# Ruining the whistleblower

> **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: "Ruining the whistleblower," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/ruining-the-whistleblower/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*John Kiriakou's account of what a prosecution of a whistleblower is actually for — not conviction but ruin, personally, professionally and financially — offered as the thing he did not think through before he spoke, and the thing he says then happened to him exactly as described.*

- **The stated aim:** To ruin the whistleblower personally, professionally and financially
- **Who pursues it:** The Justice Department
- **What he did not anticipate:** The full weight of the government, rather than the charge itself
- **First recorded:** February 2015, days after his release to home confinement

**Ruining the whistleblower** is [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou)'s description of the actual objective of a whistleblower prosecution, distinguished from the formal one. He states it as a thing he learned late.[1]

## The account

> *"No whistleblower really sets out to be a whistleblower. I saw a policy that I believed was not just wrong but was criminal, and I decided to speak about it. You know, I really didn't think long-term about how the US government can bring its full weight against a whistleblower. The goal really of the Justice Department is to ruin the whistleblower personally, professionally and financially. I hadn't thought that through — and that's exactly what happened to me."*

The three adverbs are the substance of it. A conviction is one outcome among several the process can produce; the loss of a career, a pension, a savings account and a circle of friends does not require one, and on Kiriakou's account is not a side effect but the design.[1] The particulars in his own case — the pension, the friends, the job — he sets out in his account of [the Publications Review Board's two roads](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/publications-review-board), and the financial end of it is the subject of [whistleblowers die broke](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/whistleblowers-die-broke).

## The coda

He does not leave the account there, and the sentence that follows it is the reason he says the years were worth it: *"but again, it's opened up a whole new world for me, in the realm of human rights and civil liberties."*[2]

## See also

- [CIA Torture Program Whistleblowing](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia-torture-program-whistleblowing)
- ["Whistleblowers die broke"](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/whistleblowers-die-broke)
- [Publications Review Board](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/publications-review-board)
- [The IRS audits of Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/irs-audits-of-kiriakou)
- [The chilling effect of whistleblower prosecutions](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/chilling-effect-of-whistleblower-prosecutions)

## Sources

1. Alittlepart Ofme (CallMeCo (2015-02-10), at 02:35. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dO5QB3MDotg&t=155s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2015-02-10-alittlepart-ofme-callmeco-alittlepart-ofme-callmeco/
2. Alittlepart Ofme (CallMeCo (2015-02-10), at 03:06. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dO5QB3MDotg&t=186s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2015-02-10-alittlepart-ofme-callmeco-alittlepart-ofme-callmeco/

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