# Taking the ball and going home

> **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: "Taking the ball and going home," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/taking-the-ball-and-going-home/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*John Kiriakou's rule of thumb, offered after the July 2024 Butler shooting, that a failed state-run assassination is not retried: an operation with that many moving parts would not be attempted in front of thousands of people, would not be entrusted to a twenty-year-old, and once blown would be abandoned rather than repeated.*

- **Kiriakou's position on Butler:** A lone shooter, not a state operation
- **First objection:** Too many moving parts to be carried out
- **Second objection:** Not in front of thousands of people
- **Third objection:** Not outsourced to a twenty-year-old
- **If it were a state operation:** Trump would not have survived it

**Taking the ball and going home** is the shorthand for a position [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) took within days of the July 2024 shooting at [Butler](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/butler-rally-shooting), when asked whether the attempt might have been deliberately enabled rather than merely botched.

## The objections

His gut answer was no, or likely no, and he gave three reasons. The first is scale: an operation of that kind would have so many moving parts that it would be virtually impossible to carry out.[1]

The second and third came from a conversation the same day with a friend who is a former FBI agent, and who had been giving it a lot of thought herself. If they were going to do that, she said, they would not have outsourced it to a twenty-year-old, *"just some local yokel from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania"*, and they would not have done it in front of thousands of people.[1]

Kiriakou is careful to mark what he is not saying. He is not claiming that such operations have never been carried out in the past; only that this is not how one would be carried out.[2]

## The decisive point

The argument he treats as conclusive is the outcome. Had it been the military or any American organisation, [Donald Trump](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/donald-trump) would not be alive. A state operation would have provided secondary and tertiary layers precisely in case the first shooter missed, including a shooter tasked with killing the patsy.[2]

From that Kiriakou draws the behavioural rule his interviewers found most striking, and which they immediately contrasted with the prediction that a thwarted plot would double down: a state actor that has failed once does not try again. It takes its ball and goes home, as after the Bay of Pigs.[2]

## See also

- [Butler rally shooting](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/butler-rally-shooting)
- [Secret Service](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/secret-service)
- [Donald Trump](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/donald-trump)

## Sources

1. #249 — Trump Assassination Attempt (John is co-guest w/ Matt Cox ✓) (2024-07-16), at 1:27:41. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcgJXirykZE&t=5261s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2024-07-16-danny-jones-trump-assassination-attempt-john-is-co-guest/
2. #249 — Trump Assassination Attempt (John is co-guest w/ Matt Cox ✓) (2024-07-16), at 1:28:13. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcgJXirykZE&t=5293s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2024-07-16-danny-jones-trump-assassination-attempt-john-is-co-guest/

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