It is a staple of the British secondary school experience to have a drugs talk from a former drug addict who is ‘not proud of it,’ but is obviously still very proud of it. The man who came to my school spent most of his time telling us raucous stories from his heyday of getting on it, with a wistful look in his eyes that said more than a thousand words ever could, before briefly wrapping up by telling us how a large chunk of his nose fell out due to too much cocaine.
This ‘bloke who’s not proud of it,’ (but is very obviously still very proud of it) has in recent years made its way out of full-year assemblies and onto the social media scene. You can barely move online without bumping up against former East End villains making podcast appearances ostensibly to talk about the perils of a life in organised crime, but mostly tell stories about how it feels good to be a gangster (and how they knew the Krays).
Now, even former spies are getting in on the game. John Kiriakou is a former CIA officer who became famous for being the first to whistleblow on the CIA’s torture program, and was punished by the shining city on a hill that is the United States with a 30 month prison sentence. This is something obviously admirable, especially if it had come at some great personal cost, but since I cannot escape him wherever I go on social media, it appears that the personal cost has been fairly minor, and that the financial cost is non-existent.
In recent months Kiriakou has been on a whirlwind podcast circuit, with him appearing on popular podcasts such as Diary of a CEO, and the great white whale, the Joe Rogan Experience.
Whilst Kiriakou’s online fame is derived from these podcast appearances, it is on Instagram reels and TikTok where he thrives. Short excerpts from his podcast appearances giving humorous anecdotes from his time in the CIA have exploded in popularity, with these nearly always edited to increase the saturation and slow and speed up his speech for comedic effect. These videos are, unfortunately, very funny, and there are a lot of them; as evidenced by how a frequent comment on these clips is something along the lines of “I never see the same video twice.” For a whistleblower determined to expose the dark acts of the CIA he certainly seems to have thoroughly enjoyed his job. Both he and the reformed drug addict that my school got to talk to us when we were 16 share that same nostalgic glint in their eyes when talking about their past lives.
Kiriakou is ostensibly speaking to draw attention to the unethical nature of the CIA, most notably the torture program it employed during the War on Terror, but the way the majority of netizens see him is almost entirely divorced from that. His humorous stories about classified operations and morally murky acts give the impression of a career in the CIA as exciting and full of adventure. ‘Join the CIA; travel to exotic, distant lands, meet exciting, unusual people and kill them.’
Kiriakou paints the CIA as bad, morally speaking, but also isn’t it sort of bad-ass? I highly doubt that his stories about humorous training instructors, dodging a hotel bombing, or pretending to be gay with a source to prevent being caught as a spy is going to warrant much concern from the CIA regarding their reputation. If anything, he’s doing them a favour. The sort of amoral, sensation-seeking sociopath that the CIA needs will be enraptured by Kiriakou’s anecdotes. But hey, he’s definitely not proud of it.
“Marriot Hotel Islamabad Pakistan bombing” by Jawad Zakariya is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
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John Kiriakou: The CIA TikTok Sensation who’s “not proud of it” but is Definitely Still Proud of it
It is a staple of the British secondary school experience to have a drugs talk from a former drug addict who is ‘not proud of it,’ but is obviously still very proud of it. The man who came to my school spent most of his time telling us raucous stories from his heyday of getting on it, with a wistful look in his eyes that said more than a thousand words ever could, before briefly wrapping up by telling us how a large chunk of his nose fell out due to too much cocaine.
This ‘bloke who’s not proud of it,’ (but is very obviously still very proud of it) has in recent years made its way out of full-year assemblies and onto the social media scene. You can barely move online without bumping up against former East End villains making podcast appearances ostensibly to talk about the perils of a life in organised crime, but mostly tell stories about how it feels good to be a gangster (and how they knew the Krays).
Now, even former spies are getting in on the game. John Kiriakou is a former CIA officer who became famous for being the first to whistleblow on the CIA’s torture program, and was punished by the shining city on a hill that is the United States with a 30 month prison sentence. This is something obviously admirable, especially if it had come at some great personal cost, but since I cannot escape him wherever I go on social media, it appears that the personal cost has been fairly minor, and that the financial cost is non-existent.
In recent months Kiriakou has been on a whirlwind podcast circuit, with him appearing on popular podcasts such as Diary of a CEO, and the great white whale, the Joe Rogan Experience.
Whilst Kiriakou’s online fame is derived from these podcast appearances, it is on Instagram reels and TikTok where he thrives. Short excerpts from his podcast appearances giving humorous anecdotes from his time in the CIA have exploded in popularity, with these nearly always edited to increase the saturation and slow and speed up his speech for comedic effect. These videos are, unfortunately, very funny, and there are a lot of them; as evidenced by how a frequent comment on these clips is something along the lines of “I never see the same video twice.” For a whistleblower determined to expose the dark acts of the CIA he certainly seems to have thoroughly enjoyed his job. Both he and the reformed drug addict that my school got to talk to us when we were 16 share that same nostalgic glint in their eyes when talking about their past lives.
Kiriakou is ostensibly speaking to draw attention to the unethical nature of the CIA, most notably the torture program it employed during the War on Terror, but the way the majority of netizens see him is almost entirely divorced from that. His humorous stories about classified operations and morally murky acts give the impression of a career in the CIA as exciting and full of adventure. ‘Join the CIA; travel to exotic, distant lands, meet exciting, unusual people and kill them.’
Kiriakou paints the CIA as bad, morally speaking, but also isn’t it sort of bad-ass? I highly doubt that his stories about humorous training instructors, dodging a hotel bombing, or pretending to be gay with a source to prevent being caught as a spy is going to warrant much concern from the CIA regarding their reputation. If anything, he’s doing them a favour. The sort of amoral, sensation-seeking sociopath that the CIA needs will be enraptured by Kiriakou’s anecdotes. But hey, he’s definitely not proud of it.
“Marriot Hotel Islamabad Pakistan bombing” by Jawad Zakariya is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
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