The two officers who changed are the exceptions John Kiriakou names when asked about the colleagues he admired rather than the ones he fell out with — an answer that begins as praise for the agency’s rank and file and turns into a rule about seniority.
The rank and file
Asked to talk about co-workers who were good at the job and never get discussed, Kiriakou answered generally first. “I liked most of the people that I worked with. Most of them were genuinely great guys, women. They were patriots. Most of them actually happen to be Democrats. And um all they wanted to do is serve their country.”[1]
Then the qualifier that carries the rest of the answer: “But it’s like the higher up the chain you go the easier it is to lose your mind.”[1]
The first
“there were two guys in particular who I really really liked when we were all junior officers together. One of them became um deputy deputy director of counterterrorism and then deputy director of the FBI for counterterrorism. He became a war criminal. Is what it was. He was a great guy and then all of a sudden he’s like murdering people with drones. And then bragging about it.”[2]
Kiriakou does not name him. The charge is stated as a settled conclusion rather than an allegation, and the aggravating detail is the boasting rather than the killing.
The second
“The other became um head of the uh Alec Station, Osama bin Laden unit. Awesome fun guy, hilarious sense of humor. And he just became a stone cold killer.”[3]
Again no name is given, and again the structure of the observation is the same: an unreserved description of the man as Kiriakou knew him, followed by a flat verdict on what he became. Alec Station recurs elsewhere in Kiriakou’s accounts of the pre-9/11 agency.
He closes by returning the balance to where he started: “besides those two, most of the people that I that I rose through the ranks with were really great great men and women. I I enjoyed their time.”[3]