# The CIA entrance examinations

> **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: "The CIA entrance examinations," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia-entrance-exams/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*The two rounds of testing John Kiriakou sat before joining the CIA in 1990: a current-affairs multiple choice he found trivially easy, a blank fold-out map of the world, and a psychological inventory of several thousand agree-or-disagree statements that repeated the same proposition hundreds of questions apart to catch inconsistency — followed by an interview panel of a psychologist, a psychiatrist and an anthropologist.*

- **Round one:** Current-affairs multiple choice; blank world map; several thousand agree/disagree statements
- **Round two:** A panel of a psychologist, a psychiatrist and an anthropologist, plus hair, blood and urine
- **The repeat trick:** *"I like boxing"* asked three times, hundreds of questions apart
- **The question he remembers:** *"Have you ever betrayed a friendship?"*
- **Right answer:** Hesitation — *"no, no, that's the answer we were looking for"*

**The CIA entrance examinations** John Kiriakou sat at the end of the 1980s came in two rounds, and he has described both in unusual detail.[1]

## Round one

The first round had three parts. The first was a long multiple-choice test on current events, which he found so easy that *"you don't even have to read the newspaper every day — if you just look at the headline or look at the front page every day without actually reading anything you're still going to do well on this test."* His example: a question asking whether the prime minister of Greece was Andreas Papandreou, Leonid Brezhnev, Mao Zedong or U Thant — *"even if you didn't know you could assume which one was the Greek name and which was the Asian name."*[1][2]

The second was a large fold-out map of the world with every country left blank, to be filled in from memory.[3]

The third was the psychological inventory — several thousand items, phrased as statements to be agreed or disagreed with rather than as questions. The one he remembers is *"I like boxing."* He did not care about boxing either way, reasoned that he would probably stop if Mike Tyson were on, and said yes — and then met the same statement again 285 questions later, and again some 415 questions after that. *"So I saw what they were trying to do. It was a psychological exam and they just wanted to see if you were consistent and if you were trying to tell them what you thought they wanted to hear."*[4][5]

## Round two

A call from personnel a couple of weeks later told him he had *"blown the doors off"* the exams. Round two was held in a nondescript building in Virginia, where he faced a psychologist, a psychiatrist and an anthropologist seated together on the other side of a table. The questions were personal — *"can you describe your relationship with your mother"*, *"was your father the disciplinarian of the family"* — and one stayed with him: *"have you ever betrayed a friendship?"*[6][7]

He had no idea what the right answer was. *"I said, oh my gosh, no, I don't think so. I said, let me think about it for a minute. And they said, no, no, that's the answer we were looking for."*[8] The panel then took hair, blood and urine and sent him away; another call weeks later said he had aced those too, and he was sent to headquarters for interviews.[7]

His own reading of why he passed is candour plus temperament: he tested *"very highly on the extrovert chart"*, and that, with his professor's recommendation, was what persuaded them.[9]

## See also

- [The polygraph](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/polygraph)
- [Jerrold Post](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/jerome-post)

## Sources

1. The Sharin Hour 1/11/16: JOHN KIRIAKOU, ex-C.I.A. (2016-01-12), at 03:48. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rss4dc75908&t=228s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2016-01-12-the-sharin-hour-the-sharin-hour-1-11-16-john-kiriakou-ex-c-i/
2. The Sharin Hour 1/11/16: JOHN KIRIAKOU, ex-C.I.A. (2016-01-12), at 04:20. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rss4dc75908&t=260s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2016-01-12-the-sharin-hour-the-sharin-hour-1-11-16-john-kiriakou-ex-c-i/
3. The Sharin Hour 1/11/16: JOHN KIRIAKOU, ex-C.I.A. (2016-01-12), at 04:51. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rss4dc75908&t=291s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2016-01-12-the-sharin-hour-the-sharin-hour-1-11-16-john-kiriakou-ex-c-i/
4. The Sharin Hour 1/11/16: JOHN KIRIAKOU, ex-C.I.A. (2016-01-12), at 05:26. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rss4dc75908&t=326s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2016-01-12-the-sharin-hour-the-sharin-hour-1-11-16-john-kiriakou-ex-c-i/
5. The Sharin Hour 1/11/16: JOHN KIRIAKOU, ex-C.I.A. (2016-01-12), at 05:59. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rss4dc75908&t=359s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2016-01-12-the-sharin-hour-the-sharin-hour-1-11-16-john-kiriakou-ex-c-i/
6. The Sharin Hour 1/11/16: JOHN KIRIAKOU, ex-C.I.A. (2016-01-12), at 06:31. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rss4dc75908&t=391s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2016-01-12-the-sharin-hour-the-sharin-hour-1-11-16-john-kiriakou-ex-c-i/
7. The Sharin Hour 1/11/16: JOHN KIRIAKOU, ex-C.I.A. (2016-01-12), at 07:06. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rss4dc75908&t=426s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2016-01-12-the-sharin-hour-the-sharin-hour-1-11-16-john-kiriakou-ex-c-i/
8. The Sharin Hour 1/11/16: JOHN KIRIAKOU, ex-C.I.A. (2016-01-12), at 07:50. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rss4dc75908&t=470s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2016-01-12-the-sharin-hour-the-sharin-hour-1-11-16-john-kiriakou-ex-c-i/
9. The Sharin Hour 1/11/16: JOHN KIRIAKOU, ex-C.I.A. (2016-01-12), at 55:02. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rss4dc75908&t=3302s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2016-01-12-the-sharin-hour-the-sharin-hour-1-11-16-john-kiriakou-ex-c-i/

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