The chain of command argument is John Kiriakou’s standing objection to the internal reporting procedure that intelligence officers are told to use.
What officers are taught
Kiriakou has said that in the American intelligence community officers are taught when first hired that if they see evidence of waste, fraud, abuse or illegality, they should go through the chain of command. [1]
Why he rejects it
His position is that this has been proven not to work, time and time again, and he offers examples. Thomas Drake went through the chain of command and was rewarded with nine felony charges, including seven counts of espionage. William Binney, Kirk Wiebe and Diane Roark went through their chains of command and were arrested and harassed by the police. [1]
His own reason was more specific. He has said he did not go through his chain of command because his chain of command created the CIA’s torture programme. He went to the press instead. [2]
The advice he gives
Kiriakou has said that would-be whistleblowers contact him constantly, and that they ask him where in the media they should go. His 2018 answer was that outlets such as the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Intercept have encryption keys on their websites, but that he trusts none of them, and that the only place to go is WikiLeaks — on the ground that it is the only organization that has never blown a source. [2] [3]
What is lost when there is nowhere to go
He has framed the consequence in terms of the public rather than the whistleblower. If there is no outlet, the information never becomes public, and citizens do not learn what their government is doing in their name — a right he calls one of the most important an American can have. He adds the legal point he has made consistently since his own case: that it is illegal in the United States to classify something that is a crime, or to classify something so that it cannot go public. [4] [5]
“There were no good guys in this scenario”
Put to him again in 2023, the question draws the same two-part answer. “People ask me all the time, ‘Well, why didn’t you go through the chain of command?’ Well, my chain of command created the torture program and implemented the torture program” — and the oversight route was closed for the same reason, Congress having appropriated the funds for it.[6][7]
The conclusion is stated without hedging: “So, there were no good guys in this scenario. The only place to go was the media.” He extends the point to the report’s own author, noting that Dianne Feinstein knew and did not go public.[6][7]
Asked how many did, he counts them on his hands: Bill Binney, Kirk Wiebe and Thomas Drake at NSA; Daniel Hale and Lisa Ling at the Air Force in the drone programme; Edward Snowden at NSA and CIA. “Even after 50 years after Dan Ellsberg, you can count us on two hands. That’s it” — against the thousands inside government who knew.[8][6]