I can remember only a small handful of instances in which I talked about politics with my parents. I remember my parents telling me that Daniel Ellsberg was a hero when I was six years old.
John KiriakouIt's much less romantic in that you have to go to www.cia.gov and click "Apply Now." For me it was much more clandestine.
John KiriakouThe big issue is this incremental whittling away of our constitutional rights, our most important constitutional rights, including freedom of speech. This is something that we really have to put our foot down on, and we have to fight it at every step of the way.
John KiriakouThe truth of the matter is, we can certainly fight against terrorism and fight terrorist groups around the world without having to give up our own civil liberties. They're not mutually exclusive.
John KiriakouYou can't just blurt the information out to the Russian foreign minister and the Russian ambassador. What happens is, the information goes back to the CIA, to the originating office. The CIA will pull the relevant information out of the report, put it on a new blank sheet of paper and then type at the top, "Secret releasable to Russia." That way, nobody gets in trouble, no sources and methods are revealed, everybody's happy, and we can establish something of a liaison relationship to the Russians. That's not what the president did.
John Kiriakou