# The C-130 resettlements

> **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 C-130 resettlements," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-c-130-resettlements/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*John Kiriakou's confirmation that the Hmong communities of Minnesota were former CIA assets brought to the United States as refugees, and his extension of a rule Ted Rall proposed — that refugee populations end up wherever the aircraft carrying them happened to land — to the Kurds of Bismarck, North Dakota and St Louis.*

- **The rule:** A refugee community settles wherever the aircraft landed
- **Hmong and Lao:** Minnesota
- **Vietnamese:** Dayton, Ohio
- **Iraqi Kurds:** Bismarck, North Dakota, and St Louis
- **Kiriakou on the Hmong:** Former CIA assets
- **His verdict:** A certain beauty to it, and very strange

**The C-130 resettlements** is the name for a rule of American refugee geography that John Kiriakou and Ted Rall arrived at together in December 2025, when a viewer asked about immigration enforcement in Minnesota.

## The Minnesota question

Kiriakou began from family knowledge of the state: his brother lived there for nine years and his sister for about fifteen. There are large communities of Somalis, and of Hmong and Lao — and he said he had been unaware that a lack of documentation was a problem among them.[1][2]

Rall's reason for the same puzzlement was that these people had been brought in, especially the Hmong. Kiriakou completed the sentence: *"They were former CIA assets."*[2] Rall's confirmation followed — they were working for the CIA or for the military, and were brought over as refugees.[2]

## The rule

Rall then set out the mechanism as he understood it, and asked to be corrected. In these situations everyone packs into a C-130, the aircraft lands at whatever United States Air Force base it happens to land at, and *"that's kind of like where you live"* — which, he said, is how Dayton ended up with a large Vietnamese population.[2][3]

Kiriakou did not correct it. He extended it, supplying two further cases: *"And and Bismarck North Dakota and St. Louis with a ton of Kurds. Iraqi Kurds."*[3] Rall's response — *"So random"* — drew Kiriakou's agreement: *"Exactly right."*[3]

## What it means

Rall's summing-up was that there is a certain beauty to it and that it is also very strange, and the conversation moved on without either man drawing a policy conclusion.[3][4]

The rule matters in Kiriakou's commentary because it links two things he treats as connected: the American habit of recruiting local allies for a war, and the improvised, unplanned way in which those allies are absorbed into the country afterwards — the same failure he describes in far harsher terms in the case of [the Afghan Zero Units](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-afghan-zero-units).

## See also

- [The Afghan Zero Units](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-afghan-zero-units)
- [Kurds](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/kurds)
- [Central Intelligence Agency](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia)
- [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou)

## Sources

1. Trump to Europe: DROP DEAD (2025-12-10), at 51:22. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClPOKa97jQg&t=3082s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-12-10-deprogram-ted-rall-trump-to-europe-drop-dead/
2. Trump to Europe: DROP DEAD (2025-12-10), at 51:53. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClPOKa97jQg&t=3113s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-12-10-deprogram-ted-rall-trump-to-europe-drop-dead/
3. Trump to Europe: DROP DEAD (2025-12-10), at 52:24. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClPOKa97jQg&t=3144s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-12-10-deprogram-ted-rall-trump-to-europe-drop-dead/
4. Trump to Europe: DROP DEAD (2025-12-10), at 52:54. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClPOKa97jQg&t=3174s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-12-10-deprogram-ted-rall-trump-to-europe-drop-dead/

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From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-c-130-resettlements/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt