Andrew Bustamante is a former CIA officer who runs a business selling CIA-style training online. By his own account, Bustamante entered US government service at 18 through the Air Force Academy, graduating in 2003 and serving as a nuclear missile officer before the CIA recruited him in 2007; he spent seven years as a National Clandestine Service staff operations officer through the agency’s PCS/FTC program before leaving in 2014.[1] John Kiriakou identifies him as the only person to have criticized him for hosting a radio show on a Russian network.[2][3] Kiriakou notes that Bustamante takes the training he underwent at the CIA and teaches it to, by Kiriakou’s understanding, “anybody who pays” — including Russians and Chinese — and asks “what’s the difference,” calling that the more problematic arrangement.[4] Kiriakou makes the same point elsewhere, disputing Bustamante’s characterization of Kiriakou’s own radio work as Russian propaganda given that Bustamante sells CIA-training courses for $3,000 to $4,000 depending on the course.[5]
Kiriakou says Bustamante privately told him, when they first met, that he had not been a case officer — despite publicly presenting himself as one — but rather a “SO,” or special operations officer, an assistant-type role handling paperwork and setting up surveillance teams for case officers.[6] He makes the same claim elsewhere in blunter terms, saying special operations officers “do surveillance, they do the paperwork, they go pick up my dry cleaning” and that Bustamante never recruited anybody in his career; Kiriakou also notes Bustamante has never explained why he left the CIA after only seven years.[7]
Kiriakou disputes a claim Bustamante made in a book co-written with his wife that he had caught a CIA mole, noting the agency’s Counter Intelligence Center employs roughly 300 skilled mole hunters and that no such case was ever reported by major newspapers.[8] Despite their public disagreements, Kiriakou says that when he debated Bustamante on the Danny Jones podcast, the two — despite approaching the subject from opposite sides — ended up agreeing on about 80% of the underlying issues; he separately says he “won” that same debate once Bustamante attacked him personally.[9][5] Kiriakou also recalls once telling Bustamante directly that “the president has the CIA in his back pocket.”[10]