# Sources are not traitors > **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: "Sources are not traitors," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/sources-are-not-traitors/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia. *Asked whether CIA officers privately regarded their recruited agents as traitors and held them in contempt, John Kiriakou answered that they did not — because the officers believed they were the good guys, and a recruited source had become one of them.* - **Question put:** Did CIA officers view recruited sources as traitors? - **Answer:** "Absolutely not" - **Reasoning:** "We really really believed that we were the good guys" - **Kiriakou's recruitments:** Nine over his career - **Of those:** Seven he would gladly be friends with; one was "a cold-blooded stone cold killer" **Sources are not traitors** is [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou)'s answer to a viewer who asked whether, inside the CIA, officers regarded the people they had recruited as traitors and held them in contempt. Kiriakou called it *"an interesting question"* and answered it flatly: *"the answer is absolutely not."*[1] ## The reasoning The explanation he gives is not about the agent's conduct but about the officers' self-image. *"You know, we really really believed that we were the good guys."* Recruitment therefore functioned as an act of transfer rather than of corruption: *"And so if we were able to recruit somebody and make them one of the good guys, we were all one big happy family."*[1] ## The exceptions he concedes Kiriakou does not pretend that every recruitment was a friendship. *"There were there were a couple of sources that I recruited who in normal life I would not be friends with, right? We would not we would not have had contact. They were scumbags."*[1] One case he singles out: *"In one case they were he was a killer like a just a coldblooded stone cold killer."*[1][2] ## The proportion Against those he sets the majority, and gives a number for his career total. *"Um but seven of the nine people that I recruited over the years I would love to be friendly with them."*[2] ## Trust and its verification The follow-up put to him was the obvious one: whether an officer worried that a person who would betray one master would betray another — the doubt of someone conducting an affair with a married partner. Kiriakou conceded the worry immediately — *"Oh, sure. Sure"* — and named the machinery built to answer it: *"And that's what vetting is all about. So, you know, you've got to polygraph them. You have to what we call operationally test them."*[2][3] His worked example of that testing — a source made to run a surveillance detection route while a full team followed him, then asked to describe what he had done — is set out in [the operational test](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-operational-test).[3] ## See also - [The Operational Test](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-operational-test) - [Running Into Former Sources](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/running-into-former-sources) - [Blackmail in agent recruitment](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/blackmail-in-recruitment) - [Kiriakou's first recruitment](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/first-recruitment-in-athens) ## Sources 1. Greek Spies, Epstein, Aliens, CIA (2026-02-10), at 06:45. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwuKmPsXKPs&t=405s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-02-10-deprogram-ted-rall-greek-spies-epstein-aliens-cia/ 2. Greek Spies, Epstein, Aliens, CIA (2026-02-10), at 07:16. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwuKmPsXKPs&t=436s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-02-10-deprogram-ted-rall-greek-spies-epstein-aliens-cia/ 3. Greek Spies, Epstein, Aliens, CIA (2026-02-10), at 07:47. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwuKmPsXKPs&t=467s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-02-10-deprogram-ted-rall-greek-spies-epstein-aliens-cia/ --- From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/sources-are-not-traitors/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt