Daniel Ellsberg is recognized as an early whistleblower who released the Pentagon Papers, exposing classified U.S. government assessments of the Vietnam War. [1] John Kiriakou calls Ellsberg — who gave the public the Pentagon Papers in 1970, showing that the Pentagon and White House had lied to Americans for nearly a decade about losing the Vietnam War — “the Godfather of all national security whistleblowers” and “the godfather of all modern national security whistleblowers.”[2][3][4] Kiriakou says Ellsberg became one of the most important mentors in his life, comparable to his own father, and that Ellsberg “took him under his wing” not long after they first met.[5][3]
Kiriakou says a CIA psychologist named Dr. Gerald Post, who would later recruit him into the agency’s office of leadership analysis, had in 1971 refused an order from his own boss to conduct an illegal psychological profile of Ellsberg, an American citizen; Post’s boss did the profile himself and signed Post’s name to it, and Post — after being subpoenaed — testified before the Watergate committee that he had refused the assignment because it was wrong.[6] Kiriakou also says the Ellsberg espionage case never reached a courtroom because it fell apart after President Nixon ordered a break-in at the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist.[7]
Mentor to Kiriakou and the whistleblower community
Kiriakou says the Government Accountability Project, led by fellow whistleblower Jesselyn Radack, introduced him to Tom Drake, Bill Binney, Kirk Wiebe, and Diane Roark, and eventually to Ellsberg himself. That circle later expanded to include Jeffrey Sterling, Daniel Hale, and Edward Snowden, whom Kiriakou says is harder to stay in touch with than the others.[5][8] Kiriakou recalls that Ellsberg told him, shortly after they first met — around late 2007 or early 2008 — that it would be a shame to be known only for something done decades earlier without accomplishing anything more.[9] In the last two years of his life, Ellsberg — whom Kiriakou calls “my hero” — deliberately tried to get himself indicted under the Espionage Act at 90 years old: he released top-secret nuclear-related information he had held for decades, describing the 1958 debate over whether to nuke China over Taiwan, gave it to reporter Charlie Savage to publish in the New York Times, and then told the Justice Department, “indict me.”[10][11][12][13][14] Kiriakou says Ellsberg wanted to take an Espionage Act prosecution to the Supreme Court, confident the First Amendment would finally strike the statute down.[12][15] Kiriakou notes, honored, that Ellsberg told him he listens to Kiriakou’s own radio show while walking on his treadmill.[11]
When Kiriakou was deciding whether to fight his own Espionage Act prosecution or take a plea, he says Ellsberg was the one who told him, off the record, to take the deal — arguing that mounting a constitutional challenge “was not for you,” given that Kiriakou had five children to think about.[9] Two nights before Kiriakou went to prison, Ellsberg called to tell him he had done the right thing.[16] While Kiriakou was incarcerated, Ellsberg wrote him letters — often enclosing a book, frequently one Ellsberg had written himself — always signed “love, Dan,” and also called Kiriakou’s wife to check on the children.[10]
Public life and friendships
Kiriakou describes a December 2019 Christmas party hosted by professor Peter Kuznick at which Ellsberg, Senator Mike Gravel, and journalist Seymour Hersh were all present together.[17] A couple of months after that party, Gravel asked Kiriakou to be his foreign policy advisor for his 2020 presidential campaign; Gravel’s campaign manager was a 20-year-old college student.[18]
At the 2016 PEN Awards Gala in Beverly Hills, Kiriakou — there to accept the PEN First Amendment Award — invited Ellsberg as his guest; Ellsberg was there to accept an honorary award being given to Edward Snowden.[19] At the same gala, director Francis Ford Coppola, upon receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award, publicly criticized the room for criticizing the president, prompting Ellsberg — who had not heard Coppola clearly — to stand up and curse at him once Kiriakou explained what Coppola had said; Coppola responded that he’d said enough and walked off stage in silence.[20]
