Amaryllis Fox Kennedy is a former CIA officer whom John Kiriakou identifies as having served under non-official cover. Her commercial cover, he says he is told, was as an international art consultant — a line of work he notes carries a great deal of money, a great deal of hidden money, and a great deal of money laundering, which is what made it serviceable.[1][2]
The blocked nomination
Kiriakou says she was to have been deputy director of the CIA, and that Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas — whom he characterises as a statist and a neoconservative — refused. His reading of the motive is personal rather than substantive: Cotton had wanted to be CIA director himself, was passed over for Mike Pompeo in Trump’s first term, and resented the appearance of an upstart, married to Robert F. Kennedy’s son and lately the campaign manager, taking a job he thought should have been his.[2][3]
Cotton sent word to the White House that he would filibuster the appointment. Kiriakou’s assessment of what happened next is that the president outmanoeuvred him: “the president did something that was just so smart — he named her deputy national security adviser, which is a way more important job, because the CIA director reports to the national security adviser.”[4]
Kiriakou notes that the counterterrorism portfolio within that office was not hers, being held by Sebastian Gorka, with whom Kiriakou has both a personal and a professional quarrel.[4][5]
Her cover
Using her as an illustration of how unpredictable cover positions are, Kiriakou described Fox Kennedy — “who until recently was the Deputy National Security Advisor and is the daughter-in-law of um Bobby Kennedy Jr.” — as a deep cover officer “and her cover was that she was uh a fine art consultant.” He paired the example with another deep cover officer he had once met whose cover was wildlife photographer, to make the point that no occupation is more or less likely than any other.[6]
When the name was first floated
Kiriakou’s reaction in December 2024, when reports first placed her in line for the deputy directorship, was that he had heard it “about four days ago” and that “it was a little shocking to me.”[7][8] He said he had never met her.[8]
He nonetheless argued the case for her, and did it by way of the agency’s own grade system. She “left the CIA when she was a GS-12 or GS-13, and she went into the media and into documentary film making and had a second career, a second life” — and, he said, “just because she left as a GS-12 or 13 doesn’t mean that she can’t run the CIA, especially 15 years later with all this experience.”[9][10] His hope was that she would get the job, “because I think that she would shake things up, and I think that she is someone that the rest of us who used to be in the agency and are now outside looking in would consider a friend and supporter.”[10]
Asked what the deputy director actually does, he described it as the operational engine of the building: the deputy “is the one who actually runs the day-to-day operations of the CIA,” while the director is occupied with “breakfast with the president and lunch with the chairman of the Senate intelligence committee.”[11] Budget is farmed out to the executive director; what stays with the deputy is “covert action, major personnel changes, who gets to be the chief of what station in what part of the world.”[12]