 "'I wipe my a** with your...': What ex-CIA officer told Pakistan after threats over 'can't beat India' remark")
Former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou has sparked a new controversy after revealing how Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) tried to pressure him into apologising for his assessment of India–Pakistan military balance.
According to him, PTI sent a formal letter demanding an apology — prompting him to respond that he would “use the letter as toilet paper” to wipe his a**. As expected, he added, the Pakistanis never contacted him again.
Kiriakou, who spent 15 years with the CIA including a stint as chief of counterterrorism operations in Pakistan after 9/11, had earlier said during the four-day India-Pakistan mini-war that India would decisively defeat Pakistan in a conventional conflict.
Speaking to ANI, he said, “Nothing, literally nothing good will come of an actual war between India and Pakistan because the Pakistanis will lose. It’s as simple as that. They’ll lose. And I’m not talking about nuclear weapons. I’m just talking about a conventional war. And so there is no benefit to constantly provoking Indians.”
His remarks triggered a wave of online abuse from Pakistan. Soon after, he received a letter from PTI president Chaudhry Parvez Elahi condemning his comments “in the strongest possible terms” and demanding “an immediate apology” to “his excellency, the former prime minister [Imran Khan], to the members of the party [PTI], and to the people of Pakistan.”
Quick Reads
View AllRecounting the episode in a podcast, Kiriakou said, “I said, in a conventional conflict, India would beat Pakistan because it has five times the people. The death threats… I’ve lost count of how many death threats I received… So I got a letter from the president of Imran Khan’s political party… And he says that they condemn in the strongest possible terms what I said to the Indians, and they demand an immediate apology to his excellency the former prime minister, to the members of the party, and to the people of Pakistan.”
Despite his lawyer advising silence, Kiriakou said he replied bluntly: “‘In regards to your demand for an apology, I wipe my a** with your demands for an apology.’ And I hit send and that’s how I left it and I haven’t heard back from them.”
Who is John Kiriakou?
Kiriakou spent years working across South Asia during his CIA career and has since written extensively on Pakistan’s internal security and West Asian geopolitics. He insists his assessment was professional, rooted in basic force comparison, not political intent.
His comments on India’s conventional superiority came months after Indian forces struck Pakistani military facilities following the ISI-backed Pahalgam terror attack. Pointing to India’s responses from the 2016 surgical strikes to the 2019 Balakot operation, he said New Delhi has moved beyond its earlier “strategic patience.”
Against that backdrop, he reiterated that Pakistan would lose any conventional war with India — and should stop provoking a neighbour that is militarily stronger and unwilling to tolerate terror emanating from across the border.
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