Kiriakou recalls arguing with Ellsberg in 2016 about voting third-party; Ellsberg insisted the Democrats were better than the Republicans in a two-party system, but Kiriakou voted for Libertarian Gary Johnson, and Trump won.[21] In 2016, Kiriakou also appeared in a split-screen segment on MSNBC with Ellsberg; despite being told in advance how to identify him, host Ari Melber introduced Kiriakou on air as “convicted felon John Kiriakou,” prompting Kiriakou to nearly walk off the set before agreeing to restart the interview.[22]
On whistleblowers generally
Kiriakou cites the book Beautiful Souls, by an Israeli journalist, as finding that whistleblowers have an unusually clearly defined sense of right and wrong, rarely consider their own financial well-being when deciding to go public, and typically never return to their chosen field or make a financial comeback.[23]
The pre-prison warning to Kiriakou
A few days before John Kiriakou reported to federal prison in 2013, Daniel Ellsberg — whom Kiriakou calls the godfather of national-security whistleblowers — sat him down with a warning Kiriakou says he has never forgotten: “If there’s one thing that is consistent across all whistleblowers, it’s that we never make a financial comeback. Never.” Kiriakou answered “Dan, that won’t be me” — a defiance he says he has spent the years since attempting to make good on.[24][25][26] Kiriakou notes that Ellsberg himself was never charged under the Espionage Act because the Nixon administration’s “plumbers” had burgled his psychiatrist’s office and released his medical records to the press, tainting any prosecution.[24]
”The godfather of modern day national security whistleblowing”
Sharing a panel with Ellsberg in November 2021, and warning that he did not want to embarrass him, Kiriakou repeated an assessment he says he has given publicly: “dan is the godfather of modern day national security whistleblowing if dan hadn’t done what he did with the pentagon papers none of us would have been able to do what we did later.”[27]
He treats the parallel with Julian Assange as deliberate rather than coincidental: “the parallels between what dan did so long ago now 50 years ago and what julian did are striking listen julian’s a smart guy uh julian knows history he’s studied history he knew about dan and dan’s uh heroic actions uh by releasing the pentagon papers i i know that dan was uh was a source of inspiration for julian just like he was a source of inspiration for all the rest of us.”[28]
The personal register is unguarded: “i still i still name drop dan with my friends… i consider him to be a friend you know i can’t i still can’t believe that i’m friends with dan ellsberg it means so much to me.” What he credits Ellsberg with above the disclosure itself is having understood the price in advance — “dan knew what the consequences were and he did it anyway because it was the right thing to do and that has inspired so many more people to do the right thing.”[29]
Ellsberg is also the source of the framing Kiriakou uses for whistleblower psychology: “one of the things that dan uh taught me uh early on was that uh there’s a greater good uh there’s a greater good with whistleblowing.”[30]
The warning, in its earliest telling
Kiriakou was repeating Ellsberg’s warning publicly by 2018, and already hedging his own defiance against it. “Daniel Ellsberg told me one time that one thing that all whistleblowers have in common is that they die broke — that they’re never able to make a financial comeback after their whistleblowing. I’m determined that that won’t be me. But as the years begin to tick by since I first went public, I’m realising that that may be me.”[31][32] He set it beside the concrete loss: the conviction cost him his federal pension, “and so I’m going to have to work until the day I die.”[31]
Why the charges collapsed
Kiriakou counts Ellsberg among the three Americans charged under the Espionage Act for speaking to the media between 1917 and 2009, and puts his exposure at “something like 150 years in prison.” Ellsberg had earned the personal enmity of Richard Nixon, and Kiriakou’s reading is that this is the only reason he went free: “had the Nixon administration not gone completely off the legal reservation to get Ellsberg, that poor guy may have died in prison otherwise.”[33][34]
The conduct he means is the offer of the FBI directorship to the judge sitting on the case; when that came out the case was thrown out and the charges were never adjudicated.[34] What he draws from it is how reputations move: Ellsberg is remembered as a heroic whistleblower, but at the time “he was considered a dangerous traitor and was gonna, never see freedom again.”[35]