This page aggregates every event with a known date that has been mentioned anywhere in KiriPedia's source corpus. Entries are grouped by calendar day; click any article title to read the surrounding context.
New events appear here automatically as articles are added or updated — each event lives in its source article's frontmatter under an events: array. The callout above and the order of entries within each day reshuffle on every page load.
Jump to: January · February · March · April · May · June · July · August · September · October · November · December
January
January 1
- 2025 — The Biden administration places an initial $25 million bounty on Nicolás Maduro, which the Trump administration raises to $50 million in August 2025, per John Kiriakou. [Maduro Capture]
- 2012 — John Kiriakou is charged with five felonies, including three counts under the Espionage Act, after three years of surveillance. [CIA Torture Program Whistleblowing]
- 2011 — John Kiriakou travels to Afghanistan with Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman John Kerry, sitting through a briefing by 11 generals whose optimistic account he privately disputes. [Afghanistan 2011 Kerry Trip]
- 2002 — John Kiriakou flies from Washington via London and Kuwait to Islamabad to become CIA chief of counterterrorism operations, arriving without his luggage. [Pakistan Station (2002)]
- 1993 — Per John Kiriakou, who recalled the year uncertainly as 1992 or 1993, Mir Aimal Kansi shoots commuters entering CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia with an AK-47, killing two and wounding seven, before fleeing to Pakistan. [Mir Aimal Kansi CIA headquarters attack]
- 1944 — German forces withdraw from Zakynthos, per John Kiriakou having failed to deport or kill a single one of the island's Jewish residents. [Zakynthos Holocaust rescue]
January 3
- 2020 — Trump killed Qassem Soleimani; roughly 700,000 attended his funeral procession, but Iran did not retaliate militarily — later termed "strategic patience" by Kiriakou's telling. [Iran strike factions (2026)]
January 6
- 2007 — John Kiriakou's ABC News interview with Brian Ross airs, in which he confirms that the CIA waterboarded Abu Zubaydah. [John Kiriakou]
January 11
- 1968 — Washington Post publishes front-page photograph of a U.S. soldier waterboarding a North Vietnamese prisoner, per John Kiriakou; Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara orders an investigation, the soldier is convicted of torture, and is sentenced to twenty years of hard labor at Leavenworth. [Waterboarding]
January 12
- 2012 — Twenty-two FBI agents raid John Kiriakou's home while he is lured to FBI headquarters under pretext of an interview; Peter Strzok physically places the handcuffs on him. [John Kiriakou]
January 15
- 1991 — President Bush's ultimatum deadline for Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait expires; per John Kiriakou, "the 15th of January, that's what it was." Bombing campaign Desert Sword begins immediately after. [Saddam Hussein]
January 28
- 2003 — President George W. Bush delivers the Yellowcake Niger forgery line in the State of the Union — twice pulled out of the draft by the CIA and twice reinserted by Dick Cheney. [Yellowcake Niger forgery]
February
February 1
- 2009 — Weeks after taking office, President Obama names John Brennan Deputy National Security Advisor for counterterrorism; Brennan secretly asks the Justice Department to reopen the case against John Kiriakou. [CIA Torture Program Whistleblowing]
February 3
- 2015 — Per Kiriakou, he is released from FCI Loretto after serving 23 months of his 30-month sentence. [FCI Loretto]
February 4
- 2004 — The Pentagon's LifeLog program was killed — one day, John Kiriakou notes, before Mark Zuckerberg filed the LLC for Facebook. [DARPA LifeLog]
February 18
- 2001 — FBI counterintelligence chief Robert Hanssen is arrested as a Russian mole; John Kiriakou says Hanssen had spent a year framing CIA officer Brian Kelly. [Robert Hanssen]
February 19
- 2003 — John Kiriakou takes notes behind CIA Director George Tenet at the eve-of-Iraq-invasion Principals Committee meeting; Vice President Dick Cheney chairs; General Tommy Franks ends his order-of-battle briefing with "If all goes as planned, we can be in Tehran by August." [Principals Committee Meeting (February 2003)]
February 21
- 1994 — Aldrich Ames is arrested; John Kiriakou says analyst Sandy Grimes broke the case by noticing Ames's bank deposits spiked after every Mexico City trip. [Aldrich Ames]
