# Slow-rolling the president

> **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: "Slow-rolling the president," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/slow-rolling-the-president/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*John Kiriakou's 2017 forecast that the CIA would not confront Donald Trump but outlast him, senior officers with twenty-five and thirty years in the building having already waited out several presidents, offered as the agency's characteristic response to a president it neither trusts nor is trusted by.*

- **The prediction:** The [CIA](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia) will slow-roll rather than resist
- **The reason:** Senior officers have 20, 25, 30 years in; presidents have four or eight
- **Made:** May 2017
- **Prompted by:** A serving officer's call from overseas

**Slow-rolling the president** is the term [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) used in May 2017 for what he expected the [CIA](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia) to do about [Donald Trump](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/donald-trump): not resist him, not leak against him indefinitely, but outlast him.[1]

## The call from overseas

Asked what his former colleagues were saying, Kiriakou described a friend still serving who had telephoned him recently from an overseas post, asked whether he had been following the news, and then asked the question directly: *"do the American people realize how bad this is?"* Kiriakou's answer was that they did, *"I think Congress is pretending that it's not bad, but I think the American people realize that this president, so early in his term, is just simply out of control."*[2]

The specific charge is about competence with intelligence rather than about policy: *"he doesn't understand intelligence, he doesn't understand the purpose or use of intelligence, he doesn't like or trust the CIA."*[1]

## Waiting him out

The agency, on Kiriakou's account, was briefly unsure how to respond, and then settled on the tactic available to any permanent institution facing a temporary occupant:

> *"I think in the end the CIA is going to slow roll this president. And what I mean is, they know they can wait him out. Most senior officers in the CIA have been in the organization for 20, 25, even 30 years. They've waited out other presidents, and I think that they believe they can wait out this one, that he won't be around for long."*

The arithmetic is the whole argument: a career outlasts an administration, and an institution that need not win an argument need only survive it.[1][3]

## See also

- [Donald Trump](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/donald-trump)
- [Central Intelligence Agency](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia)
- [Deep state](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/deep-state)
- [Senior Executive Service](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/senior-executive-service)
- [No good guy](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/no-good-guy)

## Sources

1. Blowing the Whistle / Why Trump Worries Him (2017-05-17), at 07:19. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAmdo2MzzhE&t=439s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2017-05-17-democracy-now-blowing-the-whistle-why-trump-worries-him/
2. Blowing the Whistle / Why Trump Worries Him (2017-05-17), at 06:49. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAmdo2MzzhE&t=409s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2017-05-17-democracy-now-blowing-the-whistle-why-trump-worries-him/
3. Blowing the Whistle / Why Trump Worries Him (2017-05-17), at 07:50. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAmdo2MzzhE&t=470s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2017-05-17-democracy-now-blowing-the-whistle-why-trump-worries-him/

---

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