# The Arlington house > **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: "The Arlington house," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-arlington-house/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia. *The 1,200-square-foot house John Kiriakou bought with his Pakistan overtime and danger pay for $347,000, sold two years later for $721,000, and now values at a million — the anchor of his repeated argument that his own children can never live in the Arlington, Virginia neighbourhood they grew up in.* - **Bought with:** Overtime, danger pay, language differential, post differential and per diem from Pakistan - **Size:** 1,200 square feet on three floors - **Purchase price:** $347,000 - **Sold:** Two years later, for $721,000 - **Value now:** About $1 million, in his telling - **Second house:** A teardown bought with his second wife about twenty years ago, rebuilt to raise their family - **Neighbourhood average:** Given variously as $2 million and $2.4 million; $3.2 million for a house like the one he built - **Current arrangement:** A townhouse shared with two housemates **The Arlington house** is the property [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) uses as his standing illustration of American housing costs — a small house bought with hazard pay, sold at a profit he found startling at the time, and now worth a figure he treats as evidence that a generation has been shut out. ## Bought with hazard pay The purchase followed his return from [Pakistan](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/pakistan-station-2002). *"I remember when I got back from Pakistan, I had so much money from overtime and danger pay and language differential and post differential and per diem. I bought a house. I bought a house, a little one."*[1] He is precise about how little. *"It was 1,200 square feet on three floors. That's how small it was. And I paid — I still remember — I paid 3.47 for it. 347,000. I sold it two years later for 721, and now it's a million bucks. A 1,200-square-foot house. A million dollars."*[2] The benchmark he and his then-wife used at the time was a newspaper story. *"My ex and I at the time marveled over this Washington Post article — and this was like, I say, 20 years ago — that Arlington had sold its first million dollar house. And I said, can you imagine that? A million dollars for a house. It's just insane."*[3] ## The teardown A second telling, given on the same programme in January 2026, describes a different property and a different stage of life. *"Twenty years ago I was middle middle class, my new wife was middle middle class, and we bought a house in a middle middle class area of Arlington, Virginia. We tore it down and we built a nice house in which to raise our family."*[4] He prices the same street twice, and not identically. In November 2025 he gave the Arlington average as *"2 million"* and his own neighbourhood as *"3.2 million"*, describing the area as *"no nicer than any other neighborhood — just a normal, middle class, middle neighborhood."*[3][5] In January 2026 he gave the teardown figure as *"$2.4 million"* and the built-house figure again as *"3.2 million."*[6] ## What it costs him now The conclusion he draws is personal before it is political. *"I can't afford to live here. I have two housemates and we live in a townhouse. Otherwise, I could never hope to live here."*[5] And it is generational. He returns repeatedly to a conversation with his third son: *"he knows that he will never again live in Arlington, Virginia. It's not possible."*[1] The January version is blunter still — *"my children will never be able to live in the neighborhood in which they grew up. It's not possible. And it's not going to turn around."*[6] He dates the inflection to a single morning: *"as soon as the planes hit those towers and the Pentagon, everybody started getting rich in the Washington area."*[7] Absent a change, he says, the arithmetic ends badly — *"we're headed for an economic catastrophe where an entire generation is cut out"* — and he adds that he thinks the country is already there.[5] ## See also - [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) - [Pakistan Station (2002)](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/pakistan-station-2002) - [Spies of Arlington National Cemetery](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/arlington-cemetery-spies) ## Sources 1. DeProgram Show with Ted Ra (2025-11-05), at 44:58. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mebPnYD1ko&t=2698s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-11-05-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-1mebPn/ 2. DeProgram Show with Ted Ra (2025-11-05), at 45:28. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mebPnYD1ko&t=2728s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-11-05-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-1mebPn/ 3. DeProgram Show with Ted Ra (2025-11-05), at 46:02. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mebPnYD1ko&t=2762s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-11-05-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-1mebPn/ 4. DeProgram Show with Ted Ra (2026-01-26), at 39:37. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hw_Ta_maSFs&t=2377s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-01-26-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra/ 5. DeProgram Show with Ted Ra (2025-11-05), at 46:33. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mebPnYD1ko&t=2793s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-11-05-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-1mebPn/ 6. DeProgram Show with Ted Ra (2026-01-26), at 40:07. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hw_Ta_maSFs&t=2407s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-01-26-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra/ 7. DeProgram Show with Ted Ra (2026-01-26), at 40:38. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hw_Ta_maSFs&t=2438s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-01-26-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra/ --- From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-arlington-house/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt