S1E22 The Good, The Bad, The Ugly
John Kiriakou's Dead Drop
Costard & Touchstone Productions
4.9 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 6 April 2026
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
THE BLURB: John finds that working in the private sector (doing corporate intel at Deloitte and Touche) for big money, perks and benefits has its advantages over working a lot more for a lot less at the agency. Then one day - when everything's going gangbusters for John, he gets a call from Brian Ross at ABC News. And everything changes. But, how did Ross find John? And why was the news media so slow to take up and believe the torture story? By the time reporters like Ross found their way to John, they were in a feeding frenzy. In this episode, we'll tell you why that happened and how it contributed to what happened to John.
SHOW NOTES
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This podcast, it's a Costerton Touchstone production. |
| 0:04.4 | I'll tell you a funny thing about Deloitte. |
| 0:06.9 | My very first day at Deloitte, after the Chicago conference, which lasted a week, got to meet |
| 0:13.0 | everybody, genuinely liked everybody, still in touch with most of them. |
| 0:17.4 | And I went back to my new office in Tyson's Corner, Virginia, which is McLean, Virginia, |
| 0:23.0 | where the CIA is located. Niceest office I ever had in my life. Beautiful view of the Virginia |
| 0:27.9 | countryside, reserved parking space. I was making exactly double what I had been making at the |
| 0:34.2 | agency. Life is good. My very first day, the big boss calls the partner. I should |
| 0:40.0 | add, I was hired at what was called the senior manager level, so I was just one promotion away from |
| 0:45.2 | partner principal. Partners have accounting degrees, their CPAs. Principles are partners, |
| 0:50.9 | but who don't have their CPA. So I was just one promotion away from the principal level. |
| 0:56.1 | So he says, hey, we just got a tip that such and such happened. Get out there people and talk to your |
| 1:02.7 | sources. Well, that just meant picking up the phone and calling all the people, you know. I didn't |
| 1:06.5 | know anybody because this was my first day on the job. I started hearing ping, ping, ping, as everybody's |
| 1:12.5 | writing these intelligence reports and sending them around everybody. Wow, this is actually |
| 1:17.5 | really cool. People are calling all their sources. They're getting answers to these important |
| 1:22.2 | questions. It's going to allow Deloitte to make whatever decision they need to make for revenue |
| 1:27.0 | enhancement or new clients |
| 1:28.6 | or whatever, this is going to be fun. But there are a couple of things I'd like to do my way. |
| 1:34.0 | First of all, there was no standardized way to interview new hires. I said to the partner, |
| 1:39.6 | do you mind if I go talk to HR, like global HR on my own? No, knock yourself out. So I went to |
| 1:47.8 | HR, New York, I think it was. I said it would be immensely helpful if I could get a spreadsheet |
... |
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