‘Once CIA, always CIA’ is the standing accusation that no one who has served in the CIA ever truly leaves it — and therefore that former officers who criticise the agency are still working for it. John Kiriakou names it as the single thing about public perception of the agency that angers him most.[1]
The comment
His description is of a fixture rather than an argument. “I’ll go on a podcast — or it doesn’t have to be me, it can be Ray McGovern, Ed Snowden, it could be anybody — and there is always one in the comment section who writes, ‘Once CIA, always CIA.’ Like they have some epiphany or something.”[1]
“That is the most intellectually lazy, stupid, thoughtless position that anybody could take, especially when talking about a whistleblower.” He is careful that the objection is not personal — he lists Ray McGovern, Edward Snowden and Joshua Schulte, and says he could name half a dozen more.[2]
The question he puts back is about provenance: “there’s this idea that once you’re in the CIA that you’re somehow never allowed to leave. Where did that come from? What did they base that on?”[3]
Why the agency benefits
Kiriakou’s explanation is not that the line is planted but that it is useful, and that the CIA cultivates the conditions for it. “There are a lot of very stupid people out there. There are a lot of very easily manipulated people out there. The CIA knows that and takes advantage of it, because it causes splits in the anti-CIA populace.”[3]
The cultivation he describes is the agency’s Hollywood work — “they will work with Hollywood to make sure that everything that comes out of Hollywood is pro-CIA” — and the self-image it produces: “they will make themselves look like Supermen, like they are everywhere, they’re in every aspect of our lives and there’s nothing we can do about it.”[4]
He grants half of that and refuses the other half. “It’s true that they try to do it. It’s not true that they’re everywhere. They’re omniscient, they’re omnipotent — quite the opposite is true.” The evidence he offers against omniscience is the analytical record: since the agency’s founding in 1947 it has either got every major global development wrong or missed it altogether, “from the Berlin Wall being built to 9/11 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine and everything in between.”[4][5]
The version aimed at him
By May 2026 the accusation had acquired a specific form — that his own videos are a recruitment tool designed to make the CIA sound appealing. His answer was blunter: “I think that they’re brain damaged.”[6]
“There’s literally nothing that’s more intellectually lazy than saying ‘once CIA, always CIA.’ Like, are you deranged? If you think I went to prison to make the CIA look sexy, then you’ve got some serious mental and emotional problems. So no, I dismiss those people as unserious and unworthy of a response.”[7]
What separation actually involves
In September 2025 Kiriakou answered the phrase administratively rather than rhetorically, and in doing so conceded the one grain of truth in it. Resignation is not immediate: “you can’t just walk into HR, resign and walk out.” Instead the departing officer resigns and is “put on a leave-without-pay status for a year” — during which, if an operation arises for which that officer is uniquely qualified, the agency can recall them. Only after that year elapses is the separation final. His conclusion is that this narrow and time-limited hold is the whole of it, and that the slogan built on it is “just something for lazy and stupid people to humor themselves with.”[8][9]
He also answers it by naming the people the claim would have to cover. Saying he hears the phrase “a couple of times a week,” his standard reply is to ask the speaker to consider the implication: “I’ll be sure to tell Ed Snowden, Ray McGovern, and the sons of Philip Agee that you think that they’re all still CIA.”[10][8]
The answer he gives to it
Kiriakou has answered the accusation live on air, interrupting an interview in April 2024 to address a comment in the chat. “If you think that I am still in the CIA — after I blew the whistle on the CIA”s torture program, lost my pension, lost my job, lost my family, lost my freedom for two years — and you think I”m still in the CIA, that is the epitome of intellectual laziness.”[11]