February 24
- 1991 — Ground assault begins — Norman Schwarzkopf's flanking maneuver, with the main force routed through Saudi Arabia to strike Iraqi forces from the north. The country was liberated in two and a half days. [Norman Schwarzkopf]
February 27
- 1991 — John Kiriakou enters Kuwait City with U.S. Marines on Liberation Day, describing his CIA analytical work during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait as where he "made his bones." [John Kiriakou]
February 28
- 2026 — Reacts on the Julian Dorey Podcast to his viral 'Lincoln's last turd' clip and his sudden status as an internet meme figure [John Kiriakou]
March
March 1
- 2003 — Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is captured in Rawalpindi, Pakistan; John Kiriakou says his identity was first learned when Abu Zubaydah named 'Mukhtar' to FBI agent Ali Soufan. [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed]
- 1979 — Iranian pilgrims infiltrated the Hajj and took over the Kaaba, per Kiriakou killing more than a thousand people and leading Saudi Arabia to break diplomatic relations with Iran for years. [Saudi-Iran diplomatic rivalry]
March 10
- 2023 — China brokered the resumption of Saudi-Iranian diplomatic relations, catching the U.S. off guard. [Saudi-Iran diplomatic rivalry]
March 16
- 1985 — CIA Beirut station chief William Buckley is abducted; John Kiriakou says his torture was filmed and sent to U.S. embassies on three VHS tapes, the last showing his execution. [Bill Buckley]
March 20
- 2003 — The U.S. invades Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein — a war John Kiriakou says everyone at the CIA knew was justified by false WMD claims. [Saddam Hussein]
March 22
- 1990 — Mossad assassinates British inventor Gerald Bull outside his Brussels apartment — only after Iraqi engineers solve his giant gun's cracking problem with an internal sleeve they called "the condom". [Gerald Bull]
March 31
- 2021 — Daniel Hale pleads guilty to a single Espionage Act count, per John Kiriakou, hoping to have four other counts dismissed. [Daniel Hale]
April
April 1
- 2002 — A 17 November bomb intended for a Piraeus shipowner's car detonates prematurely, severing the bomber's hands and destroying an eye; his confession leads to the group's total rollup. [Revolutionary Organization 17 November]
- 1976 — 17 November assassinates former Greek National Police chief Mallios, a torturer under the military dictatorship, using the same pistol later known as the Welch .45. [Revolutionary Organization 17 November]
April 13
- 2023 — Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guard reservist, was arrested by the FBI in connection with the leak of classified Pentagon documents to a Discord server; John Kiriakou, discussing the case the next day, predicted an Espionage Act charge and an eventual plea bargain. [Jack Teixeira]
April 14
- 2010 — NSA whistleblower Tom Drake is indicted on ten felony counts; John Kiriakou cites his case as proof that internal channels for national-security whistleblowers do not work. [Tom Drake]
- 1865 — Abraham Lincoln assassinated at Ford's Theatre; an artifact allegedly excreted by him in the theatre men's room that evening was preserved by a Pennsylvania circus-freak-show museum [Lincoln's last turd]
May
May 1
- 2002 — John Kiriakou, on his first day as executive assistant to the CIA's deputy director for operations, is told the U.S. will invade Iraq the following year and overthrow Saddam Hussein — a year before the Principals Committee meeting on the eve of the invasion. [Principals Committee Meeting (February 2003)]
- 1960 — Francis Gary Powers' U-2 is shot down over the Soviet Union; John Kiriakou notes he got no hero's welcome because Americans felt he should have died with the plane. [Francis Gary Powers]
May 17
- 2018 — Gina Haspel is confirmed as CIA Director in the closest such vote in history; John Kiriakou had opposed her, calling her '1,000% pro-torture.' [Gina Haspel]
May 18
- 1965 — Israeli spy Eli Cohen is publicly hanged in Damascus; John Kiriakou credits his penetration of Syria with Israel's later military victories. [Eli Cohen]
June
June 1
- 2013 — Edward Snowden's NSA disclosures break publicly; John Kiriakou, then imprisoned at FCI Loretto, writes both a public and a private letter to Snowden advising him never to cooperate with the FBI. [Edward Snowden]
- 2002 — John Kiriakou returns from Pakistan and, on the strength of the Abu Zubaydah capture, is promoted to executive assistant to the CIA's deputy director for operations. [Pakistan Station (2002)]
