# Six ways from Sunday

> **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: "Six ways from Sunday," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/six-ways-from-sunday/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*Senator Chuck Schumer's 2017 televised warning that a president who takes on the intelligence community leaves himself open to retaliation, and John Kiriakou's reading of what the threat actually consisted of, not violence, but the institutional attrition available to career officers who outlast any administration.*

- **Said by:** Senator Chuck Schumer, on television, 2017
- **Kiriakou's role:** Asked by CNN the following day to explain the remark
- **What he says it did not mean:** Physical harm
- **What he says it did mean:** Leaks, withheld risk-taking, and waiting a president out

**Six ways from Sunday** is a phrase from a televised warning by Senator Chuck Schumer that a president who crosses the intelligence community exposes himself to retaliation. [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) says CNN telephoned him the day after the remark aired and asked him to explain what Schumer had meant.[1][2]

## What he says it did not mean

His first move was to rule out the reading that the phrase invited. Whatever Schumer meant, Kiriakou says, he did not mean physical harm.[2]

## The mechanism he describes instead

The threat he describes is structural rather than criminal, and rests on time. Officers at the [CIA](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia) have been there twenty, twenty-five, thirty years; presidents come and go; and the officers know they can outlast this president exactly as they could outlast any other.[2]

From that asymmetry he derives the specific forms retaliation can take, none of which requires anyone to disobey an order. They can leak selectively to embarrass him. They can decline to take the risk of going after a well-placed source, so that the best intelligence never arrives. They can decline to initiate a high-risk operation. The result he describes is not sabotage but inertia, nothing gets done, the administration muddles through, and the officers wait the four years until the voters remove him and return somebody they prefer.[2][3]

## The frame he attaches to it

Kiriakou treats the episode as a problem of accountability rather than of party, and separates his reading of the intelligence agencies from any defence of the president they were said to be threatening: *"we don't have to love the CIA and the FBI just because we don't like Donald Trump."*[4]

## See also

- [Central Intelligence Agency](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia)
- [Russiagate](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/russiagate)
- [John Brennan](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-brennan)
- [Donald Trump](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/donald-trump)

## Sources

1. The Jimmy Dore Show (2018-08-07), at 01:01. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMAoad0hQUw&t=61s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2018-08-07-the-jimmy-dore-show-the-jimmy-dore-show/
2. The Jimmy Dore Show (2018-08-07), at 01:33. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMAoad0hQUw&t=93s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2018-08-07-the-jimmy-dore-show-the-jimmy-dore-show/
3. The Jimmy Dore Show (2018-08-07), at 02:03. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMAoad0hQUw&t=123s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2018-08-07-the-jimmy-dore-show-the-jimmy-dore-show/
4. The Jimmy Dore Show (2018-08-07), at 04:37. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMAoad0hQUw&t=277s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2018-08-07-the-jimmy-dore-show-the-jimmy-dore-show/

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