"I''m a non-person"
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"I'm a non-person" is John Kiriakou's own description of his position after release from prison, given in answer to the suggestion that being erased by a former friend in high office was a 1984 moment. "That's what's happened. I'm a non-person."

The message

The episode he uses to illustrate it is deliberately small. A former colleague from both the CIA and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee came to congratulate him on his release, and it was good to see him, but he was also carrying something: "I have a message from our friend: congratulations, he's really glad you're home, he hopes you understand that he can never speak to you again." The friend in question had since taken a very senior position in the administration. Kiriakou's answer: "yeah, sure, I understand. I think he's a coward, but I understand."

What went with it

The material half is the pension, taken after nineteen and a half years of what he calls proud federal service, leaving him to "work until the day I die."

The silence he minds most

Asked in 2015 what disappointed him most, Kiriakou did not name the sentence or the money. It was that in the eight years since the ABC interview "not a single additional CIA officer has come out and said I was an interrogator, this is what I saw, I was involved in the planning, I was involved in the implementation. Nobody has gone public." Asked how many knew what he knew, his estimate was "in the several dozens", and "never said a word."

See also

- Thomas Drake
- Edward Snowden
