# Mary Margaret Graham

> **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: "Mary Margaret Graham," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/mary-margaret-graham/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*CIA Senior Intelligence Service officer and later Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Collection under John Negroponte — described by John Kiriakou as a career "reports officer" who had never personally recruited a source, and as his difficult chief of station in a later domestic assignment.*

- **Role:** Chief of station (per Kiriakou); later Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Collection
- **Appointed by:** John Negroponte
- **Career track:** Reports officer (per Kiriakou, never personally recruited a source)

**Mary Margaret Graham** is a former [Central Intelligence Agency](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia) officer who later served as Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Collection under Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte. [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou), who served under her as chief of station on a domestic assignment, gives an unflattering account of her career and conduct.

## Chief of station

Kiriakou says Graham did not want him assigned to her station, citing an earlier incident in Athens in which he had beaten a pastry chef into a coma for insulting his first wife; the CIA's Deputy Director for Operations, Jim Pavitt, overruled her objection and assigned Kiriakou to the station regardless.[1] Kiriakou states that although Graham was a member of the Senior Intelligence Service, she had never personally recruited a source, having instead worked as a "reports officer" — reformatting and sanitizing raw intelligence cables for analysts — a track he considers categorically different from operations work.[2] He notes that a class-action lawsuit brought by female CIA officers over systemic gender discrimination, decided in the Eastern District of Virginia, resulted in every woman at the agency receiving a cash settlement and an automatic two-grade promotion — for example, from GS-14/15 to Senior Intelligence Service Level One or Two — and implies Graham's rank owed more to that settlement than to operational merit.[3]

Kiriakou says Graham imposed a quota, unique to her station worldwide, requiring each officer to publish five intelligence reports a month to be considered meeting expectations; he was rated as not meeting expectations after producing only two reports in his first weeks, despite inheriting zero sources from his predecessor.[4] At a diplomatic event, Kiriakou approached a North Korean official he had surveilled fishing earlier and asked only, "did you catch any fish?" — the official walked away quickly, and Graham subsequently called Kiriakou "unhinged" over the incident, despite his having recruited five sources in two years to her none.[5] When Kiriakou left the station for a higher-paying position, Graham made a station-wide announcement that he was leaving for "more money than God had," while privately controlling the language of his performance evaluation — alongside an exceptional performance award and medal she was also issuing him.[6]

## Deputy Director of National Intelligence

Kiriakou says Graham was later named Deputy Director of National Intelligence under John Negroponte because the two "were joined at the hip."[7] In that role, he says she inadvertently revealed the classified CIA budget figure — classified at the highest level since the agency's founding in 1947 — during a speech covered by the Washington press corps, before remarking, "my bad, sorry about that."[8] Kiriakou also quotes a since-published memoir in which Graham, discussing Afghanistan, offered the observation "war is what it is" — which he calls "another pearl of wisdom from the brilliant mind of Mary Margaret Graham."[9] Kiriakou has repeated the assessment elsewhere, calling Graham, for whom he worked, *"one of the most horrible humans"* he has ever encountered, and giving the leaked budget figure as roughly $44 billion, around 15 years before the telling — a figure he guesses has since grown to roughly $100 billion.[10][11]

## The only figure the public has

Kiriakou treats Graham's disclosure as the sole reason any public estimate of intelligence spending exists. *"We only have a general idea of what the CIA spends because the former deputy director of national intelligence Mary Margaret Graham accidentally let it slip while giving a speech. Otherwise we wouldn't have any idea what the budget is. The budget has always been classified."*[12]

He raises it in the context of [a redaction covering declassification spending itself](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia-budget-concealment) — a secrecy he calls *"outrageous, and typical, and very common."*[13]

## See also

- [Central Intelligence Agency](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia)
- [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou)

## Sources

1. S1E20 Changes (2026-03-23), at 45:46. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/69c0933b1a160b44db6cd910/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-03-23-dead-drop-s1e20-changes/
2. S1E20 Changes (2026-03-23), at 47:21. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/69c0933b1a160b44db6cd910/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-03-23-dead-drop-s1e20-changes/
3. S1E20 Changes (2026-03-23), at 47:54. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/69c0933b1a160b44db6cd910/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-03-23-dead-drop-s1e20-changes/
4. S1E20 Changes (2026-03-23), at 49:29. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/69c0933b1a160b44db6cd910/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-03-23-dead-drop-s1e20-changes/
5. S1E20 Changes (2026-03-23), at 53:39. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/69c0933b1a160b44db6cd910/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-03-23-dead-drop-s1e20-changes/
6. S1E21 End Of Times (2026-03-30), at 31:16. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/69c1bb941a160b44dbc6ad12/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-03-30-dead-drop-s1e21-end-of-times/
7. S1E21 End Of Times (2026-03-30), at 10:46. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/69c1bb941a160b44dbc6ad12/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-03-30-dead-drop-s1e21-end-of-times/
8. S1E21 End Of Times (2026-03-30), at 11:18. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/69c1bb941a160b44dbc6ad12/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-03-30-dead-drop-s1e21-end-of-times/
9. S1E21 End Of Times (2026-03-30), at 11:49. Recording: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/68e695c6d798804c9e4bbd13/e/69c1bb941a160b44dbc6ad12/media.mp3 · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-03-30-dead-drop-s1e21-end-of-times/
10. "All My Stories Have a Bad Ending for the Good Guy" - John (2025-09-25), at 1:34:25. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s41zksLari8&t=5665s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-09-25-joe-mkhitaryan/
11. Former CIA Spy Reveals the Truth That Shook Washington - (2026-05-26), at 42:11. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2cKxy1ZQf0&t=2531s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-05-26-covert-operations-insight/
12. Every Official Everywhere With Classified Documents (2023-01-28), at 25:15. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWTHWRbcuyI&t=1515s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2023-01-28-kevin-gosztola-every-official-everywhere-with-classified-doc/
13. Every Official Everywhere With Classified Documents (2023-01-28), at 24:45. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWTHWRbcuyI&t=1485s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2023-01-28-kevin-gosztola-every-official-everywhere-with-classified-doc/

---

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