One morning a few weeks ago, John Kiriakou got a call from his 16-year-old niece. “Uncle John, you’re exploding on TikTok,” he recalls her telling him.
Kiriakou, a 61-year-old ex-CIA officer who went to prison in 2013 for disclosing classified information related to the agency’s Middle East torture program, had no idea what she was talking about. He doesn’t have a TikTok account. He’s more of a Facebook lurker, if anything. But clips from a podcast Kiriakou filmed in January with Steven Bartlett, who hosts the Diary of a CEO show, which has more than 15 million subscribers on YouTube, were going viral without his intervention.
For nearly two decades, Kiriakou has been on a campaign to receive a presidential pardon. From 1990 to 2004, Kiriakou served as a CIA analyst and counterterrorism officer, leading a 2002 operation to capture Abu Zubaydah, who ran a training camp for al Qaeda fighters. During his detention, the CIA waterboarded Zubaydah. Kiriakou later discussed the agency’s torture tactics in a 2007 interview with ABC News, where he went on to serve as a terrorism consultant. Five years later, the Justice Department charged Kiriakou, who then pleaded guilty to disclosing the name of a covert operative who participated in CIA interrogations to journalists.
Though Kiriakou finished his prison sentence in 2015, he wants a presidential pardon to clear his name and get back decades of pension contributions. “I had 20 years of proud federal service. My pension was $700,000,” says Kiriakou. “Without that pension, I’m going to have to work until the day I die. It was wrong of them to take it from me, and I want it back. I can only get it back with a pardon.”
In recent years, he’s applied through official channels and tried navigating President Donald Trump’s informal and expensive clemency market. So far, his requests have gone unanswered. Now, he’s trying something different, appearing on some of the very same podcasts Trump did throughout the 2024 election. Clips of him chatting with Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan, among others, won’t stop making the rounds—and the internet is loving it.
When Kiriakou sat down with Bartlett for the January podcast, they had a serious conversation discussing his career at the CIA, his whistleblowing, and, ultimately, his nearly two-year imprisonment. But it’s the stories Kiriakou tells throughout the episode—about gathering intelligence in countries like Pakistan or detailing the CIA’s MKUltra program—that have drawn millions 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 frequently videos of him appeared on their For You page.
One user who goes by the handle @_bamboclat is credited by Know Your Meme for popularizing these edits of Kiriakou telling unimaginable stories about his time abroad. These clips have received around 50 million views on the account.
“I first found out about him through podcasts on TikTok. I think the reason why everyone is in love with him is because he’s a good storyteller,” says @_bamboclat, who declined to share his full name. “He’s been telling it for 20 years. Slowing down and speeding it up, the meme version of him, is pretty popular with Gen Z and the TikTok audience.”
The virality has turned Kiriakou into a cultural phenomenon. Following his newfound popularity, the Creative Artists Agency (CAA) signed him. Cameo—the platform that allows users to request personalized videos from their favorite celebrities—recruited Kiriakou last month. So far, he’s made more than 700 videos for fans for around $150 apiece. In one Cameo video, Kiriakou is asked to shout out a woman’s nail salon. The clip is being used as an advertisement for the business on TikTok.
“When somebody pointed it out to me, I went on TikTok and looked at them, and I thought it was hilarious,” says Kiriakou. “These young people who have done this have made opportunities available to me that just would never have existed.
The Diary of a CEO interview was one of many Kiriakou recorded over the past year. He says he never intended to go viral, but just wanted to place his plea for clemency in front of Trump. “I was laser-focused on getting to Donald Trump so that I could ask for a pardon,” says Kiriakou. “I know that the guy’s tech savvy. I know that he watches podcasts. God knows he’s been on a lot of podcasts. Maybe, just maybe, he’ll watch one that I’m on.”
His first major appearance was with Carlson last summer. That interview got the attention of Patrick Bet-David, another popular conservative podcaster who interviewed Trump in the lead-up to the 2024 election—Kiriakou recorded with him in July. In October, Kiriakou went on The Joe Rogan Experience. He’s appeared on other shows with popular creators like Danny Jones and Dalton Fischer that have accrued millions upon millions of views.
Since taking office, Trump has seemingly made clemency a commodity. Pay a person with enough influence over the president enough money, and a pardon could become a possibility, Trump administration critics suggest. During Trump’s first term, Kiriakou tried that route. In 2018, he paid former Trump adviser Karen Giorno $50,000 to lobby for a pardon with a promised $50,000 more if she succeeded.
“Rudy Giuliani tried to shake me down for $2 million,” says Kiriakou. “I just got up and walked out.” (The New York Times reported in 2021 that a Giuliani associate offered the deal. Giuliani told the Times he did not remember ever meeting Kiriakou. Giuliani did not respond to an X DM from WIRED for comment.)
Whether any of these attempts have won Kiriakou any sympathy with Trump is unclear. While Trump has pardoned or commuted the sentences of nearly 1,600 January 6 prisoners, there are some pardon seekers even Trump has faced difficulties freeing. Tina Peters, a former election clerk in Mesa County, Colorado, is currently serving a nine-year prison sentence after facilitating a security breach in her county’s election management system. She’s become a hero in the election-denying communities, and top Trump advisers like Michael Flynn and Steve Bannon have pushed for her release. In a December Truth Social post, Trump announced that he had granted Peters a “full Pardon,” but she has yet to be released, because the president does not have jurisdiction over state-level cases like hers.
Kiriakou says he was told by a senior government official that the president is aware of his pardon application. “He said it could happen in six hours. It could happen in six months, or maybe he doesn’t like your face. Or maybe he doesn’t like your suit, and then it never happens. It’s just impossible to tell,” Kiriakou recalls.
The White House declined to comment on Kiriakou’s pardon application when reached by WIRED. “The White House does not comment on potential clemency petitions. The President is the final decider on all pardons or commutations,” a White House spokesperson said.
Daniel Kobil, a Capital University law professor who studies clemency, calls Kiriakou’s new media strategy “a brilliant variation on an old strategy” of building a large base of supporters. “The best thing to do is generate broad support with a constituency that Trump cares about,” says Kobil. “It’s obviously a long shot with many decisionmakers. Trump, I think, is more of a wild card.”
Still, Kiriakou’s plan is to keep going. He says he’s returning to Carlson’s and Bet-David’s shows in the coming weeks, continuing to feed the social media clip economy that has formed around his unbelievable stories. Maybe this time, Trump will see them.
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