Area 58
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Pressed by a viewer who had been waiting through the broadcast, "John, come on. There's aliens, right? Parts of the government have to know", John Kiriakou gave a two-part answer, and the second part was an anecdote he clearly enjoyed.

The opening concession

Kiriakou did not dismiss the premise. "There have to be," he said. "I mean, maybe they're just little bacteria. Who knows?" The formulation is characteristic of his position on the subject: he allows the possibility of life while declining to specify anything about it.

The man with the book

He then described a recent conversation with someone who, he was careful to note, "presents as very serious." The man told him he was writing a book about Area 58.

Kiriakou assumed a slip of the tongue. "And I said, 'Area 51?'" The man corrected him: "No, Area 58. It's even ," at which point Ted Rall supplied the arithmetic, "51 plus seven," and Kiriakou completed the thought: "plus seven more. And it's that much more secret."

The substance of the claim followed. There is, on the man's account, "an underground bunker at Area 58, and that is where the alien ships come in to land, and we call it the embassy, because that's where we liaise with the aliens."

The response

Kiriakou's immediate reaction was a flat monosyllable: "I'm like, 'Okay.'"

But he did not leave it there, and the qualification he added is the reason the story is worth recording. "But you know what? I mean, I've learned so much about government after having left government that, who knows."

That is not an endorsement. It is a statement about the limits of his own confidence: having discovered after departure how much he had not known while inside, he declines to certify that any particular claim about government secrecy is impossible. He applies the same reasoning elsewhere when asked why the Pentagon does not simply declassify what it holds on unidentified craft.

Placement

The exchange came near the end of a broadcast, immediately before the hosts turned to the Iran,Contra segment they had been promising all hour. Kiriakou did not name the man, name the publisher, or say whether the book appeared.

See also

- CIA and the UFO question
- Kiriakou's UFO sighting
- Luis Elizondo
- The Australian Pilot
- Ted Rall
