A change in programming seemed in order over the long weekend. I hope semperloquitur does not see these John Kiriakou critiques as treading on his Sunday movie feature turf.
I started watching Kiriakou from time to time when he was Ted Rall’s co-host on Deprogrammed, as well a long interview with Tucker Carlson, and some earlier comments on the US torture program. Rall gave an update two months ago in A Funny Thing Happened to John Kiriakou:
John Kiriakou wasn’t exactly down and out. But he was struggling.
Not only was John broke, he was drowning in legal fees he owed to the lawyers who’d defended him when the federal government came after him…. He wound up on food stamps. Whether the hitch was his age (61) or being blacklisted by U.S. government, who could say?…
John Kiriakou was the whistleblower who exposed the CIA’s Bush-era torture program, infamous for waterboarding and other atrocities. Rather than the medal and a ticker-tape parade he deserved, the government sent him to federal prison for nearly two years—for the crime of telling a set of awful truths. They destroyed his marriage, stole his pension and framed him as the bad guy.
Now he’s a meme. Actually hundreds of memes. If you’ve been online in the last month, odds are you’ve seen some iteration of CIA John, as twentysomethings call him, over and over and over…
“I didn’t know how to go about turning things around” after he was released. John told me. “So I just decided to start saying yes to podcasts. If you’re a 17-year-old kid and you’ve got a podcast that your high school buddies listen to, the answer is yes. Then, about two years ago, I started getting invitations to go on bigger podcasts.” John spent his days appearing on one podcast after another. He was busy. But he still couldn’t earn a living.
Then some kid made a TikTok.
“My niece called me and said, ‘Uncle John, you are blowing up on the Internet.’ I said, ‘Why?’ She said, ‘There are these hilarious shorts of you.’ I said, ‘From what?’ She said, ‘I don’t know..”. I went on TikTok, and I recognized from what I was wearing that it was from the ‘Diary of a CEO’ podcast. Some kid just took that interview, cut my stories up into shorts, changed my voice from my regular voice to an ‘Alvin and the Chipmunks’ voice and then to this deep ogre’s voice, and then laser beams are shooting out of my eyes.”
“It went crazy to the point where I’m approaching a billion views. It’s nuts to me. The next day, I was filming a documentary with a German production company on the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. We were down at the Pentagon for three hours, and 10 people stopped me for selfies…’”
John’s life has changed…forever? Who knows?…
What is certain is, thanks to that TikTok and the podcast episode that inspired it, John’s penchant for truth-telling has lifted him from relative obscurity—unlike Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, he wasn’t a household name—to international renown.
One of the greatest luxuries in life is being able to become who you were meant to be. The horrific abuse of justice with Kiriakou being the only person prosecuted over the US torture program looks to have made that possible for him. But very few have the intelligence, tenacity, and charisma to turn their lives around the way he did. In particular, he conveys an intense desire to be liked without seeming fawning or needy. It may be that, at least to my ear, he’s pitched his voice in the heroic tenor range, which suggests vigor and what the Japanese call yaruki, which my colleagues at Sumitomo Bank translated as “spirit of aggressiveness” or perhaps more tidily, “can-do”.
Kiriakou has said North by Northwest is his favorite spy movie (while conceding that most would not put it in that category) and that he has seen it at least 100 times.
Below Kiriakou discusses some points of tradecraft. He has more talks on similar topics on YouTube.
Enjoy!
Spy movies are my favorite genre of film…
My favorite is “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”… which is a mini-series and not really a “film”, but whatever.
There is a movie version. A really, really crappy movie version. Alec Guinness IS George Smiley. Smiley’s People (the series is pretty good) but nothing can compare with the impact of the TTSS series when it was first aired.
One of the problems with the movie version was that the producers appeared to believe that stuffing it with big names would automatically create a huge success. Naaaah….
Want to see good Gary Oldman? Slow Horses. Good Benedict Cumberbatch? Four Lions. Colin Firth? Pride and Prejudice/Bridget Jones’ Diary. Toby Jones? Detectorists.
Now that you mention it…
I did see the film version of TTSS… it was obviously forgettable…
Then again, it’s hard to tell that story in two hours…
Slow Horses is top-notch. I’ve watched each series (there are 5). Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb is simply outstanding, but the supporting cast is also excellent (especially Kristin Scott-Thomas). My favorite series is of course the second one (Russians!).
The theme song to Slow Horses is a catchy tune, and even a Rolling Stones fan like me was slow to realize that it was Jagger singing. A great story in and of itself:
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/mick-jagger-strange-games-rollling-stones-interview-1328816/
Well, Jagger going from ‘Wild Horses’ to ‘Slow Horses’ is just a sign of aging.