June 5
- 1968 — Robert F. Kennedy is shot at the Ambassador Hotel; John Kiriakou argues the physical evidence makes the RFK assassination impossible to attribute to Sirhan Sirhan alone. [RFK Assassination]
June 8
- 2000 — Assassinated by Revolutionary Organization 17 November in Athens; John Kiriakou was the originally intended target [Stephen Saunders]
June 15
- 2026 — Per John Kiriakou, the director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons calls him to invite him onto an informal advisory council on prison reform; Kiriakou tells the director the agency is corrupt "from the very top to the very bottom" and that reform must start with breaking the guards' union. [FCI Loretto]
June 18
- 2002 — Per John Kiriakou, the CIA began isolating Abu Zubaydah at Detention Site Green, with the FBI team departing and not returning, ahead of the coming interrogation escalation. [Abu Zubaydah]
June 25
- 1996 — A truck bomb destroyed the Khobar Towers U.S. military housing complex in Saudi Arabia, killing 19 U.S. Air Force personnel; John Kiriakou, living across the water in Bahrain, felt the blast shatter his own windows. [Khobar Towers bombing]
June 30
- 2018 — John Kiriakou marks this as the worst day of his life — worse, he says, than going to prison — a personal betrayal he is under court order not to discuss in detail. [John Kiriakou]
- 1990 — The CIA, with John Kiriakou as its lead Saddam Hussein analyst, issues its first paper warning the White House of the Iraqi military build-up on the Kuwait border. [Iraqi invasion of Kuwait]
July
July 6
- 2001 — Cofer Black interrupts a routine John Kiriakou briefing to a friendly Arab delegation to warn — nine weeks before 9/11 — that "something terrible is going to happen … on an unprecedented scale," handing them code words to watch for ("honey salesman, wedding, football match"): "I beg you, if you have any sources inside al-Qaeda, please help us." [Cofer Black]
July 21
- 2024 — Following Joe Biden's withdrawal from the 2024 race, Kamala Harris is installed as the Democratic presidential nominee without a competitive primary — per John Kiriakou, despite party insiders having planned four regional primaries. [Kamala Harris]
July 31
- 2002 — George Tenet goes to the White House and wins President Bush's approval to strip the FBI of primacy over Abu Zubaydah's interrogation — clearing the path for enhanced interrogation to begin. [George Tenet]
- 2002 — FBI Director Robert Mueller withdraws every FBI employee from the host country of the CIA black site holding Abu Zubaydah within 48 hours of the CIA winning primacy — "we know what these CIA guys are going to do." [Robert Mueller]
August
August 1
- 2015 — Per Kiriakou, he learns his Second Chance Act resentencing petition for fellow inmate Mark Lanzalotti succeeded, freeing Lanzalotti 17 years into a 30-year sentence. [FCI Loretto]
- 2002 — John Kiriakou begins work at CIA headquarters as executive assistant to Bob Grenier, the newly appointed associate deputy director of operations for policy support — the same day the CIA's most intense torture of Abu Zubaydah began. [Bob Grenier]
- 2002 — The Justice Department issues the legal opinions authorizing the CIA's enhanced interrogation program; John Kiriakou says the Federal Torture Act was suspended 'like magic.' [Enhanced interrogation techniques]
- 2002 — John Kiriakou's first day as Executive Assistant to the CIA Deputy Director for Operations; he is read into six compartments and told the U.S. will invade Iraq in spring 2003 to overthrow Saddam and build the world's largest air base in the south. [John Kiriakou]
- 1994 — John Kiriakou, his wife Joanne, and their 16-month-old son Chris arrive in Bahrain, where Kiriakou serves under State Department cover as second secretary for economic affairs. [Bahrain Posting (1994–1996)]
- 1990 — Kiriakou's boss at the CIA: "Get a good night's sleep, because tomorrow's going to be a very long day." The Iraqi military, per John Kiriakou, is fully massed on the Kuwait border the night before the invasion — "you could not squeeze one more Iraqi soldier onto the border." [Saddam Hussein]
August 2
- 2002 — CIA contractors Mitchell and Jessen began torturing Abu Zubaydah, who — per John Kiriakou — had been cooperating with FBI interrogator Ali Soufan until then. [Abu Zubaydah]
- 1990 — Iraq announces medical doctor Ahmed Khatib — co-founder of the PFLP with his AUB roommate George Habash — as occupation governor of Kuwait, without Khatib's consent; he pledges loyalty to the Kuwaiti ruling family hours later. [Ahmed Khatib]
