Every viral clip, every carefully delivered disclosure, every former CIA officer appearing on a podcast had their material read and signed off by the agency before it ever reached your ears. It is a documented, lifelong obligation every officer agrees to upon joining.
John Kiriakou, Andrew Bustamante, and Mike Baker are among the most recognizable names flooding the podcast circuit right now. Kiriakou has gone mega-viral discussing Jeffrey Epstein as an intelligence asset, appearing on The Diary of a CEO, the Danny Jones podcast, and the Joe Rogan Experience.
Baker has appeared on Joe Rogan at least 21 times. His Twitter handle is MB companyman, with “company man” being slang for a CIA officer. Bustamante, meanwhile, has built an entire business called Everyday Spy, selling CIA recruitment frameworks repackaged as career advice.
What connects all three is a lifetime secrecy agreement requiring every former officer to submit anything they plan to say publicly to the CIA’s Pre-Publications Classification Review Board. Books, speeches, blog posts, podcast talking points, op-eds.
The regulation states: “Any form or means of communication, including oral or electronic.” Podcasts are not a free pass. As of 2015, the CIA was reviewing 184,000 pages of declarations per year.
When asked directly whether this applies to him, Kiriakou confirmed it. “Yes, you are right that we are all subject to pre-publication review,” he said. “I’ve written eight books, nine books, the ninth one’s at the publishers now. And so I’ve told all these stories a thousand million times. They’ve all gone through pre-publication review. So I can answer the questions and I can tell the stories. Now, if there’s something new that I want to tell, and I’ve been out of the agency for 22 years now, so there’s nothing new, I would have to, of course, resubmit to pre-publication review and have it cleared.”
Kiriakou also acknowledged the CIA’s growing podcast strategy directly. “I think yes. Now they do. It took them a little while to get current, but just like they over time developed a strategy with Hollywood, sure they’re developing a strategy with podcasters. You know, it was only in the last 10 years that the CIA opened a branch within the Office of Public Affairs whose job it is solely to liaise with Hollywood studios.”
This is not a new playbook. A New York Times investigation revealed the Pentagon recruited over 75 retired military officers to appear across every major TV network as independent analysts.
Internal documents called them “message force multipliers.” They received classified briefings, talking points, and free trips to Iraq. That program ran from 2002 to 2008 across Fox, CNN, NBC, CBS, and ABC.
The CIA launched its own podcast, The Langley Files, in 2022. Director Burns described its purpose as to “demystify a little bit of what we do.”
