Kiriakou says he was introduced to WikiLeaks while working inside one of the secret spaces the organization wanted to expose. [1] He says that, unlike many other people, the way he first heard about WikiLeaks was as a warning: “Don’t touch that. Don’t go near that. Don’t take that gate when you leave the base when protesters are out there. Don’t do that.” [1] He says he heard more about WikiLeaks once Chelsea Manning came forward, describing it as the talk of those secret spaces at the same time an internal campaign was underway to smear Manning, which he calls “pretty ridiculous.” [2]
A personal grievance with Julian Assange
Kiriakou says he initially had a personal problem with Julian Assange rather than the ideological sympathy some assumed: the first cache of documents Chelsea Manning released to WikiLeaks happened to include his own Social Security number, contained in an obscure cable about a Middle East trip he had taken while working on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff. Nothing ultimately came of the exposure, but it made him angry, and he says it was part of why he was never counted among Assange’s most visible supporters.[3] After his own release from prison, he connected with Dr. Sulette Dreyfus, founder of the Australian organization Blueprint for Free Speech and a co-founder of WikiLeaks alongside Assange going back decades in Australia; she asked him directly, on a walk in Athens in 2015, why he was never associated with Assange, and he explained the leaked Social Security number as well as concerns he had heard from others about Assange’s treatment of women.[4][5]