- 1990 — John Kiriakou, eight months into his CIA career and 25 years old, briefs President George H.W. Bush in the Oval Office hours after Iraq invades Kuwait. [John Kiriakou]
- 1990 — On the morning Iraq invaded Kuwait, a 25-year-old John Kiriakou — Saddam Hussein's classified biographer — was taken to the Oval Office and asked by the president, "Well, now what do we do?" [Iraqi invasion of Kuwait]
- 1990 — Amir Sheikh Jaber al-Ahmad and the Kuwaiti royal family flee to Saudi Arabia hours after the Iraqi invasion; the government-in-exile is established in Taif under day-to-day leadership of Sheikh Saad al-Abdullah. [Sheikh Jaber al-Ahmad]
August 4
- 2002 — Per John Kiriakou, Abu Zubaydah was first waterboarded, at roughly 6:20 p.m., beginning a month in which he was waterboarded at least 83 times. [Abu Zubaydah]
August 6
- 2001 — The President's Daily Brief article "Bin Laden Determined to Attack in US" is delivered; per John Kiriakou, Condoleezza Rice reportedly dismissed the warning, saying the real threat was China. [President's Daily Brief]
August 9
- 1964 — Born in New Castle, Pennsylvania [John Kiriakou]
August 10
- 2019 — Jeffrey Epstein is found dead in federal custody; John Kiriakou believes it was suicide, citing his own experience of Bureau of Prisons camera and staffing failures. [Jeffrey Epstein]
August 12
- 2024 — John Kiriakou says Benjamin Netanyahu, then polling at 22% approval, faced fraud, criminal, and corruption charges predating October 7. [Benjamin Netanyahu]
August 16
- 2000 — 17 November released a manifesto naming John Kiriakou as "the big spy" they had passed over in favor of killing Stephen Saunders; Kiriakou was evacuated from Greece the same day. [Revolutionary Organization 17 November]
September
September 4
- 2025 — A U.S. military strike on a boat in the Caribbean Sea kills 11 people the White House calls drug traffickers; John Kiriakou calls the strike "piracy on the high seas followed by a mass murder." [Venezuela Boat Strikes]
September 10
- 2001 — Phone bills seized in the Taliban embassy raid showed dozens of calls from the embassy to U.S. cities abruptly stopping on this date — the day before 9/11 — and resuming on September 16, possible evidence of sleeper cells. [Taliban embassy raid]
September 11
- 2001 — John Kiriakou and Cofer Black, due to meet Condoleezza Rice that morning, instead watched the World Trade Center burn; Kiriakou said, "I think this is what Cofer was talking about." [Cofer Black]
- 2001 — John Kiriakou is at CIA headquarters on September 11; the building is ordered to evacuate twice; Kiriakou abandons his car halfway home, walks to the Teddy Roosevelt Bridge where he encounters the deputy national security adviser running barefoot, returns to headquarters, and sleeps under his desk for four days without leaving. [John Kiriakou]
- 2001 — Thomas Drake's first day at the NSA; per John Kiriakou, Drake learns of a mass-surveillance program shortly after the attacks. [Thomas Drake]
- 2001 — Tom Drake begins his first day as a senior NSA intelligence officer; per John Kiriakou, Drake becomes aware immediately afterward of NSA plans for warrantless wiretapping of American citizens. [Tom Drake]
September 12
- 2001 — Per John Kiriakou, President Bush effectively struck the assassination ban from Executive Order 12333, telling the Special Activities Division it could "kill anybody you want." [Executive Order 12333]
- 2001 — Richard Perle, per John Kiriakou, went to Dick Cheney the day after 9/11 and urged the invasion of Iraq — the seed of a war Saddam Hussein had no role in provoking. [Richard Perle]
September 18
- 1947 — The CIA is formally established under the National Security Act — an agency John Kiriakou says was created only after Truman lied to J. Edgar Hoover to clear William Donovan's path. [Central Intelligence Agency]
September 27
- 2024 — Hassan Nasrallah is killed in an Israeli strike that John Kiriakou says leveled an entire complex and killed roughly 300 people — which he characterized as a war crime. [Hassan Nasrallah]
October
October 1
- 1994 — Roughly two months into John Kiriakou's Bahrain posting, a bombing at Bahrain's Ministry of Labor marks the start of what becomes known as the first Intifada. [Bahrain Intifada (1994)]
October 7
- 2023 — Hamas breached the Gaza fence at some 29 points; John Kiriakou calls the delayed Israeli response a policy failure after Itamar Ben-Gvir diverted forces to the West Bank despite repeated warnings. [October 7 attack]
