One morning a number of weeks in the past, John Kiriakou acquired a name from his 16-year-old niece. “Uncle John, you’re exploding on TikTok,” he remembers her telling him.
Kiriakou, a 61-year-old ex-CIA officer who went to jail in 2013 for disclosing classified information associated to the company’s Center East torture program, had no thought what she was speaking about. He doesn’t have a TikTok account. He’s extra of a Fb lurker, if something. However clips from a podcast Kiriakou filmed in January with Steven Bartlett, who hosts the Diary of a CEO present, which has greater than 15 million subscribers on YouTube, have been going viral with out his intervention.
For almost 20 years, Kiriakou has been on a marketing campaign to obtain a presidential pardon. From 1990 to 2004, Kiriakou served as a CIA analyst and counterterrorism officer, main a 2002 operation to seize Abu Zubaydah, who ran a coaching camp for al Qaeda fighters. Throughout his detention, the CIA waterboarded Zubaydah. Kiriakou later mentioned the company’s torture techniques in a 2007 interview with ABC News, the place he went on to function a terrorism guide. 5 years later, the Justice Department charged Kiriakou, who then pleaded responsible to disclosing the identify of a covert operative who participated in CIA interrogations to journalists.
Although Kiriakou completed his jail sentence in 2015, he desires a presidential pardon to clear his identify and get again a long time of pension contributions. “I had 20 years of proud federal service. My pension was $700,000,” says Kiriakou. “With out that pension, I’ll should work till the day I die. It was flawed of them to take it from me, and I need it again. I can solely get it again with a pardon.”
Lately, he’s utilized by means of official channels and tried navigating President Donald Trump’s casual and expensive clemency market. To this point, his requests have gone unanswered. Now, he’s attempting one thing totally different, showing on a number of the exact same podcasts Trump did all through the 2024 election. Clips of him chatting with Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan, amongst others, received’t cease making the rounds—and the web is loving it.
When Kiriakou sat down with Bartlett for the January podcast, they’d a critical dialog discussing his profession on the CIA, his whistleblowing, and, in the end, his almost two-year imprisonment. Nevertheless it’s the tales Kiriakou tells all through the episode—about gathering intelligence in countries like Pakistan or detailing the CIA’s MKUltra program—which have drawn hundreds of thousands of views in “brainrot”-style edits on platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels.
“See you in two scrolls,” one commenter wrote on a clip of Kiriakou, joking about how incessantly movies of him appeared on their For You web page.
One person who goes by the deal with @_bamboclat is credited by Know Your Meme for popularizing these edits of Kiriakou telling unimaginable tales about his time overseas. These clips have obtained round 50 million views on the account.
“I first discovered about him by means of podcasts on TikTok. I believe the rationale why everyone seems to be in love with him is as a result of he’s a superb storyteller,” says @_bamboclat, who declined to share his full identify. “He’s been telling it for 20 years. Slowing down and dashing it up, the meme model of him, is fairly well-liked with Gen Z and the TikTok viewers.”
The virality has turned Kiriakou right into a cultural phenomenon. Following his newfound recognition, the Inventive Artists Company (CAA) signed him. Cameo—the platform that enables customers to request personalised movies from their favourite celebrities—recruited Kiriakou final month. To this point, he’s made greater than 700 movies for followers for round $150 apiece. In a single Cameo video, Kiriakou is requested to shout out a woman’s nail salon. The clip is getting used as an commercial for the enterprise on TikTok.
