# The USS Gerald Ford plumbing failure

> **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 USS Gerald Ford plumbing failure," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-uss-gerald-ford-plumbing/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*Days before the 2026 war, John Kiriakou raised the possibility that a sewage failure severe enough to send the carrier USS Gerald R. Ford back to Norfolk was sabotage by a crew that did not want to go to war with Iran.*

- **The ship:** USS Gerald R. Ford
- **The failure:** Sewage "up to your ankles, literally"
- **The remedy reported:** Turn around and return to Norfolk
- **Where he saw it:** "A piece on Fox, I think it was, day before yesterday"
- **The viewer's claim:** Sailors stuffing clothes into toilets to back them up
- **His reaction:** "I wondered when this came out 2 days ago if it was sabotage"
- **Status:** Unconfirmed, raised as a suspicion, not a finding

**The USS Gerald Ford plumbing failure** came to [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) twice, first as a news item, then as a viewer's allegation, two days before the United States attacked Iran.

The viewer's version was specific: that sailors were putting their clothes into the toilets to back them up, so that the ship would have to leave station rather than wait for war with Iran.[1]

Kiriakou had already seen the underlying report. *"There was a piece on Fox, I think it was, day before yesterday about the USS Gerald Ford having such a significant plumbing problem where there's human [waste] like up to your ankles, literally. That the only thing they can do to take care of it is to turn around and go back to Norfolk."*[1][2]

## The suspicion

What he added was that the viewer's reading had occurred to him independently. *"And I wondered when when this came out 2 days ago if it was sabotage."*[2]

Neither host produced evidence, and both left it where it stood, *"Sabotage. It sounds like it. Sure seems like it."*[2] The corpus records the suspicion as a suspicion; no later confirmation appears in the source material.

The episode matters mainly for what it says about Kiriakou's reading of the pre-war mood: he treated deliberate crew action to avoid an Iran deployment as plausible enough to raise unprompted, in the same broadcast in which he judged that [the American military's own preference was to keep waiting](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-white-house-tip) until more assets were in place.

## See also

- [2026 Iran war](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/2026-iran-war)
- [The White House tip](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-white-house-tip)
- [Hot bunking](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/hot-bunking)
- [The indicator he'd be watching](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-indicator-hed-be-watching)

## Sources

1. DeProgram (Ted Rall) (2026-02-25), at 37:57. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GI7gFn7KjzI&t=2277s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-02-25-deprogram-ted-rall-deprogram-ted-rall/
2. DeProgram (Ted Rall) (2026-02-25), at 38:27. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GI7gFn7KjzI&t=2307s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-02-25-deprogram-ted-rall-deprogram-ted-rall/

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