# The encounter at the Greek ambassador's residence

> **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: "The encounter at the Greek ambassador's residence," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/greek-ambassador-dinner-encounter/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*An exchange John Kiriakou describes from a dinner a few weeks after his 2015 release from prison, in which Senator Ron Wyden, then vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, welcomed him home, was told Kiriakou had expected him to speak up, and answered that it had taken everything he had simply to keep his own security clearance. Kiriakou offers it as evidence that the intelligence oversight committees are afraid of the agencies they oversee.*

- **When:** A couple of weeks after Kiriakou's 2015 release from prison
- **Where:** The Greek ambassador's residence, Washington
- **Size of the dinner:** About 30 guests
- **Other party:** [Senator Ron Wyden](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/ron-wyden), then vice chairman of the [Senate Intelligence Committee](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/senate-intelligence-committee)
- **The senator's answer:** 'It took all of my energy just to not lose my security clearance'
- **Kiriakou's reply:** 'Oh, you're afraid of them'
- **How it ended:** The senator walked away

[John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) tells the following story as a demonstration, offered in support of the argument that the congressional intelligence committees are not in a position to oversee anything.

*"A couple of weeks after I got out of prison I was invited to dinner at the Greek ambassador's residence. So I went, and there was a Democratic senator there from the [Senate Intelligence Committee](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/senate-intelligence-committee), and he walked up to me and he said, 'hey, welcome home, we were so worried about you.' I said, 'thanks, Senator, but I've got to tell you, I was disappointed. I thought you would stand up for me.' And he got angry. And he said, 'look, it took everything I had just to not lose my security clearance.' And I said, 'oh, you're afraid of them.' And then he just walked away from me."*[1][2]

## The senator

In other tellings Kiriakou names him: Senator [Ron Wyden](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/ron-wyden), the Democrat of Oregon, who at the time of the dinner was the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.[3][4][5] The dinner was a large one, roughly thirty people, and it followed his release in 2015.[3]

The wording of Wyden's answer is consistent across the retellings, *"it took all of my energy just to not lose my security clearance"*, as is Kiriakou's reading of it.[6][5] *"That's when I realized that even the overseers are afraid of them,"* he said of the moment. *"Lose your security clearance. You're the boss. You're the oversight committee vice chairman. They should be afraid of you. And it was the opposite."*[7]

## The point he draws from it

Kiriakou's general position is that the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the [Senate Select Committee on Intelligence](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/senate-intelligence-committee) *"are really not oversight committees so much as they are cheerleaders for the [CIA](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia)"*, with the consequence that assurances such as the claim that [MK-Ultra](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/mk-ultra) and its sub-programs ended in 1975 rest on nothing the public can check. *"How do we know that? We don't know it. We're just supposed to take their word for it."* The encounter at the residence supplies the mechanism behind the deference: the clearance is the leverage.[8][9]

The identification of Wyden sharpens the argument rather than softening it. Wyden is, in Kiriakou's account, the one member of the committee the press treats as willing to confront the agency, *"if he's the only one on the Senate Intelligence Committee who's viewed by the media as, you know, the one guy who's going to stand up to the agency, what does that say about all the other members?"*[6] Kiriakou's summary of him is that he will walk right up to the line, *"and God bless him because he's the only one who will, but he'll never ever cross it"*, which is why, he said, it did not surprise him *"one iota"* that Wyden neither released a classified letter to the press nor referred to its contents in a later one.[10]

## A second exchange at the same table

Kiriakou has also described an encounter at the same dinner with a member of the House, whom he does not name. The congressman walked over and said the members had been so worried about him and were glad he was home. Kiriakou's reply was blunt: he had asked for help, friends of his had asked for help, and the answer at the time had been that he was too controversial. *"Don't feed me that line now, now that it's all over, you should have helped me when I needed the help, and you didn't."*[11] He draws the same lesson from it: *"we have to ride them and keep on them, they work for us."*[12]

## See also

- [Ron Wyden](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/ron-wyden)
- [Congressional intelligence oversight](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/congressional-intelligence-oversight)
- [Senate Intelligence Committee](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/senate-intelligence-committee)
- [MK-Ultra](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/mk-ultra)
- [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou)

## Sources

1. One America News Network (2026-02-27), at 11:03. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulc3YGqjKvk&t=663s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-02-27-one-america-news-network-one-america-news-network/
2. One America News Network (2026-02-27), at 11:34. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulc3YGqjKvk&t=694s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-02-27-one-america-news-network-one-america-news-network/
3. Yung Flamingo Club: John Kiriakou (2025-09-02), at 04:39. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rss03084c7a&t=279s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-09-02-yung-flamingo-club-yung-flamingo-club-john-kiriakou/
4. Why Abolishing The CIA Won't Change Anything (2025-01-25), at 09:58. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_GA5Wj3-94&t=598s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-01-25-kim-iversen-why-abolishing-the-cia-won-t-change-anything/
5. John Kiriakou on CIA Propaganda, War with Iran and Going Viral (2026-02-19), at 40:12. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfEX7MK0Rrw&t=2412s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-02-19-american-conservative-cia-propaganda-going-viral/
6. Why Abolishing The CIA Won't Change Anything (2025-01-25), at 10:29. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_GA5Wj3-94&t=629s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-01-25-kim-iversen-why-abolishing-the-cia-won-t-change-anything/
7. Yung Flamingo Club: John Kiriakou (2025-09-02), at 05:11. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rss03084c7a&t=311s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-09-02-yung-flamingo-club-yung-flamingo-club-john-kiriakou/
8. One America News Network (2026-02-27), at 08:26. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulc3YGqjKvk&t=506s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-02-27-one-america-news-network-one-america-news-network/
9. One America News Network (2026-02-27), at 08:58. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulc3YGqjKvk&t=538s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-02-27-one-america-news-network-one-america-news-network/
10. John Kiriakou on CIA Propaganda, War with Iran and Going Viral (2026-02-19), at 40:43. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfEX7MK0Rrw&t=2443s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-02-19-american-conservative-cia-propaganda-going-viral/
11. CIA EXPOSED: Whistleblower Reveals Torture Secrets with Jo (2024-07-30), at 45:45. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jnq27oguBTQ&t=2745s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2024-07-30-spartan-leadership-podcast/
12. CIA EXPOSED: Whistleblower Reveals Torture Secrets with Jo (2024-07-30), at 46:16. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jnq27oguBTQ&t=2776s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2024-07-30-spartan-leadership-podcast/

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