John Kiriakou

One day he went to her and he said, Martha, you know, I've been your deputy for X number of years.

I think I'm ready for promotion into the senior intelligence service.

And Martha said, and I just talked to her daughter a couple of weeks ago about this.

Martha said, not only will you never be a member of the senior intelligence service, I don't even want you working for me anymore.

You're fired.

Well, you're not really fired at the CIA.

If you're fired, that means you have six weeks to walk the halls and find another job.

If you can't find another job in six weeks, then they escort you to your car.

They take your badge and, you know, so long.

Good luck.

Well, it's the normal job turnover is in the summertime.

This is the week before Christmas, 1993 or 4, I can't recall now.

And there are no jobs open at Christmas.

So he finally finds one job.

It is in the PDB staff, the president's daily brief.

And it is as a morning briefer.

Giving the president's daily brief briefing to the lowest ranking person entitled to a PDB briefing.

So that's the National Security Council's director for intelligence programs who happened to be this guy named George Tenet.

And so they immediately hit it off.

Two alpha dogs, cigar smoking, hard drinking.