# The CIA barber shop

> **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 CIA barber shop," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-cia-barber-shop/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*The barber in the basement of CIA headquarters, which John Kiriakou visited once on the reasoning that it saved a trip across town and found stocked with Playboys and Penthouses, one of several amenities, alongside a dry cleaner and a post office substation, that made the building function as a self-contained town.*

- **Where:** The basement of CIA headquarters
- **Why he went:** 'I might as well just go get a haircut at the CIA barber instead of going halfway across town'
- **What he found:** 'They had Playboys and Penthouses all over the barber shop'
- **Other amenities:** A dry cleaner; a post office substation so nobody had to go into town to post anything
- **How paychecks arrived:** Flipped upside down and left on your chair
- **Smoking:** Permitted at your desk when he joined; once designated areas came in, every manager declared his own office one

**The CIA barber shop** is one of the amenities of the [headquarters building](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/langley) that [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) has described, recalled in October 2025 in a digression about how paychecks used to be delivered.

## The paychecks

The recollection began with the observation that at the [CIA](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia), as in the private sector at the time, *"they would just come with our paychecks and flip them upside down and leave them on our chairs."*[1]

## Smoking

From there Kiriakou moved to a conversation he had had with a former colleague. *"When I started at the CIA, you could smoke at your desk. And then after a year, they made designated smoking areas."* The rule produced an immediate adaptation: *"so all of the managers made their offices designated smoking areas."* Asked whether smoking was really that prevalent, he confirmed it: *"it was that big, yeah."*[1][2]

## The barber

*"There's a barber in the basement of the CIA,"* he says. *"When I first joined, I was like, oh, I might as well just go get a haircut at the CIA barber instead of going halfway across town."*[2]

What he found there was not what the setting suggested: *"I went down there and they had Playboys and Penthouses all over the barber shop."* Inside the CIA.[2][3]

## The rest of the town

Agreeing that the compound is *"like a whole city in there"*, Kiriakou added the other services. Employees use the dry cleaner, *"oh yeah, yeah, everybody does"*, and *"there's even a little post office substation in there so you don't have to go into town to mail stuff."* He used it all the time.[3]

## See also

- [Langley](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/langley)
- [The CIA's internal social culture](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia-internal-social-culture)
- [CIA cash room](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia-cash-room)
- [The colour-coded badges](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-colour-coded-badges)
- [CIA adultery culture](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia-adultery-culture)

## Sources

1. DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou: “Gaza-istan?” (2025-11-01), at 47:46. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7-d0Y6eESc&t=2866s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-11-01-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-deprogram-with-ted-rall-and-john-kiriakou-gaz/
2. DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou: “Gaza-istan?” (2025-11-01), at 48:17. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7-d0Y6eESc&t=2897s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-11-01-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-deprogram-with-ted-rall-and-john-kiriakou-gaz/
3. DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou: “Gaza-istan?” (2025-11-01), at 48:48. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7-d0Y6eESc&t=2928s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-11-01-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-deprogram-with-ted-rall-and-john-kiriakou-gaz/

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