Where this was said
How Kiriakou Was Recruited Into the CIA
At 14:54 · chapter starts 11:35
Kiriakou traces his CIA origin story to a graduate school class called The Psychology of Leadership, taught by Dr. Gerald Post — secretly a CIA officer working undercover. Assigned to shadow and profile a boss, Kiriakou chose the union organizer he worked for, called him a racist to his face mid-observation, and wrote a forensically detailed sociopath diagnosis. Post gave him an A and invited him to the CIA. Kiriakou recalls his early days parking far away just to walk through the CIA's main entrance past the Wall of Honor, nearly crying with pride. He also places himself within a family context: his liberal parents had argued about the 1976 Pennsylvania primary, his father backing Frank Church who had overhauled the CIA. After careful deliberation about the agency's ugly history, a friend's CIA-officer husband told him 'the bad old days are gone' — true for a brief period, before Reagan and Iran-Contra reversed course.
Kiriakou's CIA recruitment started with a graduate school paper about his racist boss. His professor — actually a CIA officer undercover — graded the psychological profile and invited Kiriakou to join the agency. That practice is now illegal under 1993 EEOC legislation.
The practice of CIA officers posing as university professors to recruit students — how Kiriakou was recruited — was made illegal by Congress in 1993 under the EEOC.
