The philosophy class is the story John Kiriakou tells in place of an answer when he is asked how he came through the loss of his career, his pension and his marriage. Pressed on it in 2023 — the interviewer noting that he looked better than he had in years — he answered first in general terms: “It’s been a process and it’s taken me years. But I have to be honest with you. I like myself. I’m pleased with the way I turned out. I’m never going to be wealthy. I’m never going to live in a giant house. But my children respect me.”[1][2]
Then he gave the evidence. His third son had started at Miami University of Ohio two weeks earlier and rang home after walking out of his first-ever philosophy class.[2]
“There are like 300 kids in the class and the professor starts talking about ethical dilemmas. And he said, ‘There’s this guy, John Kiriakou. He was a loyal CIA officer and he saw that the CIA was committing the crime of torture. And he knew what would happen if he went public, but he also knew it was wrong. And so he went public anyway.’ And he said, ‘How many of you would have gone public?’”
The son’s account of his own reaction is the part Kiriakou repeats: “I wanted to jump up and say, ‘That’s my dad.’” His reply was to tell the boy to pass on the offer privately — “tell him that next time I’m in town to visit you, I’m happy to talk to his class.”[3]
What he draws from it is narrow and domestic rather than vindicatory: “But that makes me proud. That makes me happy. My children respect me. I can sleep at night with a clean conscience. And you know, I’m fine. I don’t need a new car every couple of years. I don’t need the big fancy house. I like the way my life turned out.”[3][4]
This passage survives in the corpus only because it was recovered from the transcript’s sponsor sidecar, into which the caption normaliser had wrongly swept it.