FBI apologies to Kiriakou are the letters and messages John Kiriakou says he has received from FBI agents who worked on his prosecution — three since his conviction, by his own count, with each agent explaining that the case had been directed from the top and that they had simply followed orders.[1][2][3] He read one aloud: an agent who worked both the headquarters and Washington field-office teams wrote to “personally apologize sincerely” for “the disgraceful way that the FBI and our government treated you,” explaining that the case was “directed and driven by seniormost officials” while many mid- and street-level personnel were against it — “but nevertheless, we just followed orders.”[4][5] Kiriakou’s mixed reaction: gratitude, but also “you should have stopped following orders.”[6]
Kiriakou has separately described two other, distinct instances of apology. Weeks after his release from prison, one of the three people he says were directly responsible for imprisoning him called, asked to meet, and apologized profusely over coffee at a hotel; the two never met again, which Kiriakou considered sufficient closure.[7] Separately, a former FBI agent who took part in his arrest — by then no longer with the Bureau — messaged him through eBay to say he had been ashamed and unable to sleep since the arrest, and that he had been ordered to carry it out by superiors; Kiriakou identifies this as the third FBI agent to apologize to him.[8]
In the immediate aftermath of his 2015 release from prison, before those later messages, two FBI agents separately wrote directly to his attorneys to apologize for his prosecution.[9][10] One agent who later emailed Kiriakou directly told him that at the working level nobody had wanted the case, but that agents had been ordered by more senior officials to find something to charge him with.[11][12]
Notably, this was not the FBI’s only word on the matter: an earlier, separate FBI investigation into Kiriakou ran from December 2007 to December 2008 and closed with an unusual step — his attorneys received a declination letter concluding he had not committed a crime.[13][14] Kiriakou says that only weeks after Barack Obama took office, John Brennan had the Justice Department secretly reopen the closed case, and that his phones and emails were monitored as a result.[14]
Kiriakou also says the toll went beyond himself: his second wife, whom he describes as a highly regarded and decorated senior CIA officer, was fired from the CIA the day of his arrest solely because she was married to him.[15] He characterizes the government’s broader strategy toward whistleblowers as not merely prosecuting them, but ruining them financially, personally, and professionally as a warning to others.[16]