# CIA language training

> **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: "CIA language training," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia-language-training/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*The agency's language pipeline as John Kiriakou experienced and describes it: a full year of Arabic at nine hours a day, an optional second year at the State Department's school, and the calculation that made his own career, that it is cheaper to teach a linguist operations than to teach an operations officer Greek and Arabic.*

- **Kiriakou's course:** Arabic, one full year
- **Intensity:** Nine hours a day
- **Optional second year:** State Department language school
- **Outcome:** Conversational fluency, then [Bahrain](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/bahrain-1994-1996-posting)

**CIA language training** is, in [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou)'s account, both an immersion course and a career mechanism, the thing that moved him out of analysis and into operations.

## The course

Having asked in 1993 to be detailed to the State Department, Kiriakou was first sent to Arabic language training, which took a full year and left him with what he calls some conversational fluency.[1] The regime was nine hours a day of Arabic. Some students went on to a second year at the State Department's own language school; Kiriakou did not, going straight out to [Bahrain](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/bahrain-1994-1996-posting), where he served from 1994 to 1996 as the embassy's second secretary for economic affairs.[2]

## The linguist's advantage

Kiriakou spent the first seven years of his CIA career as an analyst working on Iraq, became bored, and looked for a way into counterterrorism operations. A counterterrorism slot in Athens covering Arab terrorism required either Greek or Arabic; as he tells it, he turned out to be the only person in the entire agency who spoke both.[3][4][5]

The institutional reasoning he was given has become one of his standing lines about how the agency actually allocates people: *"it's a lot easier and a lot cheaper for us to take a linguist and teach him operations than it is to take an operations person and teach him how to speak Greek and Arabic."*[6] He got the job, went through operational training at [the Farm](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-farm), and found he had a knack for it.[7]

## The shortage that never closes

Against that, Kiriakou describes a permanent scarcity of qualified speakers, and a screening system that reproduces it. The agency goes through *"fits and starts"* of resolving to hire as many Arabic speakers as it can; but many Arabic speakers in the United States are first-generation Americans or refugees who became citizens, and they run into trouble with the [polygraph](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/polygraph) or the background investigation and are not hired.[8] Those who were hired, he says, were cleared several levels below their American-born colleagues despite identical vetting, a practice he says changed after 9/11.[9]

The deficit has operational consequences in his telling. He notes the oddity, in the cover story given by a group of Arab travellers to Pakistan, that they had gone there *to learn Arabic*, a country where the language is Urdu, not Arabic.[10]

## See also

- [The Farm](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-farm)
- [The polygraph](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/polygraph)
- [Bahrain Posting (1994–1996)](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/bahrain-1994-1996-posting)
- [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou)

## Sources

1. Radio Liberty interview, 4-15-10, John Kiriakou (former (2019-06-19), at 08:56. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPfqguIwcqU&t=536s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2019-06-19-soundwaves-2000/
2. The Real News Network (2015-04-23), at 06:43. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWlx41Hqf5A&t=403s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2015-04-23-the-real-news-network-the-real-news-network/
3. Kiriakou on the CIA, Obama vs Trump (2019-10-03), at 05:45. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6eXin4Blys&t=345s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2019-10-03-kiriakou-on-the-cia-obama-vs-trump/
4. 018 — State Sanctioned Torture, Whistleblowing & 9/11 — (2023-01-13), at 01:39. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiWoQ0Y86DE&t=99s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2023-01-13-the-open-forum-podcast/
5. Aug 14 2015 — The Scott Horton Show (2018-01-29), at 05:10. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fcQ4ObATRc&t=310s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2018-01-29-scott-horton-aug-14-2015-the-scott-horton-show/
6. John Kiriakou Speaks at Quaker House (2015-11-12), at 12:56. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2GbWGoIW6w&t=776s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2015-11-12-quakerhouse/
7. Whistleblower John Kiriakou On the Rob Kall Bottom up Show (2017-06-29), at 11:06. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2t-xAWvn0g&t=666s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2017-06-29-rob-kall-bottom-up-show/
8. Foresight with Ken Weaver--John Kiriakou, Whistleblower (2019-03-14), at 09:24. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcTHv1zLD7M&t=564s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2019-03-14-salem-access-tv-public/
9. An Interview With John Kiriakou (CIA Whistleblower On Th (2022-07-23), at 14:34. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULlvbl5ym8E&t=874s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2022-07-23-the-darkened-hour/
10. The Real News Network (2015-05-04), at 12:06. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E82OrQF9nkY&t=726s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2015-05-04-the-real-news-network-the-real-news-network/

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