The 2016 research pitch
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The 2016 research pitch was an approach made to John Kiriakou about three weeks before an interview he gave on 7 November 2016, roughly eighteen months after his release, which he reads as a second attempt to entrap him, distinct from the Japanese diplomat FBI sting of 2011.

The caller claimed that he and Kiriakou had been colleagues overseas about twenty years earlier, said he no longer worked for the agency, and said he was living abroad and wanted to hire Kiriakou to do research for him. The name did not ring a bell, though the caller used the names of a couple of people Kiriakou had been friendly with. Two things did not fit: "the story just didn't make any sense to me," and the caller "kept making mistakes with some of the CIA lingo, which made me think that the guy's not a CIA officer."

The check turned on one of the names. The caller mentioned someone Kiriakou had worked with at an overseas post he declines to identify; Kiriakou telephoned her, and her first question resolved it, "which John Smith?", establishing that the man named was an FBI agent rather than the CIA colleague the caller had implied.

The offer was $5,000 a month, and Kiriakou describes the work requested as going back to his former CIA colleagues to draw classified information out of them. He no longer held a security clearance. His conclusion is that the object was another Espionage Act charge: "here they are, after I've done my time, I've finished my sentence, still trying to entrap me."

He places it in a pattern rather than treating it as personal, naming Tom Drake, Kirk Wiebe, Bill Binney, Jeffrey Sterling and Chelsea Manning as others who face the same thing: "even after you're convicted, even after your case is over, they still come after you."

See also

- Japanese diplomat FBI sting
- FBI
- Espionage Act
- John Kiriakou
