He said he's fluent in Arabic and thats how he befriended and turned an al Qaeda guy in Pakistan but I heard him speak Arabic and its lousy and he would stand out as a foreigner a mile away.
this post was submitted on 10 Apr 2026
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Asklemmy
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Any language learned as an adult will be extremely difficult to speak well, to the point of sounding native
Youre right but in the interview he made out like he was able to blend in with his Arabic.
He sucks. First of all nobody is "ex-CIA" and antiimperialist media needs to get that through their heads. He lied about being present at the torture of Abu Zubaydah. He was working at places that "tortured some folks", just not, you know, his main claim to fame. A good rubric to apply to whistleblowers is do they condemn the organization, disavow its personnel, cut all ties with it, and ultimately is their critique structural, merely careerist, or is it in fact a controlled self-critique by the org. Johncharlie Kirkiakou is kind of a codifying example of the shitty whistleblower, he is always moaning about how the CIA had never tortured anyone before the Bush administration and it was a Great Shame on the good Amerikan people etc, blow it out your ass "John"!!! They wrote manuals on that shit in the 50s. Fuck that guy read about the Office of Strategic Services, its postwar collaboration with Nazis, and the inextricable links between the CIA (emphasis on central), other first world intelligence agencies, fascist orgs, and private banking.
Kiriakou has serious "that happened" energy.
I'm not really qualified to guess how much of what he says is bullshit, and I'm sure you inevitably gain some stories being a CIA station chief or whatever, but the guy has a story about literally everything ever. He's been everywhere, he's met everyone, he knows everything about everything... and it really strains disbelief.
The guy obviously loves telling stories (and I'd even go so far as to say he's great at it), but I've gotta imagine that the vast majority of it is seriously embellished if not outright bullshit โ especially when so much of what he says seems designed to paint him favorably.
I bet he tells stories off-camera about how people eat up the psyops he runs without even really thinking deeply about blatantly ridiculous stories
Also if he was a real whistleblower I'm sure he'd have had a car accident or tragic mugging gone wrong or suicide by now.
Funny enough he was in a documentary about 17 Noembri
Also Jared Leto's high school teacher for american government & history classes.
https://xcancel.com/0ddette/status/2041362458351108213?s=20
WHAT? I did not even need to go insane about this. Also that account has weird personal lore (nevermind)
Oh I don't know anything about the account posting the video lol, I just grabbed whatever clip of that interview between Leto & Kiriakou first appeared in a search
He's got a good barber
Don't trust him at all, absolutely still CIA.
Nobody leaves the Company
If he's not on the run from the CIA, he's still CIA
47 cruise missiles
I think he's fairly credible, but it's obvious he also likes talking and being the center of attention so I suspect will exaggerate for attention. Being Ex-CIA guy is also his business, so he has motive for continuing to appear interesting and relevant. I think it's prudent to remain a little sceptical.
At the same time him being an actual ex CIA agent shows he has very successful self control and modulation, unlike many other internet famous people
I think he's credible as a witness for what he's seen. He seems believable, but I haven't looked into any criticism of what he's said.
They put him in prison for being a whistleblower so he at least has some scruples.
I have never heard of him. In general, I don't find YouTube a reliable source for anything controversial. I think the CIA falls under that umbrella. So I would be very skeptical.