I did find Netflix’s The Recruit a somewhat fresh take on the spy/CIA theme. It present’s the whole organization as a dystopia where everyone is trying to avoid making mistakes (and ending up in the Slough House). They’d rather backstab their fellow officers than offer help – unless the success is granted and payoff big enough.
Red Sparrow was fantastic, IMO. I do not understand why it was panned so badly by the general public and critics.
I haven’t seen it…
I’ll have to watch…
Thank you.
Just remember it’s literally fantastic, as in “so extreme as to challenge belief” according to Merriam-Webster. Based on the narrative of Soviet Union being unbelievably evil and run by gullible monsters.
TTSS mini-series has two versions available online. An edited US version that leaves gaps in the story, and the longer BBC version.
BBC Version
There is now a brightened, HD version of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy on YouTube. Definitely very top grade, sometime positively Shakespearean.
A tickertape parade is the very least he deserves.
Kiriakou is a very interesting talker and I bet that he has all sorts of stories to tell, most of which he would not be allowed to. Just finished watching the first video and will watch the second tomorrow.
Just about finished watching his second video and it is just as good as the first.
In future years North by Northwest will seem increasingly nostalgic, what with scenes at the by then torn down UN headquarters and a finale on Mt. Rushmore before Trump added via concrete pastie. Pauline Kael complained about Hitchcock’s penchant for making spy movies but of course his true obsession was blond actresses and none better than Eva Marie Saint.
Well, I must confess that I have just watched it end to end. It showed a two dimensional mindset. (Hitch and Eva Marie? little doubt.) I was taken into two dimensions and admired both the leads, but alas, the missing dimensions kept flashing and I escaped.
I’d say The Birds (another blonde) the best of Hitchcock’s late career movies.
And Hitchcock once no doubt facetiously claimed he only had sex once in his life (he had a daughter). So his obsession with blondes was platonic. Tipi Hendrin claimed he tried more if you believe her.
My eldest says it’s not so easy to dial down being in high alert mode while driving, even now when he’s just driving his car around town years after leaving Army Special Forces. Thanks for this link! Always interesting, compelling links and posts and comments.
This guy became ubiquitous on my TikTok and Youtube feeds recently, very similar to that Professor Jiang character. Although I do like a lot of what he says, I distrust anyone who gets that kind of algorithmic reach out of nowhere. It makes me think this is someone’s game that I’m not seeing.
I like Kiriakou but he does seem to be trying to make the most of his moment of fame. (Why not? He has bills to pay.) He reminds me of when Robert Baer was trying to cash in on his former career and was everywhere about 15 – 20 years ago.
I can’t knock either for their efforts. Pat Lang once framed Baer as a field agent who may not see the bigger picture, but then Lang operated several layers above Baer later .
Lang also said to analyze the message separate from the messenger.
We are so fortunate to have ex CIA guys and gals commenting on events in real time. But the question for them should be, “How would you describe how different the discoveries would be today about the CIA from a new Church committee investigation?”. Since Frank was fifty (!) years ago, the answers could be enlightening, if they would be allowed…
Some things are safe to say, but he still wants a pardon. Who wouldn’t? Often he’ll make a statement about conditions in prisons that’s super up to date. Recently he made an up to date statement re JFK files we’ll never see. I was lucky. I heard him back with the late Lee Stranahan on Sputnik, and then on the “Political Misfits” podcasts on Sputnik. That was every weekday! He was on every week day on “Deprogram” until not too long ago too [not via Sputnik], but he’s a busy man now and hearing him everyday is a thing that’s gone with the wind [I miss Michelle from Misfits too]. Anyway, regarding what mainstream didn’t really grok (podcasts), he was helping raise their standards all the while.
Sputnik. Miss that badly. Disappeared off FM driving to DC…
Thanks for this entry.
Turner Classics published a DVD of “North by Northwest” around 2001 including an excellent audio commentary by scriptwriter Ernest Lehman. He speaks a lot about dirctorial issues. Highly recommended.
btw: That entire DVD-series of Hitchcock includes other classic titles – which mostly is identified with Hitch´s later, American “phase” – with more excellent commentaries.
Of course it was considered as an alternative and also a precursor to what would turn out the more pulp Bond franchise. Latter is highly indebted to the Hitchchock entry in many ways.
It speaks for Kiriakou to appreciate this movie which after all is by now almost 60 years old.
p.s. Of course for mass media consumption, Bernard Herrmann´s musical score is highly significant. Perhaps Semper Loquitor one day offers an installment with one of those spy movies which are a major staple in Hitchock´s ouevre.
Blast from the past:
North By Northwest, 1959 – Opening Titles by Saul Bass
2:15
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRNFz_3Jjp4
of course almost 70 years not 60! (wow how time flies by)
“By Way of Deception”, “Special Tasks”, “The Samson Option”, “Body of Secrets” and “Inside the CIA” were my favorite non-fiction spy books.