Asked about the small-scale side of government waste, John Kiriakou answered with two short stories he says are related.
The parking lot
He always flew out of Dulles, he explains, because it is Washington’s international airport, and because from Dubai or Doha you can go anywhere else you need to — sometimes switching out passports on the way, depending on the operation. When he had to park for more than a couple of days, he parked in the economy lot, the one where you sit for forty-five minutes waiting for the purple bus. [1] [2]
He was always very good about his paperwork, and one day his boss came up to him and asked whether he had parked in the economy lot at the airport. Kiriakou said yes. Why? Because it’s nine dollars a day and the daily lot is twenty-five dollars a day. And the boss said: don’t try to save the government money. [2] [3] Kiriakou later learned the man had parked in the valet lot at sixty dollars a day while he was out in the nine-dollar lot — and he went on parking in the economy lot, because it simply did not make sense to him to throw away the American people’s money. [3]
Pittsburgh on five dollars
The first sequel came when a foreign scientist arrived in Pittsburgh for a seminar and Kiriakou’s boss told him to go and bump the man — to approach him and say, in effect, I know who you are, you probably know who I am, we need to have dinner and a conversation. [3] That morning Kiriakou had to change his trousers, and left his wallet and credit cards in the other pair; he reached the airport with his driver’s licence and a five-dollar bill. Thinking he was about to be fired, he flew anyway. [4] [5]
A cab into town was thirty dollars. At the Red Cross emergency aid desk he asked whether there was a bus; there was, it stopped in every suburb first, and it cost $2.50. So he cashed his five-dollar bill for four ones and four quarters, took an hour to travel the seven miles into Pittsburgh, bumped the man — who told him to go screw himself, so there would be no dinner — took the bus back, and flew home. [6] [7] The next day he filed his accounting paperwork, and his boss came up and said: damn you, did you spend five dollars on that trip to Pittsburgh? Kiriakou said yes, but there’s a story behind it. The answer was the same as before: don’t try to save the government money. [7] [8]
The fattoush salad
The next trip was an overnight in Dubai on the way somewhere else. There was a Lebanese nightclub in the lobby of the hotel and Kiriakou went in at about seven, before anyone else, and said he did not want to stay for the show, he just had a real hankering for Lebanese food. He was told they only sell the package: the show and a big shisha pipe. He asked how much. A hundred and ninety-five dollars. He said: give it to me. [8] [9]
He ate a salad. Back in Washington his boss said, now that’s a dinner — you probably had a nice bottle of wine, you had a steak. Kiriakou said no, he had eaten a fattoush salad and it cost $195. Asked how that could possibly be, he answered: you told me to stop trying to save the government money. [10]
You can’t win in government, he concluded — especially in an organisation like the CIA, where nobody cares about the money and the money is the last thing you should worry about. [11] The point recurs in his account of business class after 9/11.