation of that kind "at most would last a day or two and it would be targeted against somebody who had very specific information that the CIA needed. Not some Uber driver driving around, you know, Kentucky. It's just not real life." He notes the existence of a website where such claims are collected and traded, accounts of the agency "stealing their dreams and planted a chip in the filling in their tooth and communicating through some kind of waves."

One element he affirms. Put to him that people have credibly picked up AM/FM radio through their fillings and concluded they were being spied on, he agrees twice: "Yes... Absolutely true."

See also

- Havana Syndrome
- Central Intelligence Agency
