Kiriakou’s daily news diet is John Kiriakou’s stated morning reading routine: the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times and Wall Street Journal, followed by CNN, Fox and MSNBC, then the Drudge Report, Gateway Pundit and Daily Caller on the right, and Raw Story, Consortium News, ScheerPost and The Grayzone on the left — read specifically to compare how each outlet frames the same story.[1] In a later, fuller accounting he added the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (“just for the sports”), AP, Politico, The Hill, the New York Post, several Greek papers, The Telegraph, The Times of London, The Guardian, the London Evening Standard, BBC, Dropsite News, Al Jazeera, the Electronic Intifada, Consortium News, Real Clear Politics, and Axios — plus, despite writing for it, Covert Action Magazine itself.[2][3] On Twitter he says he follows relatively few people, but trusts journalists like Ryan Grim and Max Blumenthal — “they’re out there looking for truth in reporting.”[3] He has separately described himself as “addicted to the polls,” saying he reviews poll statistics for his radio show every single day.[4]
Asked which outlets he trusts most, Kiriakou singles out the Associated Press and ProPublica as “really exceptional.” He credits ProPublica’s model in particular: the outlet set itself up as a nonprofit for the sole purpose of funding investigative reporting that other newsrooms can no longer afford to do.[5][6]
Kiriakou has also used his news diet to criticize mainstream coverage directly, citing a Washington Post front-page photo captioned as Israeli children walking past a dud Iranian missile in a school playground, while — in his account — no comparable coverage ran of an Iranian school that an American missile struck, killing roughly 270 children aged 9 to 12.[7][8]
Distrust of AI chatbots
Kiriakou says he distrusts current AI chatbots because they hallucinate. Testing ChatGPT by asking “Who is John Kiriakou?”, he received a fabricated biography claiming degrees from the University of Maryland and the University of Ghent in Belgium; when he corrected it, the chatbot insisted the false answer was right.[9][10] While preparing a graduate terrorism-studies syllabus for a class he taught in Spain, he asked ChatGPT for scholarly journal article links; of roughly 14 citations it returned, every single one was fabricated.[11] He also reports that a hacker used AI to impersonate Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s voice and contacted foreign officials, prompting a State Department warning cable to all embassies and consulates.[12]
YouTube virality and “Washington famous”
Kiriakou says he spent 11 years in relative obscurity after leaving prison until a wave of TikTok virality suddenly brought him mainstream attention.[13] His YouTube channel Deep Focus surpassed 100,000 subscribers in about nine and a half months,[14] and his videos went from roughly 500 views to as many as 30 million, with one short reaching 38 million — he is now recognized by strangers daily.[15] He describes himself as “kind of Washington famous” without knowing how to monetize it: a TSA agent recognized him at an airport, and an airline pilot told him he watches his videos before bed.[16] He received his first YouTube monetization check for $365,[17] and says a planned speaking tour was cancelled after a promotional campaign generated 57,000 ticket-link clicks but only seven ticket sales, which he attributes to Meta redirecting users to a blank white screen.[18] He had just sent his seventh book to his publisher and was considering an eighth, purely for fun.[19]
Other views
Kiriakou dismisses accusations that he still secretly works for the CIA as recruitment propaganda, calling such claims intellectually lazy and the people making them “unserious” and “brain damaged.”[20] He called Trump’s planned $100 million military parade on his own birthday “foolish” and “a vanity project.”[21] He has also said he has been researching whether humans have already developed free energy and anti-gravity technology, and suspects it has likely been achieved but suppressed, citing claims by ex-military figures like Colonel Thomas Bearden about enormous latent energy.[22]