The Imran Khan apology demand followed an interview John Kiriakou gave to an Indian outlet in late October 2025, which he described on air as having set off “all hell” across South Asia.[1][2]
The sentence that caused it
Kiriakou’s own account of the offence is that it was arithmetic, and that he had said nothing he had not said a thousand times before.[3] He was asked, as a follow-up question, who would win a war between India and Pakistan. His answer was that both sides are nuclear powers, so nobody would win; but that if neither side used nuclear weapons, it simply stands to reason that India, with five times the population, would win.[4] Reduced to its shortest form: “I said in a conventional conflict India would beat Pakistan because it has five times the people.”[5][6]
The corpus contains an Indian interview of 24 October 2025 in which he makes exactly that case — that literally nothing good will come of a war between India and Pakistan because the Pakistanis will lose, and that he is not talking about nuclear weapons but about a conventional war — carried under the headline Pakistan will lose any conventional war.[7][8]
What did not air, he says, was the substance. He had been asked about Kashmir first and had given his real view — that the CIA had gone to both sides asking them to walk away, and neither would — and that portion was cut from the final show. Only the follow-up about who would win was run.[9][4]
The demand
“I have more death threats than I can shake a stick at,” he said. “And then Imran Khan’s party issued a formal statement demanding that I apologise to Imran Khan, I apologise to the party, and I apologise to the Pakistani people. And they want it in writing by the end of the day today.”[2]
In later tellings the demand is not a public statement but a private letter, and Kiriakou is unsure of the sender’s exact title — “a letter from the president of Imran Khan’s political party, right? Whatever it’s called, the Pakistan whatever party” in one account, the party’s director in another. Both accounts agree that it arrived in the post, and in the second he adds a detail that plainly unsettled him: “How he got my home address, I have no idea.”[10][11][12]
The letter, he says, condemned in the strongest possible terms what he had said to the Indians and demanded an immediate apology “to his excellency the former prime minister, to the members of the party and to the people of Pakistan.”[13][14] His summary of the grievance is that he was being asked to apologise for giving an opinion — “It’s like, what are you nuts? All I said was India has five times the number of people.”[12]
He also notes what the letter left out: “He neglected to say in the letter that his prime minister is in prison right now.”[15]
The reply
Kiriakou prefaced his answer with an apology of a different kind, to his audience: “please forgive me, but I told them that I wipe my ass with their apology, and that’s as good as they’re getting.”[2]
His lawyer’s advice had been to throw the letter away. He did not. He replied by email — “in regards to your demand for an apology, I wipe my ass with your demands for an apology” — hit send, and left it there. He has not heard back from them since.[13][16]
“And then the death threats came in.”[2]
The threats and the advice
The volume was such that he stopped counting: “I’ve lost count of how many death threats I received.”[11][6] His lawyer’s instruction was to keep a low profile and be aware of his surroundings — advice Kiriakou relays with evident amusement rather than alarm.[11]
The same lawyer supplied the episode’s dry epitaph, observing that the speaking invitation to the Pakistani military academy was presumably no longer live. Kiriakou’s answer was that he would never go back there anyway: “they don’t treat me with respect.”[17][16]
The host of the show on which he first described the demand responded not by arguing the point but by proposing a precaution: “I can’t say I’m surprised, but I would definitely have someone else — someone who you don’t like — start your car in the morning.”[18]
The policy that came out of it
The episode produced a standing rule, which Kiriakou announces as such: “as a matter of policy — listen, I’m serious — no more interviews to any Indian or Pakistani news outlets ever again. Okay? John’s policy. Done.”[3][19]
His stated reason is not the threats but the editing. Those outlets, he says, “just make stuff up and put it in a banner headline with two exclamation points” — that a CIA officer has finally revealed the truth behind something — when what he has actually told them is that his information is twenty-five years old.[5][19] He repeats the rule in July 2026, this time giving the cut Kashmir answer as the reason: “which is why I no longer do Indian and Pakistani media.”[4]