In a revealing interview with Tucker Carlson, former CIA officer John Kiriakou made one of the most damning admissions yet about the so-called “deep state.” According to Kiriakou, U.S. presidents may technically command agencies like the CIA, but in practice, it’s often the other way around.
“Presidents come and go,” Kiriakou said. “But these CIA people, they’re there for 25, 30, 35 years. They don’t go anywhere.” The implication? If a president gives them orders they don’t like, they simply outlast him—and continue implementing their own agenda.
That’s exactly the kind of entrenched power President Trump promised to dismantle when he signed an executive order on day one of his second term to end the federal government’s weaponization. The order accused agencies like the CIA and FBI of acting with unchecked authority and abusing their influence to go after political opponents.
Kiriakou, who famously blew the whistle on the CIA’s torture program and later served time for revealing classified details, agreed with Trump’s take. “It is a deep state,” he told Carlson. “You can call it the federal bureaucracy. You can call it the state. But the truth is that it exists.”
CIA insiders, according to Kiriakou, operate on a long timeline. Their job security and institutional memory far outlast any one administration—meaning they can afford to ignore or even undermine elected leaders. “If they don’t like a president,” he explained, “they just wait, because they know he won’t be around forever.”
This type of quiet sabotage is what Trump’s new CIA Director John Ratcliffe has promised to eliminate. Ratcliffe and new FBI Director Kash Patel were brought in to clean house, and insiders say they’ve already begun breaking down the internal fiefdoms that allowed years of politicized activity to flourish.
Kiriakou also accused top Democrats of gaslighting the public. He cited former House Intelligence Committee Chair Jane Harman, who publicly denied knowledge of the CIA’s torture program—only to be called out by Kiriakou himself. “She was in the room when it was briefed,” he said, accusing her of flat-out lying.
He also warned that even a president’s closest allies in Congress can’t always be trusted to challenge the intelligence community. Over time, unelected agency officials “are the ones with the power,” Carlson added, underscoring the structural imbalance.
This isn’t mere speculation anymore. By May, intelligence officials had reportedly begun quietly restructuring internally under Ratcliffe’s orders. His goal: purge the agency of politicized operations and return it to its core national security missions.
Kiriakou’s blunt warning: if Americans don’t confront the quiet tyranny of the intelligence apparatus, it will continue shaping U.S. policy from the shadows—regardless of who the people elect.
