# No ethics training at the CIA

> **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 ethics training at the CIA," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/no-ethics-training-at-the-cia/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*John Kiriakou's claim that the CIA provides no ethics training of any kind, so that an officer either arrives with a personal moral code or never acquires one, and the classroom hypothetical he uses to show where the line goes undrawn.*

Kiriakou reached the claim by way of a question about Good Samaritans. He said he had put the question to a psychologist, who told him that Good Samaritans, whistleblowers and people of that ilk have an unusually clearly defined sense of right and wrong, and that this is because they usually come from very tightly knit families, churchgoing, synagogue-going, whatever the tradition.[1]

## The claim

From that he turned to what he calls an interesting thing about the CIA: there is no ethics training. None, zero. An officer either goes into the CIA with his own personal moral code, or he does not have a moral code, because it is not going to be taught to him.[1]

The consequence Kiriakou draws is not that officers are wicked but that they are unanchored: for a lot of people, he says, they are never really sure where the moral line is that they should not cross.[1]

## The hypothetical

When he lectures at universities he always asks the same question as an example of this. The student is a CIA case officer who has recruited a penetration of a foreign terrorist group, the real thing, a source whose information has allowed lives to be saved and attacks to be disrupted, and everything he has said has been true. At a meeting somewhere in the Middle East the source says he has given everything he was asked for, and now the officer is going to do something for him: get him a prostitute, or the information stops.[2]

Kiriakou puts the question and leaves it standing: do you get him the prostitute, yes or no.[2]

The point of the exercise, in his framing, is that the Agency provides no answer of its own. Whatever the officer decides, he decides out of whatever he brought with him through the door.[1]

## See also

- [The prostitute hypothetical](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-prostitute-hypothetical)
- [Military Ethics](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/military-ethics)
- [Central Intelligence Agency](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia)

## Sources

1. Explores Life as a Spy (2022-04-07), at 21:53. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOgFKuk-VyU&t=1313s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2022-04-07-david-gornoski-explores-life-as-a-spy/
2. Explores Life as a Spy (2022-04-07), at 22:25. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOgFKuk-VyU&t=1345s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2022-04-07-david-gornoski-explores-life-as-a-spy/

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