# How Kiriakou went armed in Athens

> **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: "How Kiriakou went armed in Athens," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/kiriakou-weapons-carry/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*The load John Kiriakou carried every day during his Athens tour — a 9mm in a tear-away waist pack with three magazines, a snub-nosed .38 on his ankle, about 47 rounds in total, and a buck knife his boss handed him on his first day *"just in case things go to shit"*.*

- **Primary:** 9mm in a tear-away waist pack, three magazines
- **Backup:** Smith & Wesson snub-nosed .38 on the ankle, six rounds
- **Total:** About 47 rounds
- **Also carried:** A Smith & Wesson buck knife, a gift from his boss
- **Chamber:** Kept empty, in case a child found the weapon

**How Kiriakou went armed in Athens** is a measure of how seriously he took [17 November](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/revolutionary-organization-17-november) — and of the operational paranoia his training was designed to instil.

He describes the daily load precisely: a 9mm pistol in a tear-away waist pack with three magazines, and a Smith & Wesson snub-nosed .38 on his ankle carrying six rounds. All together, he reckons, about forty-seven rounds — as many as he could squeeze in.[1][2]

On his first day on the job his boss presented him with a Smith & Wesson brand buck knife, with the words *"just in case things go to shit."* It never left his back pocket. He still has it twenty-seven years later; it is in his nightstand.[2][3]

One habit qualified all of it. Kiriakou never kept a round in the chamber, being *"always afraid that God forbid one of my kids should find the gun"* — which is why, when a man came at him during the [attempted carjacking](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/athens-carjacking), he had to pull the slide back before the weapon meant anything.[4]

## Why

The armament went with a routine designed to defeat a pattern: leaving at a different time every day, taking a different route every day, never establishing a habit. His training, he says, was meant to make him paranoid — so that when the bad guys really were out to get him he would see them.[5][1]

His wife, he says, thought the threat exaggerated. She knew how well trained he was and how heavily armed, and she knew 17 November had no interest in her — a gap in perception he identifies as one of the things that corroded the marriage, since he could not tell her the whole truth and resented her obliviousness a little more each time.[2][6]

## What removes the right to carry

The entitlement is conditional and is lost easily. Kiriakou describes an officer barred from a [Beirut](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/beirut) assignment because he had been accused of beating his wife: the accusation alone, without a conviction, removes an officer's authority to carry a gun, and a posting that cannot be worked unarmed therefore becomes closed to him.[7]

## Pakistan: the opposite decision

The Athens load was not how he worked everywhere. Arriving in Pakistan he declined a weapon outright, and gave two reasons for it. The first was his own state: he had *"just finished a tour in Athens, where I was the subject of an assassination attempt,"* and was *"still a little rattled, PTSD-wise,"* from it.[8][9] The second was what he thought he might do with a gun in that condition — *"I declined the gun when I first arrived in Pakistan because I was afraid that I would just kill somebody."*[9] His reasoning was that everybody around him was armed anyway: *"just better to not have a gun, because if there's going to be a shootout, well, I'm going to just hope for the best and hope that my colleagues can take care of me."*[9]

He went armed for the raids, but it *"took me a couple of months to ease into that."*[9] Body armour he skipped as well, and remembers being challenged on it by a colleague who tapped him on the chest on the way out: *"Hey, where's your bulletproof vest?"* His answer was that he hated the way it felt, that it was a hundred degrees outside, and that it would leave him sweating and dehydrated. The colleague's response was *"are you crazy?"* — to which Kiriakou pointed out that he did not have a gun on him either.[10][11]

He attributes the whole disposition to age rather than courage. Asked by his mother after Pakistan whether he had been afraid, he said no — *"because I was so busy that it just never occurred to me to be afraid"* — and adds that in your twenties and thirties *"you think that you're indestructible. And looking back, I did think I was indestructible."*[12][8]

## See also

- [The Athens carjacking](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/athens-carjacking)
- [Revolutionary Organization 17 November](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/revolutionary-organization-17-november)
- [The Nordeen house](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/nordeen-house)
- [The Farm](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-farm)

## Sources

1. S1E9 The Hothead (2026-01-05), at 09:31. 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 10:03. 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/
3. S1E9 The Hothead (2026-01-05), at 10:33. 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 34:02. 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 08:59. 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 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/
7. S1E11 Have Human Spies Become Obsolete? (2026-01-19), at 13:03. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/695ad02c18c941d6d66b194c/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-01-19-dead-drop-s1e11-have-human-spies-become-obsolete/
8. JAILED for Exposing CIA Secrets: John Kiriakou (2025-07-21), at 02:33. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Q5cbp6C4CU&t=153s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-07-21-capital-and-coast-jailed-for-exposing-cia-secrets-john-kiriakou/
9. JAILED for Exposing CIA Secrets: John Kiriakou (2025-07-21), at 03:04. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Q5cbp6C4CU&t=184s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-07-21-capital-and-coast-jailed-for-exposing-cia-secrets-john-kiriakou/
10. JAILED for Exposing CIA Secrets: John Kiriakou (2025-07-21), at 03:35. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Q5cbp6C4CU&t=215s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-07-21-capital-and-coast-jailed-for-exposing-cia-secrets-john-kiriakou/
11. JAILED for Exposing CIA Secrets: John Kiriakou (2025-07-21), at 04:05. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Q5cbp6C4CU&t=245s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-07-21-capital-and-coast-jailed-for-exposing-cia-secrets-john-kiriakou/
12. JAILED for Exposing CIA Secrets: John Kiriakou (2025-07-21), at 02:02. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Q5cbp6C4CU&t=122s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-07-21-capital-and-coast-jailed-for-exposing-cia-secrets-john-kiriakou/

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From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/kiriakou-weapons-carry/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt