S1E25 The Whistleblower
John Kiriakou's Dead Drop
Costard & Touchstone Productions
4.9 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 27 April 2026
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
THE BLURB: As John's date with prison looms, he begins prepping - financially and mentally. In the end, John's plea deal would put him inside for 30 months reduceable to 23. At least it would be in a relatively benign, low security work camp setting. That was what the prosecution agreed to! Meanwhile, public opinion about John begins to shift; They go from seeing him as a pariah to a whistleblower - and an American hero. Still, prison is prison and John approaches his sentence more and more like a mission to continue speaking the truth, damn the consequences.
SHOW NOTES
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This podcast, it's a Costerton Touchstone production. |
| 0:04.0 | The FBI called me. |
| 0:05.6 | They needed help, they said, with a case similar to one involving a Japanese diplomat who |
| 0:10.9 | had tried to recruit me. |
| 0:12.2 | So I went into their offices, happy to be of service. |
| 0:15.9 | In fact, my exact words were anything for the FBI. |
| 0:20.0 | The conversation started amicably enough, talking about the |
| 0:23.4 | Pittsburgh Steelers, people we knew, chit-chat. Then the topic turned to my book, the reluctant |
| 0:28.6 | spy, and the questions began to get more pointed, more hostile. I began to realize this wasn't |
| 0:35.5 | a conversation. This was an interrogation. |
| 0:39.3 | Neither the good cop, FBI agent, nor the bad cop, giving me a death stare. |
| 0:43.5 | Gave a rat's ass about any Japanese diplomats. |
| 0:46.5 | No, I was their focus. |
| 0:48.2 | And the fact that I had ratted out the CIA's torture program to Brian Ross at ABC News, |
| 0:52.9 | that's what they cared about. |
| 0:54.5 | When they finally told me out loud that I was the subject of their investigation, I was |
| 0:59.2 | shocked, but not too shocked to say the one thing that saved my ass and kept them from |
| 1:05.0 | arresting me right then and there. |
| 1:08.4 | I said, I want to see my lawyer. |
| 1:17.4 | I'm going Kiriaku. |
| 1:19.0 | Welcome to Dead Drop. |
| 1:20.2 | What Makes a Spy Tick? |
... |
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