# The Islamabad guest house > **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 Islamabad guest house," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-islamabad-guest-house/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia. *The sixteen-room guest house in Islamabad that CIA officers took over entirely during the post-9/11 deployments — a place John Kiriakou says the agency still will not let him name, which came with breakfast, dinner and laundry for about thirty-five dollars a day against a per diem of five hundred.* - **Location:** Islamabad, Pakistan - **Size:** Sixteen rooms — all taken by CIA officers - **Included:** Breakfast, dinner and laundry - **Cost:** About $35 a day - **Per diem:** About $500 a day - **Naming:** The CIA will not allow Kiriakou to name it **The Islamabad guest house** is a small hotel in the Pakistani capital that [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) and his colleagues occupied during CIA deployments to Pakistan, and which he describes at length while explaining that he is not permitted to identify it. ## The place Kiriakou introduces it with the restriction attached. *"I was staying in a guest house in Islamabad, Pakistan, that the CIA will not allow me to name."*[1] The scale of it explains why the agency could take it over: *"It only had It only had like 16 rooms, and CIA officers, we took all 16 rooms."*[1] ## The economics The detail Kiriakou dwells on is financial, and he presents it without embarrassment. *"But that guest house came with breakfast and dinner and laundry. And it was like 35 bucks a day. It was incredible. And then they give you like 500 a day per diem, so you just pocket the rest."*[1] He states the consequence in a single sentence, and then moves on: *"I bought a house when I came home. Anyway."*[1] The arithmetic is left for the listener. A per diem set for the accommodation an American official might be expected to need, paid against a bill of thirty-five dollars a day in a house shared with colleagues, produced a surplus large enough over a long deployment to buy property. ## What he remembers instead Asked separately for the best meals he had ever eaten abroad, Kiriakou's first answer came from the same building — a young Pakistani cook, whose name he nearly said aloud and then withheld, who spent half of each day shaving beef thin for a dish of spices, hot green chillies and rice cooked in chicken stock. That dish, and not the money, is what he calls [the best meal he had overseas](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-best-meal-overseas).[2] The guest house therefore appears twice in the same conversation, once as a windfall and once as a kitchen, and Kiriakou treats the second as the more memorable of the two.[1][2] ## See also - [The Best Meal Overseas](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-best-meal-overseas) - [The Islamabad surveillance incident](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/kiriakou-islamabad-surveillance-incident) - [The Dandelion Salad](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-dandelion-salad) - [Cover position](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cover-position) ## Sources 1. Iran Escalation, Captured Spies: What Really Happens? And More I Going Deeper w/JK - DEEP FOCUS (2026-03-03), at 33:49. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4_p0sXfdMU&t=2029s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-03-03-the-deep-focus-iran-escalation-captured-spies-what-really-happens/ 2. Iran Escalation, Captured Spies: What Really Happens? And More I Going Deeper w/JK - DEEP FOCUS (2026-03-03), at 34:21. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4_p0sXfdMU&t=2061s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-03-03-the-deep-focus-iran-escalation-captured-spies-what-really-happens/ --- From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-islamabad-guest-house/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt