Asked in late November 2020 what he expected from the incoming Biden administration on whistleblowers and foreign policy, John Kiriakou answered in two phrases and then declined to soften either.
The two phrases
On the president-elect: “obviously I see him as Obama 2.0.” His interviewer said the words had come out of her own mouth simultaneously.[1]
On the vice-president-elect: “I see Kamala as Hillary in a Kamala suit.”[1]
The charge behind the phrase
The second judgement came with a reason attached, and the reason was prosecutorial rather than ideological. Kiriakou identified Harris as a career prosecutor and asked his listener to “imagine the thousands of lives that she ruined by sending people to prison for long stretches for having, you know, personal use drugs.”[1]
The complaint is the one he makes most consistently in his post-prison writing and speaking: that the American federal and state criminal systems produce draconian sentences for conduct that harms no one, and that the people who administered those sentences are rewarded rather than examined.
The verdict
Asked directly whether he had any high hopes for the administration on anything, he answered with three words: “No, I don’t.”[1]
Context
The forecast was made by someone with a specific grievance against the previous Democratic administration. Kiriakou attributes his own prosecution to Barack Obama’s White House and has said elsewhere that he applied to Obama for a pardon and was ignored, knowing that he would be. He would later approach the Biden administration through a Greek Orthodox priest close to the president, assemble letters of support, and be passed over as well. The Obama 2.0 assessment predates that experience by two years.