# The strongly worded protest

> **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 strongly worded protest," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-strongly-worded-protest/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*John Kiriakou's account of what actually happens when one state violates another's airspace: not an act of war but a démarche. He notes that the Russians do it to the United States over Alaska all the time, that the Americans do it back with some frequency, that the Norwegians, Swedes and Turks do it too — and that the response is to send an ambassador in to lodge a formal protest.*

- **Is it an act of war?:** "Not so much," per Kiriakou
- **Who does it:** Russia over Alaska; the US in return; also Norway, Sweden, Turkey
- **Frequency:** Routine
- **Standard response:** Ambassador lodges a formal, strongly worded protest
- **Prompting case:** Alleged Russian drones over Germany, said to be launched from ships in the Baltic

Reports that Russian surveillance drones had flown over Germany prompted [Ted Rall](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/ted-rall) to ask whether this still counted as an act of war, as it once would have, and what the Germans could do about it. John Kiriakou's answer deflated both halves of the question.

## The geography problem

Kiriakou began by granting the premise for the sake of argument — "I'm going to make an assumption here that these were Russian drones" — and then raised a practical difficulty: the aircraft would have had to cross the whole of Poland to get there.[1] Told they were apparently launched from ships in the Baltic Sea, he accepted the correction at once: "that would make more sense to me."[1]

## Not an act of war

On the legal characterisation he was direct: "an act of war — not so much, as a violation of airspace."[2]

His reason is that the practice is universal and constant. The Russians do it to the United States "all the time, in Alaska, for example," he said, "and we do it to them with some frequency as well — as do the Norwegians, the Swedes, the Turks."[2] A category of conduct engaged in routinely by every capable state, including the complainant, does not function as a casus belli.

## What actually happens

The remedy Kiriakou describes is diplomatic and formulaic. "What you do is you have your ambassador go into the Minister of Defense's office in Moscow and lodge a formal, strongly worded diplomatic protest," he said.[2]

He treated the ritual with open irony, reaching for a comic reference — "you know, to quote the Stooges, why" — before Rall interrupted with a joke of his own about Iggy Pop.[2] The interruption is characteristic of the register, but the substantive point had been made: the response to an airspace incursion is a scripted act of protest whose function is to register that the incursion was noticed.

## Placement

The answer illustrates a recurring move in Kiriakou's broadcast material. Presented with an incident framed as unprecedented and alarming, he supplies the ordinary institutional response and the frequency with which the underlying conduct occurs — not to excuse it, but to locate it. Here the effect is to place drones over Germany in the same category as bombers off Alaska: a routine intrusion answered by a routine démarche.

## See also

- [Ted Rall](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/ted-rall)
- [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou)
- [Central Intelligence Agency](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia)

## Sources

1. DeProgram Show with Ted Ra (2025-08-28), at 17:51. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86XYgK4nal0&t=1071s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-08-28-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra/
2. DeProgram Show with Ted Ra (2025-08-28), at 18:23. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86XYgK4nal0&t=1103s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-08-28-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra/

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