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The USS Gerald Ford plumbing failure

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 USS Gerald Ford plumbing failure came to 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 until more assets were in place.

See also

References

  1. DeProgram Show with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas, 2026-02-2537:57 on YouTube · Transcript
  2. DeProgram Show with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas, 2026-02-2538:27 on YouTube · Transcript

Sourced from John Kiriakou's on-record public statements. See his profile for the full body of his interviews, podcast appearances, and short-form video.