S2E6 Use Your Words

In the summer of 2007, John Kiriakou—a former CIA officer who had recently left the agency—wrote an 800-word op-ed for the Los Angeles Times about his experience rescuing child actors and their families from Afghanistan. That single piece opened doors he had never imagined. Within days, he was fielding calls from the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the Guardian. By the time he went to federal prison years later, he understood the power of his words—and he used them as his primary survival tool.

The CIA Writing Style and Its Limits

Kiriakou’s writing career began in the CIA, where analysts are trained to write in a single, uniform style. His first boss told him bluntly: “The president doesn’t give a shit about your opinion. The president wants the facts in as few words as you can convey them and a paragraph on what it means.” That style ensured that the President’s Daily Brief, contributed to by dozens of analysts each night, read as if one person had written it. But when Kiriakou left the agency and wrote his first book, My Secret Life in the CIA’s War on Terror, his wife read the draft and told him she hated it. “This reads like a dry government report,” she said. “You should write it the way you tell it.” That feedback transformed his approach. He adopted a light, conversational tone—and the book went to number five on the *