CIA psychological evaluations
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CIA psychological evaluations are the recurring psychiatric screenings every officer of the CIA undergoes. John Kiriakou treats the requirement as unremarkable and its rationale as obvious: "You have to be sane in order to go overseas and carry out these operations."

The schedule

The cadence is fixed. There is a pre-employment evaluation; another three years after hiring; and then one every five years "for the rest of your life."

Extra sessions are triggered by conduct rather than by the calendar, "unless you do something overseas that requires maybe a little bit of intermediate intervention. Like maybe you beat the hell out of somebody at a traffic stop or make a particularly inexplicable stupid decision in an operation. You're going to have to get with the shrinks and work it out with them."

'Sorry to hear you went nuts'

Kiriakou's illustration of the consequence is the reason he was given a short-term overseas mission just after the 11 September attacks. A branch chief in the Counterterrorism Center approached him and asked whether he would go. Kiriakou agreed, then asked the obvious question, why not send Dave, who covered the issue?

The chief's answer was that "Dave went nuts. He didn't pass the psych evaluation." Kiriakou then went to find Dave to be briefed on the operation anyway, and opened with "Sorry to hear you went nuts." Dave's reply was equally matter-of-fact: "Yeah, what are you going to do? It'll pass. I'll be okay. I'll be back up and at them in six months." Kiriakou's own assessment: "I don't know how nuts he was. He was clearly too nuts to go overseas."

See also

- John Kiriakou
- Central Intelligence Agency
- Sociopathic Tendencies