October 17
- 2016 — Mohamedou Ould Slahi is released after fourteen years of torture; John Kiriakou apologized to him publicly and the two became friends. [Mohamedou Ould Slahi]
October 25
- 1978 — FISA is enacted; John Kiriakou cites its abuse — four applications against Carter Page on the Steele dossier — as proof of how easily it can ruin a life. [FISA]
October 26
- 2001 — The Patriot Act is signed into law; John Kiriakou says it 'opened up everything' for domestic surveillance — and that Congress did not need 9/11 to pass it. [Patriot Act]
November
November 4
- 1979 — The Iran hostage crisis begins — one of the major global events John Kiriakou cites as a CIA intelligence failure. [Central Intelligence Agency]
November 21
- 1985 — Jonathan Pollard is arrested for spying on the Pentagon for Israel; John Kiriakou says Israel traded the stolen material to the KGB for the emigration of Soviet Jews. [Jonathan Pollard]
November 22
- 1963 — President John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas; that afternoon, per Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s account to John Kiriakou, CIA Director John McCone answers Bobby Kennedy Sr.'s driveway question "Tell me your people didn't do this" with "I don't know who did it." [JFK assassination]
- 1963 — CIA Director John McCone, at the Kennedy family home Hickory Hill on the afternoon of the JFK assassination, tells Bobby Kennedy Sr. — per RFK Jr.'s account — not that "of course my people didn't do it" but "I don't know who did it." [John McCone]
- 1963 — On the day of the JFK assassination, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — per his account to John Kiriakou — overheard his father ask CIA director John McCone whether the agency was responsible, and McCone answered only that he did not know who did it. [Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]
November 26
- 2008 — The Mumbai attacks begin; John Kiriakou was the only commentator to attribute them to Kashmiri separatist groups backed by Pakistan's ISI, which proved correct. [ISI]
November 30
- 2001 — 2,000 Taliban soldiers surrender at Mazar-i-Sharif to the Northern Alliance under General Dostum; per John Kiriakou on the Dorey Podcast: "November 30th and December 1st 2001 we arrested … 2,000 Taliban soldiers." [Dasht-i-Leili massacre]
December
December 1
- 2008 — The FBI concludes its year-long investigation and issues a declination letter finding John Kiriakou had not committed a crime. [CIA Torture Program Whistleblowing]
- 2007 — John Kiriakou tells ABC News' Brian Ross that the CIA tortured prisoners as official U.S. policy approved by the president; the CIA files a crimes report against him with the FBI within 24 hours. [CIA Torture Program Whistleblowing]
- 2001 — Around 2,000 Taliban who had surrendered were suffocated in sealed shipping containers in the Dasht-i-Leili massacre; a child survivor later described two English-speaking men in blue jeans present at the unloading, and John Kiriakou tried and failed to have the CIA's role investigated for the Senate. [Dasht-i-Leili massacre]
- 1940 — Per John Kiriakou, Nazi Germany occupies Greece in late 1940; the occupation governor sent to Zakynthos demands a list of the island's Jewish residents from the mayor and Orthodox bishop. [Zakynthos Holocaust rescue]
December 9
- 2014 — The Senate torture report is released, which John Kiriakou says vindicated everything he had disclosed about the CIA program — while redacting the number of prisoners who died. [Senate Torture Report]
December 10
- 2007 — His ABC News interview with Brian Ross airs — first U.S. official on-the-record confirmation that the CIA waterboarded detainees [John Kiriakou]
December 20
- 1989 — The U.S. invades Panama to capture Manuel Noriega — the operation John Kiriakou compares to the Maduro capture, recalling U.S. forces blasting death metal at the Vatican Embassy. [Maduro Capture]
December 23
- 1975 — CIA Athens station chief Richard Welch was assassinated by 17 November outside his home, shot three times with the pistol that became the Welch .45. [Richard Welch]
December 30
- 2009 — Forward Operating Base Chapman attack in Khost Province, Afghanistan: a Jordanian suicide bomber detonates while CIA officers gather to welcome him; seven CIA officers are killed in what John Kiriakou calls the deadliest single day in CIA history. [Forward Operating Base Chapman Attack]
- 2006 — Saddam Hussein is executed in Baghdad. [Saddam Hussein]