# The CIA recruiting video

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

*The Agency recruiting video John Kiriakou says he watched with dismay, in which a woman described herself as an autistic, depressed, anxious lesbian who had found a home at the CIA — and his reaction that this was not the CIA he joined.*

- **Format:** A CIA recruiting video, in an interview style
- **When he places it:** Two or three years before October 2025
- **The line he quotes:** "I'm an autistic, depressed, anxious lesbian … and I have a home at the CIA"
- **His reaction:** "That's not the CIA I joined"

During an October 2025 interview with a retired Army colonel who was criticising the personnel policies of the American armed forces, [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) volunteered an example from his own former employer.

## The example

The Russians and the Chinese laugh at some of the recruiting commercials released by the American military — and by the [CIA](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia), he said. He then described one in particular.

*"There was a CIA recruiting video that came out, I don't know, two years, three years ago, where they're interviewing this woman and she said, 'I'm an autistic, depressed, anxious lesbian, you know, blah blah blah. And I have a home at the CIA.' And I was like, 'Oh my god, that's not the CIA I joined.'"*[1]

## The frame he puts it in

Kiriakou's stated objection is not to who is recruited but to what the material broadcasts to adversary services. He offers the video as evidence for the guest's contention that American institutions have made themselves objects of ridicule abroad, and the measure he applies is how it reads in Moscow and Beijing.

The guest's own argument, which surrounds the remark, is broader and more categorical — a criticism of women serving in tanks and infantry formations, delivered with the claim that war is the absence of moral restraint. That argument is the colonel's; Kiriakou does not endorse it, and his contribution is the single anecdote.

## Context in his own record

Kiriakou joined the CIA on 1 January 1990 as an analyst, having been recruited while in graduate school. The phrase *"not the CIA I joined"* is one he uses elsewhere in a very different register: he has said that the Agency he came of age in was not the real CIA, and that after 2001 it returned to its roots as an organisation constantly pushing the bounds of morals, ethics and legality. Here the same phrase carries the opposite complaint.

## See also

## See also

- [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou)
- [Central Intelligence Agency](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia)

## Sources

1. The Deep Focus Show (2025-10-31), at 18:16. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oazTShMDcTo&t=1096s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-10-31-the-deep-focus-show-the-deep-focus-show/

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