The colour-coded badges are the visual clearance system at CIA headquarters, described by John Kiriakou on 19 November 2025 in answer to a viewer asking whether private contractors can hold higher clearances than some agencies. His answer to that was yes — “especially at places like DARPA, NSA and CIA” — and the badges were the illustration.[1]
The colours
The base case covers everyone who works in the building. “The badges are colour-coordinated at the CIA. Now they’re standard across the entire intelligence community. So a blue badge means top secret SI/TK/gamma. Everybody’s got it — everybody, if you’re in the building.”[1]
The blue badge once carried a letter. “It used to have an H on it. The H meant SI/TK/gamma” — that is, in his gloss, “special intelligence, talent compartment, keyhole compartment, gamma compartment.”[1][2]
Below and beside it sit three more colours. “Green badges are contractor badges. Yellow badges mean you’re cleared only to the secret level — so most of the language instructors only have yellow badges, because they don’t need access to top secret information. They’re just there to teach a foreign language.”[3]
And then the colour for no clearance at all, which Kiriakou illustrates with two people rather than a category. “Red badges mean you are not cleared. So the guy that works in the Dunkin’ Donuts at the cafeteria, he’s got a red badge. And the lady that vacuums the floor in the evening, she has a red badge.”[3]
Why the letters were abolished
Above top secret, the system used to advertise itself. “If you had compartments above top secret, they would add letters to that blue badge. So you wouldn’t just have an H — you’d have an H, an L, an E, a Q, an S, a T. And they all meant something.”[3][4]
The practice ended for the obvious reason. “Then they did away with that. So now, if you’re cleared for something special, you know you’re cleared for something special, and everybody else in that compartment knows you’re cleared for something special. So they’re not going to advertise it on your badge.”[4] The host’s summary — “the badge is encoded” — drew agreement.[4]
The office he could not enter
Kiriakou’s own position was near the top of the scale. “When I was the executive assistant to the deputy director, I had access to literally everything that the directorate of operations was doing around the world. So I had like eight different compartments beyond SI/TK/gamma.”[5]
It was still not enough. Two colleagues from the Directorate of Science and Technology — “a man and a woman there; they were colleagues, but they were really having an affair, and they made no effort at hiding it” — attended his morning meetings. “When I needed to give them a briefing book, or to go talk to them, or ask a question or whatever, I had to buzz their office, but I was not allowed to step inside the office. And it was because whatever they were doing back there, it was too highly classified for John to know about it.”[5][6]