The detractors who died
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Among the things John Kiriakou says he did not appreciate at the time, when it felt as though the entire weight of the American government had fallen on his head, is that his opponents were finite.

Attrition

"My most senior detractors," he said, "the CIA officials who wanted me dead or wanted me to die in prison, eventually they died and they're just not around anymore."

He names no one. The observation is offered as a structural fact about outlasting an institution rather than as satisfaction at any individual's death.

The replacement

What has taken their place, in his account, is a different kind of contact. "This new generation of CIA officers, many of them have reached out to me, as recently as two weeks ago, to say that I did the right thing, and that they still talk about me at the CIA twenty years after I've left, saying that I did the right thing."

His conclusion from the two facts together is a single sentence: "So, you know, in the end, it's all worth it."

Where the thought comes from

The passage follows directly from his ex-wife's advice that he had to keep telling his story until his version became the version of record, advice he says was vindicated when the government moved on to Edward Snowden and then Julian Assange. The detractors dying and the juniors calling are the long-run confirmation of the same strategy: the institution's memory of him has been rewritten by turnover.

He makes a related point immediately afterwards about a message received at the very beginning. The day after he blew the whistle, a former deputy director of the CIA emailed to say he had chosen a difficult road but that the writer was glad somebody had done it. That message came from the old guard; the calls he describes here come from people who joined after he left.

See also

See also

- John Kiriakou
- Central Intelligence Agency
- Edward Snowden
- Julian Assange
