# Kiriakou's Athens house > **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: "Kiriakou's Athens house," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/kiriakou-athens-house/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia. *The five-storey house in the northern Athens suburb of Kifissia that John Kiriakou found for himself after refusing the embassy's offer — no square rooms, a balcony off every one of them facing a different way, and a garden with a 200-year-old olive tree whose oil the family cooked with for two years.* - **Where:** Kifissia, northern Athens, halfway up the mountain - **Layout:** Five bedrooms on five levels; no square rooms - **Garden:** Five fruit trees, including a 200-year-old olive - **Olive arrangement:** A company harvested and pressed, keeping 75 per cent **Kiriakou's Athens house** was the home [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) found for himself in 1998 after refusing the [Nordeen house](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/nordeen-house) and giving up on the embassy housing office. It stood in Kifissia, a northern suburb halfway up the mountain and therefore about ten degrees cooler than central Athens — a city whose weather he compares to Charlotte, North Carolina: mild winters, scorching summers, snow unusual and never much.[1][2] He liked the architecture: five bedrooms on five levels, each level small, the house very tall and modern, and no room square — all odd perpendicular shapes stacked on one another. Every room had a balcony, and every balcony faced a different direction.[3][2][4] ## The garden The side yard was small but held five fruit trees, all bearing: an olive he estimates at two hundred years old, pears, plums, oranges and lemons.[4] A colleague explained the local arrangement for olives: an olive company will either harvest for a fee and press or brine the crop for you, or take the whole lot and give you back a quarter of what they press. Kiriakou took the second deal, and the family cooked with oil from their own tree for the whole two years. *"I still think about that olive tree."*[5][6] The plums, he says, were the best he has ever eaten — small as shooter marbles, with a tiny stone. Alone in the house one day at peak season he ate, by his own estimate and without exaggeration, two hundred of them. He shared them with an attic tortoise that lived in the garden and liked them as much as he did: *"I'd have to like wrestle this guy for the plums."*[6][7] ## What the house meant The house also carried the marriage. Kiriakou's wife, who he says wanted to be nowhere except Ohio, was thrilled by it — walking distance from restaurants, the grocer's and the *zaharoplastio* pastry shop, and a ten-minute drive from two of her uncles.[7][8] It sits in his telling as the last comfortable ground before the posting turned: *"I can see how so many of the things I really liked about my job were the very same things that were slowly undermining my marriage."*[9] ## See also - [The Nordeen house](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/nordeen-house) - [Revolutionary Organization 17 November](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/revolutionary-organization-17-november) - [The Greek Orthodox Church](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/greek-orthodox-church) ## Sources 1. S1E9 The Hothead (2026-01-05), at 02:34. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/6951d0bf30165a956d618669/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-01-05-dead-drop-s1e9-the-hothead/ 2. S1E9 The Hothead (2026-01-05), at 03:05. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/6951d0bf30165a956d618669/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-01-05-dead-drop-s1e9-the-hothead/ 3. S1E9 The Hothead (2026-01-05), at 01:33. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/6951d0bf30165a956d618669/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-01-05-dead-drop-s1e9-the-hothead/ 4. S1E9 The Hothead (2026-01-05), at 03:36. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/6951d0bf30165a956d618669/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-01-05-dead-drop-s1e9-the-hothead/ 5. S1E9 The Hothead (2026-01-05), at 04:07. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/6951d0bf30165a956d618669/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-01-05-dead-drop-s1e9-the-hothead/ 6. S1E9 The Hothead (2026-01-05), at 04:39. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/6951d0bf30165a956d618669/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-01-05-dead-drop-s1e9-the-hothead/ 7. S1E9 The Hothead (2026-01-05), at 05:12. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/6951d0bf30165a956d618669/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-01-05-dead-drop-s1e9-the-hothead/ 8. S1E9 The Hothead (2026-01-05), at 05:42. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/6951d0bf30165a956d618669/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-01-05-dead-drop-s1e9-the-hothead/ 9. S1E9 The Hothead (2026-01-05), at 11:03. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/6951d0bf30165a956d618669/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-01-05-dead-drop-s1e9-the-hothead/ --- From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/kiriakou-athens-house/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt