John O. Brennan is the former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, serving under the Obama administration. In KiriPedia’s source corpus, John Kiriakou characterizes Brennan as the principal architect of the agency’s enhanced interrogation techniques program and as the individual responsible — through the Espionage Act prosecution that followed Kiriakou’s 2007 public confirmation of CIA waterboarding — for the ruination of Kiriakou’s own life. “He ruined your life. He, I believe, committed crimes, by the way, to ruin your life.”[1] Kiriakou describes Brennan as the public face of the moral case against torture while privately having been “the godfather of the torture program.”[1]
Brennan has been known to Kiriakou for approximately thirty-five years, dating from the start of Kiriakou’s CIA career. Their mutual antipathy is, per Kiriakou, unbroken across that span: “John and I have always hated each other. I never liked him. I never trusted him. I believe that he is the archetypal sociopath.” Brennan’s institutional advancement, in Kiriakou’s account, was structurally dependent on the patronage of George Tenet — the “rabbi” relationship the agency’s promotion culture turns on: “He had a rabbi in George Tenet. And the next thing you know, he’s at the top of the heap.”[2][3][4]
The Espionage Act prosecution
Brennan is, in Kiriakou’s account, the individual personally responsible for Kiriakou’s Espionage Act prosecution. The Bush administration had closed the case against Kiriakou after his December 2007 ABC News interview confirming CIA waterboarding; “the Bush administration said I had not committed a crime. They closed the case.” On Brennan’s arrival at the National Security Council in 2009 as Deputy National Security Adviser for Counterterrorism, Brennan wrote a memo to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder asking the Department of Justice to reopen the case under espionage charges. Holder declined: “My people don’t think he committed espionage.” Brennan’s reply: “Charge him anyway and make him defend himself.”[5][6][7]
The result was a five-count indictment — three counts of espionage among them. The Justice Department subsequently waited until Kiriakou was bankrupt and then dropped the three espionage counts; Kiriakou took a plea to a lesser charge and served 23 months in federal prison.[7]
The Tuesday morning kill list
In his 2009 NSC role, Brennan instituted the Tuesday morning kill list — a weekly meeting at which a written list of targets to be killed in the following week was produced and the assignments distributed. The program was, per Kiriakou, sustained through the Obama administration and is the institutional source of the often-noted observation that “nobody dropped more missiles from drones than Obama.”[8][9]
Private-sector role (2005)
In 2005, between his CIA service and his appointment as Deputy National Security Adviser, Brennan was appointed CEO of The Analysis Corporation, an Arlington, Virginia private intelligence firm originally configured as an LLC pass-through for retired Senior Intelligence Service analysts. He has also sat on the boards of various Beltway defense contractors including BAE Systems.[10][11]
The 2025–2026 investigation
As of January 2026, Brennan is the subject of an active U.S. Department of Justice investigation under the second Trump administration. The investigation centers on three allegations:
- Coordination of the October 2020 public letter by intelligence-community veterans casting doubt on the authenticity of the Hunter Biden laptop
- Coordination of the post-2016-election CIA analysis attributing Donald Trump’s electoral victory to Russian interference
- An ongoing conspiracy — under this theory the statute of limitations does not run — to “deny American voters their duly-elected president”[12][13][14]
The U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia — the district where the alleged conduct would have occurred — declined to bring charges, was subsequently fired by the Trump administration, and the case was transferred to the Southern District of Florida on the theory that the relevant memos were “read on the MSNBC website” in Miami.[15][16]
Public behavior under pressure
In late 2025 and early 2026 Brennan exhibited public behavior that Kiriakou — who has known him for thirty-five years — characterizes as out of character and indicative of fear. Three incidents:
- At George Mason University in Arlington, Virginia, Brennan was publicly challenged by a Republican congressional candidate over his role in the Hunter Biden laptop letter and the 2016 Russia analysis. “Brennan actually pokes the guy in the chest several times. Besides that being assault, that was the first time in the 35 years that I’ve known John Brennan that I ever saw him lose his composure ever.”[2][17]
- On MSNBC the same night, Brennan appeared “exhausted and old beyond his years” and said he did not understand why the Trump administration was investigating him — a denial that “even by MSNBC standards, was not believable or credible.”[18][19]
- A few days later, in a Metro station, Brennan confronted an individual who had shouted a question at him — “went after him, went up to him with his finger and raised voice.”[19][20]
Kiriakou’s assessment of the pattern: “He’s scared.”[20]
Kiriakou’s distinction between Brennan and other senior CIA figures
Kiriakou identifies Brennan as distinct from other senior CIA officers of the post-9/11 period — including George Tenet, John McLaughlin, Michael Morell, Jose Rodriguez, and Rick Pavitt — on the following ground:
There were a lot of crimes that were committed in the name of national security. Brennan’s different. Brennan plotted against an elected president of the United States, and he tried to use the intelligence community and this lawfare against him. And we can’t risk that happening again.[21][22]
Kiriakou’s view of the prosecution
Kiriakou’s position on Brennan’s prosecution is bounded by his commitment to the prosecutorial principle articulated by Robert H. Jackson: see “Pick the man, then find the crime”. Kiriakou supports prosecution of Brennan for any crime that can be demonstrated by evidence, including specifically the “ongoing conspiracy” theory advanced by the Justice Department. He opposes a prosecution conducted by “scouring the law books looking for a crime” against a pre-selected defendant — “even a defendant who ruined my life.”[23][24]