# No-bid contracts > **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: "No-bid contracts," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/no-bid-contracts/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia. *John Kiriakou's account of the mechanism he considers the real corruption of American national security: an officer retires on a Friday, returns Monday on a contractor badge at ten times the salary, and is fed no-bid contracts by the friends he left behind — including, in one unnamed case he describes, a tax shelter that became a multi-billion dollar company inside a decade.* - **The pattern:** Retire Friday, return Monday on a different coloured badge at ten times the pay - **The unnamed company:** Did not exist in the early 1990s; a senior officer's LLC set up as a tax pass-through - **Growth:** Multi-billion dollar company by the end of the decade - **The ratchet:** The official who authorises the contract is hired by the company on retirement - **The double standard Kiriakou names:** Felony charges and an all-hands email for taking a contracting officer to a strip club Asked what government corruption actually looks like in the American national security world, John Kiriakou set aside the petty kind — the bribe to get a telephone line installed, the payment to make a plumber come to the house, which he says he complained about while serving overseas — and described something else. [1] ## The revolving door as a transaction The corruption he means is spending thirty years at the CIA, retiring on a Friday, going back in on Monday with a different coloured badge, and making ten times what you were making at the agency, because you just joined your buddy's LLC and you get a no-bid contract. That, he says, happens every single day. It is American taxpayers' money going to a private company to do exactly what the CIA was doing, for a tenth of the price. [1] [2] ## The unnamed company Kiriakou then gave a case history, declining to name the firm so that he could speak freely. The company did not exist in the very early 1990s. A very senior CIA officer retired and made an LLC — and only made it so that he and his friends could use it as a tax pass-through, smoke cigars, play cards, hang out together and write it off as a tax loss. Then their old friends inside the CIA started giving them no-bid contracts. One thing led to another, and by the end of the decade this was a multi-billion dollar company. [3] [4] The ratchet, in his description, is what makes it self-sustaining: contracts were passed without competition, and as soon as the person who authorised a contract retired, the company hired that person — and the next generation of senior officers gave them no-bid contracts in turn. That, Kiriakou says, is corruption, and it happens every single day. [4] ## The double standard What he finds ironic, though not in a funny way, is which conduct the system polices. The whole national security apparatus — the CIA, the Pentagon, the State Department — will make a very big deal about somebody trying to win a contract by taking people out to a strip club: a dozen felony charges get pressed, and an all-hands email goes out saying do not do things like this, this is corruption. It is a different kind of corruption, he concedes. But how, he asks, have these other men gone through their whole lives making between fifty thousand and a hundred and eighty thousand dollars and then retired worth twenty-five million? [5] [6] Asked whether he could imagine how much money he might have made had he stayed on the inside, Kiriakou said he would be rich — and his interviewer supplied the contrast: the officers who stayed docile got what they got, while the man who blew the whistle went to jail. [7] ## See also - [Private Intelligence](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/private-intelligence) - [CIA–Big Tech revolving door](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia-big-tech-revolving-door) - [Abraxas Corporation](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/abraxas-corporation) - [The Analysis Corporation](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/analysis-corporation) - [PricewaterhouseCoopers](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/pricewaterhousecoopers) - [Permanent wartime economy](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/permanent-wartime-economy) - [Deloitte Consulting Career](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/deloitte-consulting-career) ## Sources 1. co-branded personal channel — confirm real interview (2025-11-06), at 01:02. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtd4SW38irE&t=62s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-11-06-elizabeth-lane-tv-co-branded-personal-channel-confirm-real-inte/ 2. co-branded personal channel — confirm real interview (2025-11-06), at 01:35. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtd4SW38irE&t=95s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-11-06-elizabeth-lane-tv-co-branded-personal-channel-confirm-real-inte/ 3. co-branded personal channel — confirm real interview (2025-11-06), at 02:06. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtd4SW38irE&t=126s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-11-06-elizabeth-lane-tv-co-branded-personal-channel-confirm-real-inte/ 4. co-branded personal channel — confirm real interview (2025-11-06), at 02:39. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtd4SW38irE&t=159s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-11-06-elizabeth-lane-tv-co-branded-personal-channel-confirm-real-inte/ 5. co-branded personal channel — confirm real interview (2025-11-06), at 03:09. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtd4SW38irE&t=189s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-11-06-elizabeth-lane-tv-co-branded-personal-channel-confirm-real-inte/ 6. co-branded personal channel — confirm real interview (2025-11-06), at 03:41. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtd4SW38irE&t=221s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-11-06-elizabeth-lane-tv-co-branded-personal-channel-confirm-real-inte/ 7. co-branded personal channel — confirm real interview (2025-11-06), at 04:12. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtd4SW38irE&t=252s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-11-06-elizabeth-lane-tv-co-branded-personal-channel-confirm-real-inte/ --- From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/no-bid-contracts/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt