Crypto AG was a Swiss manufacturer of encryption equipment which, as reported in February 2020, was covertly controlled by Western intelligence services and sold compromised ciphers to governments worldwide. John Kiriakou was asked about it days after the story broke.
He did not know
Asked whether such an operation had been common knowledge inside the agency in his day, his answer was emphatic and repeated: “no, no, no, no. This was highly classified, highly compartmentalized. You know, I was in a senior position at the CIA and I had no idea.”[1]
Not a scandal
Kiriakou had given an interview on the story to a Russian network the previous week, and described it as one of the funniest he had ever given, without intending it to be. The interviewer asked whether anybody would be prosecuted. “I said no, but I think several people will probably win medals for it. This is a wildly successful operation. It’s not viewed as a crime — it’s viewed as something heroic and patriotic.”[1][2]
Told that doing such a thing was not honest, he did not dispute the description, only its relevance: “it’s intelligence. It’s an intelligence operation. It’s not supposed to be honest, it’s not supposed to be fair, it’s not supposed to make for a level playing field. This is something that intelligence services do all around the world.”[2]
Where he draws the public-interest line
Pressed on whether the public should have known, Kiriakou made a distinction he applies consistently and which separates this case from the ones he has blown the whistle on. Asked what the taxpayers’ money is for, he answered that this is precisely what it is for: “it’s in the US public interest for the CIA to crack the codes of every other country in the world. Very much in the public interest.”[3]
The contrast is with a crime, which in his account cannot lawfully be classified at all — the ground on which he defends Julian Assange’s publication of evidence of American war crimes in the same conversation.[4]