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John Kiriakou's support for restoring the name Department of War — because Truman changed it in 1947 to avoid the United States looking like an aggressor, and the record since does not support the euphemism — together with his point that a president cannot rename a federal department by executive order.
The War Department renaming is John Kiriakou’s response to Donald Trump’s September 2025 executive order restoring the older name to the Department of Defense.
The history he gives
“It was the Department of War until 1947, and President Truman changed it because it sounded kind of warmongery.” Asked what the point was so soon after a won war, Kiriakou’s answer is about image: “He didn’t want the United States to be seen as an aggressor, as an imperialist. And so he changed it to defense.”[1][2]
Why he backs the change
The euphemism, in his view, fools nobody who looks at the record. “We’re all relatively moderately intelligent people. We can tell the difference between defense and offense. And we’re an offensive military country really since we achieved so-called superpower status at the end of the Second World War. We invade countries all over the globe… We’re overthrowing governments. We’re invading. We’re occupying. It is a department of war.”[2][3]
His conclusion is unqualified: “I have no problem with this change” — “I have no problem with it at all.”[3][4] He was less impressed by the justification offered, which he characterised as “hilariously insipid”, and answered with a joke rather than an argument.[4]
The procedural obstacle
The order alone will not do it. “A president can’t change the name of a federal department. It has to be an act of Congress.” The threshold is a simple majority — “you need 60 in the Senate because you have to break cloture” — and Kiriakou did not expect much resistance: “there’s so many more important things to worry about. I don’t think the Democrats are going to care one way or the other. I wouldn’t”, though they may oppose it “just to make life harder for Trump and for the Republicans.”[3][5]
The one consequence he wonders about
His single reservation runs the other way from the objections being raised: that an honest name might make the money harder to move. He wonders “if it’s going to maybe backfire in the future and make it a little more difficult for the defense appropriations to always get rubber stamped year after year after year” — correcting himself mid-sentence to “sorry, the war appropriations.”[6]
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.
