S1E2 The New Recruit
John Kiriakou's Dead Drop
Costard & Touchstone Productions
4.9 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 20 October 2025
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
THE BLURB: After a graduate class professor recruits John, he throws himself into a mystifying series of tests all seemingly designed to trip up his desire to become a spy for America. How exactly does an institution like the CIA train people to spy for it? Welcome to your first class!
SHOW NOTES
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This podcast, it's a Costerton Touchstone production. |
| 0:09.8 | Hi, I'm John Kariaki. |
| 0:12.3 | Welcome to Dead Drop. |
| 0:13.9 | Before we get down to business, a little housekeeping. |
| 0:17.3 | First of all, I want to thank you for listening. |
| 0:20.0 | The relationship between storyteller and storytellee is incredibly symbiotic. |
| 0:26.4 | Where would we be without each other? |
| 0:28.5 | It really is an honor having you at the other end of these sound waves, so thank you. |
| 0:33.8 | If you're enjoying the podcast, would you please do us the kindness of making that fact known? |
| 0:39.0 | When you like, subscribe to, share, or comment on podcasts that please you, it really does help |
| 0:46.0 | the podcast find more listeners. So if you wouldn't mind, we'd be incredibly appreciative. |
| 0:52.4 | As I've said here, spies are human beings first and foremost. |
| 0:56.8 | The kind of human being we are, good, bad, or indifferent, will usually dictate a lot of |
| 1:02.5 | what we're like as spies. |
| 1:05.0 | In our last episode, we left off at the moment of my recruitment into the CIA. |
| 1:10.1 | I had written a psychological evaluation of |
| 1:12.5 | my boss at the labor union where I worked, documenting and analyzing his racist, sociopathic behavior. |
| 1:19.5 | My paper came back with an A grade and a note from my professor saying, please see me. So, |
| 1:25.8 | I went to his tiny office. And and there he told me a secret. |
| 1:30.4 | I was in a program called the Legislative Affairs program, but my focus was on foreign policy |
| 1:35.5 | analysis. And I was the only person in the program who did not work on Capitol Hill. |
| 1:41.8 | I was also the youngest by at least six years. Everybody else |
... |
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