The CIA Insider's Guide omnibus
===============================

The CIA Insider's Guide omnibus is the single-volume reissue of John Kiriakou's three practical guides, proposed to him by Tony Lyons, the owner and publisher of Skyhorse Publishing.

The approach began with Lyons observing that Kiriakou was "everywhere in my feed, you're on Instagram, you're on TikTok, you're on YouTube." Kiriakou's own explanation was the one he gives everybody: "this kid cut my videos up."

The proposal was to republish the guide to surveillance and surveillance detection together with the guides to lying and lie detection and to disappearing and living off the grid, "in one fat book," updated. The requested deadline was Saturday; Kiriakou's answer was "550 pages, I can't do it by Saturday."

Tucker Carlson agreed to write the introduction and delivered it the next day. Kiriakou telephoned to ask how he had written it in a day; Carlson's answer was that it was not that long, "I just dashed it off", with the instruction that the book needed to get out. Kiriakou's reply was that it did not need to, since the three books were all still in print and the exercise was repackaging and updating.

A big book year

The omnibus was one of several projects Kiriakou listed. Skyhorse also wanted the CIA Insider's Guide to the Iran Crisis updated, "which is going to be a bigger work since we're at war"; the cemetery book had been postponed; the Mafia book was finished and awaiting a release date; and he had begun a book of stories, on the reasoning that "I've got to get all my stories all in one place."

His ambition for what follows is a move upmarket. Now that he has "a really great literary agent," he hopes future books will be published by one of the big five, his best relationship being with Simon & Schuster, which has done several of his others. The attraction is promotional: the large houses "have PR budgets. And so they will send me on a book tour."

See also

- The CIA Insider's Guide to Surveillance and Surveillance Detection
- Remains of the Day (book)
- Tucker Carlson
- The rebuttal book
