# Afghanistan 2011 Kerry Trip

> **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou.
>
> Cite as: "Afghanistan 2011 Kerry Trip," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/afghanistan-2011-kerry-trip/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*John Kiriakou's 2011 trip to Afghanistan as senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee under Chairman John Kerry, where the pair sat through a briefing with 11 one-to-four-star generals presenting an optimistic account of the war — after which Kerry mused the U.S. might win, only for Kiriakou to tell him the U.S. controlled only Kabul, and that the same rosy briefing had been given every year since 2002.*

- **Year:** 2011
- **Kiriakou's role:** Senior investigator, Senate Foreign Relations Committee
- **Committee chairman:** John Kerry
- **Briefing:** 11 generals, one to four stars, presenting an optimistic PowerPoint account of the war
- **Kiriakou's rebuttal to Kerry:** The U.S. controlled only Kabul; the Taliban controlled the rest of the country

The **Afghanistan 2011 Kerry trip** was a visit [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) made to Afghanistan as senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, then chaired by John Kerry. After landing at Bagram Airbase, the pair sat through a briefing with 11 generals, ranging from one to four stars, who presented a slide-by-slide account of the war effort that was, in Kiriakou's telling, entirely rosy — the U.S. moving here, beating the Taliban there, driving them back everywhere.[1]

Coming out of the briefing, Kerry remarked that the U.S. might actually win the war. Kiriakou told him otherwise: the Afghan government under Hamid Karzai was, in effect, only *"the mayor of Kabul,"* with the Taliban controlling the rest of the country — and, Kiriakou noted, the same optimistic briefing had been given to visiting officials every year since 2002.[2]

## See also

- [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou)
- Kite Runner Afghanistan Trip

## Sources

1. CIA Whistleblower Exposes the US Security State (2025-01-26), at 17:25. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpTnt74kYus&t=1045s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-01-26-neutrality-studies/
2. CIA Whistleblower Exposes the US Security State (2025-01-26), at 18:29. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpTnt74kYus&t=1109s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-01-26-neutrality-studies/

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From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/afghanistan-2011-kerry-trip/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt