Most Replayed Moment: Ex-CIA Reveals What Spies Know About Human Nature

Steven Bartlett (0:04)

John, how did you come to be a CIA spy?

John Kiriakou (0:07)

When I was nine years old, I told my parents that I wanted to be a spy when I grew up. It came time to apply for college, and I only applied at one university, George Washington University in Washington, because it was two blocks from the White House, and it was one of only three schools in America that offered a Middle Eastern Studies program.

I was one of only four people in that brand new Middle Eastern Studies program. I stayed for a master's degree in Legislative Affairs with a focus on foreign policy analysis. I was taking a class in that program called The Psychology Of Leadership. It was taught by an eminent psychiatrist named Dr. Gerald Post, and he gave us an assignment one day where we had to shadow our bosses. We had to just follow our bosses for a week.

Steven Bartlett (1:00)

Your bosses? Yeah.

John Kiriakou (1:02)

I worked at a labor union called the United Food and Commercial Workers Union. And so we were just supposed to follow our boss around for a week, and then write a psychological profile. I used dozens of footnotes from psychology texts, and I ended up saying that he was a sociopath with psychopathic and possibly violent tendencies, and I had these citations.

I passed the paper in. Dr. Post gives it back to me a week later, gave me an A, and then he wrote, please see me after class.

So I went up to him after the class, and I said, Dr. Post, you wanted to see me. He says, come to my office. So we went down there, he closed the door, and he says, listen, I'm not really a professor here. I'm a CIA officer undercover as a professor here, and I'm looking for people who would fit into the CIA's culture. I think you would fit into the CIA's culture. Would you like to be a spy?

And I said, yes, I would.

He picked up the phone and called the number, and he said, Bob, this is Jerry. I've got a good one for you. Do you have some time? And he said, sure. He writes an address on a scrap of paper, and he says, be at this address in 20 minutes. It was only one subway stop away. So I jumped on the metro. I went to Roslyn, Virginia, just across the river. I had to buzz to be let in, and a woman opens the door. She says, are you here for Bob? And I said, yes. She says, come on in.

I'm sitting there for a moment, and then this like six foot six, 350 pound giant barrels out of his office. And he says, John, Bob, how the hell are you? I want you to be at the George Washington University Medical School. Saturday morning at eight o'clock, we've got some tests for you. I said, okay. And then we shook hands and I left. So Saturday morning, I went to the GW Medical School auditorium. There were like, I don't know, 200 people there, and they hand us a test. My wife picked me up. She said, how did you do? I said, I have no idea.

Steven Bartlett (3:16)

Does your wife at this point know that you're applying for the CIA?

John Kiriakou (3:19)

Yes. And that was going to be pretty much the extent of what she ended up knowing. Because once I got in...

Steven Bartlett (3:27)

But you were allowed to tell her.

John Kiriakou (3:28)

I was not allowed to tell her.

Steven Bartlett (3:30)

No. So you told her anyway.

John Kiriakou (3:32)

Yeah. When I first applied, they said, listen, don't tell anybody because you may go under cover, you may go under deep cover.

And we can't have people out there who know that you're a CIA officer.

Steven Bartlett (3:45)

Presumably, the CIA is smart enough to be able to check if you've told her.

John Kiriakou (3:49)

Yeah. And they ask you on the polygraph, did you tell her?

Steven Bartlett (3:52)

Really?

John Kiriakou (3:53)

And I said, yeah, I told her. She's my wife. What am I going to do? You know, but it got to the point where I'd get home from a day where, you know, I broke into some guy's house and planted a camera on a bug. And I'd get home and she'd say, how's your day? I'd say, great. Would you do? Not a darn thing. And then my phone would ring at midnight and a guy would say, the rain in Spain falls mainly in the plain. And I'd say, Mersey Dotes and Doe's Eat Oats and Little Lamb's Eat Ivy. And that means, meet me at the Yacht Club parking lot in three hours.