The Japanese diplomat FBI sting was, in John Kiriakou’s telling, an entrapment operation run against him while he was chief investigator on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. A man who introduced himself as the “number three” official at the Japanese embassy — an Arabic speaker who knew Kiriakou’s Middle East background — took him to lunch and, at the end, cold-pitched him: “if you give me information, I can give you money.”[1][2][3] Offended, Kiriakou walked out and reported it to the Senate security officer, who sent it to the FBI.[4] The FBI then had him meet the man four or five more times, conducted in Arabic since the man’s English was poor, to draw out what he wanted and how much he would pay — an offer that came to $5,000 a month, which Kiriakou says he never accepted and calls standard pay for “a run-of-the-mill spy.” Kiriakou kept reporting each contact back to the FBI, unaware there was no Japanese diplomat: the man was an FBI agent, revealed only in the 15,000 pages of discovery in Kiriakou’s later case.[5][6][7][8] They were trying, he says, to get him to commit “actual espionage” so they could charge him.
At the final lunch, the man claimed he had been promoted and was being transferred to Cairo as the Japanese embassy’s number two; Kiriakou never saw him again. A year later, in December 2012, Kiriakou was arrested and charged with three counts of espionage, one count of making a false statement, and one count of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1981.[9] The same discovery that revealed the fake diplomat also surfaced a memo chain: John Brennan wrote to Attorney General Eric Holder demanding Kiriakou be charged with espionage; Holder replied that his people did not believe Kiriakou had committed espionage; Brennan wrote back to “charge him anyway and make him defend himself.” A separate memo from the undercover FBI agent to his supervisor, Peter Strzok, concluded Kiriakou was “clearly not going to take the bait” and recommended ending the operation.[10][11]
The earliest telling
Kiriakou’s 2015 account, given before the later and better-known versions, places the first lunch in the spring of 2011 and sets it in the ordinary run of his work: as chief investigator on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee he lunched with foreign diplomats regularly, like everybody else on the committee staff, and they talked about whatever was in the news.[12]
The pitch, in this version, follows a question about his plans. Kiriakou had said he was thinking of resigning — he had promised Senator Kerry two years, had given two and a half, missed working for himself and wanted to return to consulting. The reply was “no, don’t do that; I can give you money if you give me information.” His own answer he reports verbatim: “do you have any idea how many times I’ve made that pitch? Shame on you for even saying something like that. I’m going to have to report this.”[13]
He went directly from the lunch to the Senate security officer and said he had just been pitched by a foreign intelligence officer; the officer asked for a memo, which went to the FBI. Two days later two agents came up to the Senate security office and asked him to call the man back, invite him to lunch, and draw out exactly what information he wanted and how much he would pay — with two agents at the next table to listen in.[13][14]
This telling supplies a detail the later ones drop: the FBI did not show up. They telephoned right before the lunch and told him to go ahead anyway and write them the memo. He met the man a second, third and fourth time, and possibly a fifth, believing throughout that he was helping the Bureau identify a foreign intelligence officer in a counterintelligence investigation — “no, no, I thought this was a counterintelligence investigation.”[15][16]
When the man announced he was being transferred to Cairo, Kiriakou wished him luck and never saw him again. He dates his discovery of what had happened to a year later: “it wasn’t until a year later that we learned that there was no Japanese intelligence officer, there was no Japanese diplomat. He was an FBI agent.”[16]
He is explicit about the purpose he assigns the operation, and about the distinction it implies. The object was to set him up on a real espionage charge — “not one of the bullshit espionage charges that they ended up putting on me, all of which were dropped.” The FBI knew its case was weak to non-existent, he says, because he had not committed espionage; so it tried to catch him committing it.[17][18]
The 2016 telling, and what his lawyer said
Retelling it in November 2016, he dates the first lunch to early 2011 and supplies the conversation itself — Israeli elections, Turkish elections and the Arab-Israeli peace process — before the pitch arrived at the end as a question about his plans.[19][20] This version also credits the memos with defeating the operation: he kept writing them, “and the memos were utterly comprehensive,” which is why nothing he did could be read as espionage.[21]
It adds the exchange with his own lawyer once discovery revealed what had happened. Asked why the Bureau would mount such a thing, his lead attorney answered: “because they have no case against you and they know they have no case against you. You have not committed espionage.”[21]
He treats the operation as the reason for the warning he later published to Edward Snowden — “you can’t trust anybody” — and, in the same conversation, describes a second approach made to him after his release. That episode is treated at the 2016 research pitch.[22]