# Nine recruitments in twenty-five years > **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: "Nine recruitments in twenty-five years," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/nine-recruitments-in-twenty-five-years/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia. *The conversation in which John Kiriakou's Athens station chief, a twenty-five-year operations officer who had reached senior intelligence service level four with nine recruitments to his name, pointed out that Kiriakou had recruited five in two years — and Kiriakou's explanation of the knack: that he could hide his disdain for a man completely while talking about whatever interested him.* - **Station chief's career:** 25 years as an operations officer - **His recruitments:** Nine - **His grade:** Senior intelligence service level four - **Kiriakou's tally:** Five, in two years in Athens - **Character of Kiriakou's agents:** "Badasses" — dangerous criminals, killers - **Counter-example:** A GS-15 with one recruitment, reporting on Spanish wheat harvests Asked how many agents a CIA case officer is normally expected to recruit, and what happens if months of work produce nothing, John Kiriakou answered by reproducing a conversation with his own station chief in Athens. ## The numbers The station chief, Kiriakou said, pulled him aside one day and set out his own record: "I've been an operations officer for 25 years, and in my 25 years I've recruited nine sources."[1] That officer had reached senior intelligence service level four — a rank Kiriakou describes as "huge," a community leader of the intelligence community — on those nine.[2] He then put Kiriakou's figures beside his own: "You've been here two years and you recruited five people."[2] ## The character of the agents Kiriakou is emphatic that the comparison is not only arithmetic. "Every one of those people was a badass," he said. "Let me tell you — dangerous criminals, killers."[2] He drew the contrast explicitly with padding: "I wasn't recruiting safe housekeepers, little old ladies, to make sure that the safe house is nice and clean when you need to use it for a meeting. I recruited badasses."[2] ## The knack Asked to account for it, Kiriakou said he had told the station chief: "it's the craziest thing, I just have a knack for it."[2] The skill he identifies is concealment of feeling rather than charm. "I can well hide my disdain for a person. I may hate you, but you don't have any idea that I hate you, because we're talking about whatever it is that interests you."[3] He listed the range of subjects he was prepared to sustain — baseball, the founding of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, who attended the Baader-Meinhof funerals, the theatre, FIFA — and summarised the method: "whatever you want to talk about, and I will make it look like I'm your best freaking friend. And that's why I was successful."[3][4] ## The counter-example Kiriakou then supplied the other end of the distribution. He worked for a man who made GS-15 — "the top grade in the GS scale, before you make it to senior service" — knowing he would go no further.[4] In twenty-five years that officer "made one recruitment. One. And it was a guy who reported on Spanish wheat harvests, when that used to be a thing back in the '80s."[5] Kiriakou's verdict — "he was a disaster, and he made it all the way up to GS-15 with one recruitment" — leads to the answer he gives the original question: "if you have quality recruitments, you're going to do just fine."[5] The measure, he says, is not the count. [Ted Rall](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/ted-rall) offered the analogy of a police officer writing traffic tickets to make a quota, and Kiriakou's account is a rejection of it.[5] ## See also - [Kiriakou's first recruitment](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/first-recruitment-in-athens) - [The ayatollah and the photographs](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-ayatollah-and-the-photographs) - [Blackmail in agent recruitment](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/blackmail-in-recruitment) - [Ted Rall](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/ted-rall) ## Sources 1. DeProgram Show with Ted Ra (2025-08-28), at 1:03:51. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86XYgK4nal0&t=3831s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-08-28-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra/ 2. DeProgram Show with Ted Ra (2025-08-28), at 1:04:23. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86XYgK4nal0&t=3863s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-08-28-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra/ 3. DeProgram Show with Ted Ra (2025-08-28), at 1:04:54. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86XYgK4nal0&t=3894s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-08-28-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra/ 4. DeProgram Show with Ted Ra (2025-08-28), at 1:05:25. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86XYgK4nal0&t=3925s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-08-28-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra/ 5. DeProgram Show with Ted Ra (2025-08-28), at 1:05:56. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86XYgK4nal0&t=3956s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-08-28-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra/ --- From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/nine-recruitments-in-twenty-five-years/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt