John Kiriakou describes being offered what seemed like a dream job at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic: chief operating officer of a small boutique investment firm with offices in Washington and Athens, paying well with strong benefits. He came to believe the firm was in fact an international money-laundering operation, and suspected it was backed by a foreign government — possibly Iran. He downloaded 15,000 pages of documents he believed proved the laundering before ultimately trying, unsuccessfully, to interest the FBI.[1]
The FBI’s threshold
When Kiriakou and his attorney finally sat down with the bureau at its Washington field office to present the documents, an FBI agent told him upfront: “If this doesn’t have Russia, China, terrorism, or January 6th associated with it, we’re not interested.”[2]