# The Farragut West encounter

> **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 Farragut West encounter," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-farragut-west-encounter/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*John Kiriakou's account of walking up to two National Guardsmen in the Farragut West Metro station — the safest station on the network, in his estimate — telling himself the whole way not to say anything, and then saying one sentence: "You guys should be ashamed of yourselves."*

- **Where:** Farragut West Metro station, Washington, D.C.
- **When:** The afternoon before 5 November 2025
- **Who:** Two National Guardsmen
- **Kiriakou's estimate of the station:** Probably the single safest on the entire Metro network
- **What he said:** "You guys should be ashamed of yourselves"
- **Their response:** None

**The Farragut West encounter** was a brief exchange — or rather a single sentence, unanswered — between [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) and two National Guardsmen stationed in a Washington Metro station, which he recounted on 5 November 2025.

## The setting

He was not looking for a confrontation. *"I went downtown yesterday afternoon to have coffee with a friend, and there were two National Guardsmen in the Farragut West Metro station."*[1]

The location is the load-bearing detail of the story. Farragut West sits in the federal office district a short walk from the White House, and Kiriakou's assessment of it is dismissive of any security rationale for troops being there at all: *"Farragut West — probably the single safest Metro station in the entire Metro network."*[1]

## Talking himself out of it, and failing

What he describes next is an internal argument he lost. *"As soon as I saw them at a distance, I was like: don't say anything. Don't say anything. Don't say anything."*[1]

He then walked up to them. *"And I said, 'You guys should be ashamed of yourselves.' And I walked away."* Asked what they did, he was clear that nothing followed on either side: *"They didn't say anything."* Pressed, he added the limit of it — *"That's all I said."*[1]

## Where it sits in his politics

The encounter is a personal coda to a position Kiriakou had already argued at length: that the federal deployment of soldiers into American cities is a political display rather than a response to crime, and that its authors count on the deployment becoming ordinary. He raises it in a passage about public revulsion at the ICE raids and the troops on the streets — *"even people who are anti-illegal immigration, they don't like the way this is being handled: the goons on the streets of the city, the National Guard"* — and offers his own conduct as an instance of the reaction rather than as advice.[2]

He makes no claim to have changed anything. The two men said nothing, he walked on, and the story ends there. Its interest lies in the shape of it: a former government officer, rehearsing silence, unable to keep to it.

## See also

- [The National Guard in Washington](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-national-guard-in-washington)
- [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou)
- [The Lafayette Square tents](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-lafayette-square-tents)

## Sources

1. DeProgram Show with Ted Ra (2025-11-05), at 19:55. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mebPnYD1ko&t=1195s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-11-05-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-1mebPn/
2. DeProgram Show with Ted Ra (2025-11-05), at 19:24. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mebPnYD1ko&t=1164s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-11-05-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-1mebPn/

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