John Kiriakou’s Briefing Room is a news and commentary programme hosted by John Kiriakou, announced during a July 2026 interview as launching on 1 July at the handle real John Kiriakou.[1] Its stated editorial premise is news “without political bias” — the facts first, then an explicit discussion of what those facts mean.[2]
The first episode led with the resumed fighting between the United States and Iran and the death of Senator Lindsey Graham.[3] Kiriakou set the release schedule at new videos every Tuesday and Thursday, with viewer questions submitted in the chat to be answered in a third instalment during the week.[4]
Within roughly ten days the programme had reached 144,000 subscribers.[5] Kiriakou also used a later episode to correct an on-air error: he had described Briefing Room as his only official podcast, having forgotten Dead Drop, which he distinguished as a storytelling programme while Briefing Room is the news show.[6]
He has described one of the programme’s goals as predicting the news before it is reported elsewhere, citing his own warning about a Houthi move against Saudi shipping a week before it happened.[7]
Two weeks in
Opening the sixth episode on 30 July 2026, Kiriakou reported that the show had crossed 200,000 subscribers the previous night, having been running for two weeks, and thanked viewers for the volume of suggestions coming in — “whether whether technical or ideas for for future episodes, we’re considering everything. So please keep it up. Maybe we’ll do something on famous assassinations or or whatever.” He was recording from Miami that day.[8][9]
”The Profile”
The same episode launched a recurring segment built directly on his old CIA work: “welcome to a new segment that we’re going to call the profile. When I was in the CIA, it used to be my job” — see leadership profiling. The first subject was Reza Pahlavi.[10][11]
A later episode carried the show’s first viewer Q&A, which Kiriakou opened by noting they had received hundreds of questions and would try to take twenty or twenty-five.[12]
Episode ten, from Athens
The tenth episode was recorded outdoors in Athens, in the Psyri district, with the Acropolis visible behind the camera. Kiriakou used the setting as the show’s subject: a side of the city he says most tourists never hear about — terrorism, assassinations, terrorist groups, anarchism, spy wars, and a relationship between American and Greek intelligence that has at times been an absolute mess.[13][14]
He opened it with a milestone. The channel was about to reach 250,000 subscribers, a number he says he had high hopes for but no expectation of reaching so quickly, and he credited the notes viewers leave for the show’s week-to-week improvement. He also trailed the plan behind it: that by the following year the programme should be big enough and hefty enough to start bringing on A-list guests to answer tough questions.[15][14] He closed by announcing that the next episode would be filmed in Cairo, and by pointing viewers to his other programme, Dead Drop.[16]