John Kiriakou, Glenn Diesen: CIA Regime Change from Ukraine to Iran
by Glenn Diesen [10-30-2026].
John Kiriakou is a former high-ranking CIA counterterrorism officer who served as the CIA’s Chief of Counterterrorism Operations in Pakistan. He was the first U.S. official to publicly confirm the CIA’s torture of detainees. Punished for his whistleblowing, he served nearly two years in federal prison.
00:00 John Kiriakou on the CIA and the War on Terror
01:16 How 9/11 transformed the CIA
05:15 How intelligence officers recruit informants
08:03 Covert action, propaganda, and regime change
11:29 Ukraine, Yanukovych, and Western involvement
19:14 Iran, Mossad networks, and the limits of intervention
25:03 From Iran-Contra to an increasingly militarized CIA
27:02 USAID, civil society, and covert-action funding
33:27 The moment Kiriakou rejected torture
38:36 CIA relations with Israel and intelligence oversight
42:09 The deep state, election narratives, and Russia Gate
52:25 What remains hidden and where the CIA is headed
John Kiriakou, a whistleblower and a former CIA counterterrorism officer and Chief of Counterterrorism Operations in Pakistan, argues that the CIA has evolved from an intelligence-gathering organization into an increasingly militarized and unaccountable institution engaged in regime change, political manipulation, assassinations and covert warfare. The transformation accelerated after September 11, 2001, undermining American democracy, international law and the United States’ credibility on human rights.
September 11 and the Militarization of the CIA
The American response to September 11 significantly weakened the United States. Rather than concentrating on gathering intelligence and bringing terrorists to justice, the CIA established torture programs, secret prisons, rendition operations, kidnapping teams and assassination squads.
The agency abandoned its traditional mission of recruiting spies, stealing secrets and providing policymakers with reliable intelligence. It became a paramilitary organization operating increasingly outside constitutional and international legal constraints.
Under Barack Obama, this transformation continued through weekly meetings at which officials selected individuals for assassination. These extrajudicial killings demonstrated how normalized unlawful practices had become.
Accountability was almost nonexistent. Despite the torture program and other abuses, the only person imprisoned in connection with the CIA’s response to September 11 was the officer who exposed its torture practices.
Regime Change Through Propaganda and Infiltration
CIA regime-change operations combine propaganda, political influence, intelligence recruitment and institutional destabilization.
The agency can recruit journalists to promote pro-American narratives, finance opposition movements, interfere with government communications and cultivate officials inside foreign institutions. These activities create conditions in which externally encouraged political upheavals appear to be spontaneous domestic uprisings.
The CIA’s intervention in Italy’s postwar elections established an early model: financing sympathetic journalists and manipulating public opinion to prevent a communist victory.
Similar methods operate through civil society organizations, political foundations, media outlets and development agencies. USAID performed valuable humanitarian work, including building schools and medical clinics, but also provided cover for covert-action financing.
Cutting USAID funding did not eliminate these activities. Covert financing could simply migrate to think tanks, democracy-promotion organizations and other institutions.
Ukraine and the Western Strategy Against Russia
The removal of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014 was, in my assessment, a CIA operation organized by the Obama administration after years of preparation.
Russia had repeatedly sought NATO membership or assurances against NATO expansion toward its borders. Instead, NATO continued expanding, while Washington increasingly supported Ukrainian membership.
Yanukovych’s removal represented the first stage of a longer effort to bring Ukraine firmly into the Western sphere. American policymakers incorrectly calculated that Russia would be powerless to prevent this geopolitical realignment.
Western intelligence involvement subsequently extended into Ukrainian security institutions and military cooperation. Although I have no direct inside information about these operations, media reports concerning CIA assistance and influence over Ukrainian intelligence are consistent with longstanding American practices elsewhere.
Ukraine’s extensive corruption also complicated Western efforts, including through the diversion of supplied weapons.
Iran and the Limits of American-Israeli Power
Iran demonstrates the limitations of intelligence operations and externally imposed regime change.
The CIA historically maintained little presence inside Iran, whereas Mossad developed extensive networks capable of monitoring and targeting Iranian military commanders, political leaders and nuclear scientists.
Israeli intelligence exploited vulnerable populations, surveillance technologies and weaknesses in personal security to identify targets.
Yet Israeli success in targeted killings did not translate into political victory. Israel persuaded Donald Trump that eliminating Iranian leaders would cause the government to collapse. Instead, American-Israeli aggression united previously divided Iranian factions.
The fundamental strategic imbalance is straightforward: Iran needs only to survive, whereas Washington and Israel must overthrow its government, install a friendly replacement and protect that government against its own population.
In a country of approximately 92 million people, with formidable geographical obstacles, such an occupation strategy is impossible. Americans repeatedly fail to understand that foreign populations regard invading forces as occupiers rather than liberators.
The Deep State and the Crisis of Accountability
The American deep state is real. Permanent intelligence and security officials remain in office for decades, while elected presidents come and go. Senior bureaucrats can ignore presidential instructions and manipulate inexperienced administrations through privileged access to classified intelligence.
Intelligence institutions also intervene in domestic politics. The 2020 intelligence officials’ letter concerning Hunter Biden’s laptop used carefully qualified language to imply Russian involvement without establishing it. This was an attempt to influence the presidential election.
Russiagate similarly transformed unverified intelligence reporting into political ammunition without proper analytical scrutiny.
The CIA continues expanding its budgets, personnel and relationships with technology companies, including investments in private firms.
There is little evidence of meaningful institutional reform. An intelligence community possessing enormous resources, political influence and operational independence, without effective accountability, represents a growing danger to American democracy.