#315 - CIA Spy Breaks Silence on Epstein Cover-Up, Mossad & Trump's #1 Problem | John Kiriakou

Summary

Danny Jones Podcast Episode #315 Summary

Title: CIA Spy Breaks Silence on Epstein Cover-Up, Mossad & Trump's #1 Problem
Host: Danny Jones
Guest: John Kiriakou
Release Date: July 14, 2025
Duration: Approximately 2 hours and 30 minutes

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1. Introduction to the Conversation (00:37 - 02:00)

Danny Jones welcomes former CIA officer John Kiriakou back to the podcast, expressing excitement about the pressing and tumultuous global issues they aim to discuss.

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2. Trump's Support for Israel and the Epstein Cover-Up (02:00 - 05:16)

Key Points:

• Trump as Pro-Israel President:
  John Kiriakou asserts, "I would say yes" when asked if Trump is the most pro-Israel president the U.S. has ever had (00:51).

• Epstein Files Controversy:
  Both hosts express skepticism about the legitimacy and transparency of the Epstein files. They question the lack of released footage despite extensive surveillance at Epstein's properties.

Notable Quote:

"Virginia Giuffre... testified that there was a room at Epstein's mansion... every room was wired for video. So where are the videos?"
— John Kiriakou (03:38)

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3. Mossad Operations and CIA Dynamics (05:10 - 17:10)

Key Points:

• Epstein as an Israeli Access Agent:
  Kiriakou discusses his belief that Epstein was leveraging his connections on behalf of Israeli intelligence, emphasizing the role of access agents in espionage.

• Collaboration and Tensions Between CIA and Mossad:
  While acknowledging mutual respect for Mossad's operational prowess, Kiriakou points out persistent tensions due to Mossad's aggressive recruitment and espionage tactics against U.S. interests.

• Historic Espionage Example - Eli Cohen:
  The conversation delves into Mossad's successful infiltration of Syrian leadership through spies like Eli Cohen, highlighting the sophistication and effectiveness of Mossad operations compared to CIA efforts.

Notable Quote:

"They harass our officers, like, as a matter of policy."
— John Kiriakou (21:30)

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4. The Epstein Case and Political Implications (17:10 - 37:14)

Key Points:

• Suppression and Control of Epstein Evidence:
  Jones and Kiriakou discuss the possibility of substantial evidence implicating high-profile individuals being withheld by authorities to prevent widespread scandal.

• Quotes from Media Interactions:
  Events such as press conferences with officials like Cash Patel and Dan Bongino are critiqued for their evasive handling of Epstein's death and the lack of transparency.

• Implications for Powerful Figures:
  The hosts speculate on the potential damages leaked Epstein files could inflict on prominent figures like Bill Gates, Donald Trump, and others, likening it to the JFK conspiracy in its obscured truth.

Notable Quote:

"There was some sort of statistic that... out of those hangings, Epstein had all three broken."
— John Kiriakou (07:31)

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5. Iran Conflict and U.S. Foreign Policy (37:14 - 57:17)

Key Points:

• Sanctions and Their Ineffectiveness:
  The discussion highlights the failure of U.S. sanctions against Iran, noting Iran's robust trade relations with allies like Russia and China despite sanctions.

• Potential for Nuclear Weapons in Iran:
  Kiriakou addresses Iran's nuclear capabilities, stating that while they have enriched uranium, they lack the complete weaponization components. However, geopolitical pressures may compel Iran to accelerate its nuclear program.

• Trump's Foreign Policy Approach:
  Trump's aggressive stance on Iran is examined, including his willingness to support Israel's demands for military action against Iran, which contrasts with previous administrations' policies.

Notable Quote:

"I've joined the CIA in 1990, and literally on my first day, we were warned about Israeli espionage against the United States."
— John Kiriakou (31:23)

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6. Artificial Intelligence and National Security (57:17 - 89:00)

Key Points:

• AI Misinformation and Security Risks:
  Kiriakou shares experiences highlighting AI's unreliability, such as generating fake academic credentials and scholarly articles, raising concerns about AI's role in misinformation and espionage.

• AI in Espionage Tactics:
  The potential use of AI in spoofing officials and influencing public perception is discussed, emphasizing the dangers of AI in national security breaches.

• Regulation Challenges:
  Both hosts express apprehension about the rapid advancement of AI and the lack of effective regulatory measures to prevent its misuse.

Notable Quote:

"These guys do are just about defense. Because they have convinced themselves over the years that we're not giving them everything..."
— John Kiriakou (20:26)

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7. Domestic Issues: Banking, Sanctions, and Social Control (89:00 - 123:55)

Key Points:

• Tightened Financial Regulations:
  New regulations require businesses in certain U.S. border counties to report cash transactions over $200, heightening concerns about financial surveillance and privacy.

• Stablecoins and Social Credit Systems:
  The integration of AI, stablecoins, and big data is critiqued as a pathway towards a digital social credit system, drawing parallels to systems like China's WeChat.

• Banking Failures and Crypto Regulation:
  Personal anecdotes illustrate the increasing difficulty of accessing and transferring funds, especially to cryptocurrency platforms, reflecting broader systemic issues in U.S. banking and financial oversight.

Notable Quote:

"The way they bury their money... it's the same thing. All that stuff has to be perfectly preserved..."
— John Kiriakou (63:18)

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8. Political Dynamics and Congressional Procedures (123:55 - 143:55)

Key Points:

• Broken Legislative Process:
  The hosts discuss the convoluted and partisan nature of the U.S. legislative process, using the example of the "big beautiful bill" that included a vast array of provisions to secure passage despite internal disagreements.

• Impact of Partisanship on Policy Making:
  The difficulty in passing legislation without accommodating various amendments and the resultant frustration over ineffective governance are highlighted.

• Role of Lobbying and Foreign Influence:
  AIPAC's significant influence in Congress is examined, with criticism of its purported agenda to strengthen Israel's position in U.S. politics.

Notable Quote:

"The big beautiful bill was 1600 pages long."
— John Kiriakou (133:54)

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9. Social and Cultural Observations (143:55 - 157:05)

Key Points:

• Rise of Evangelical Influence:
  The increasing prominence of evangelical Christianity in political and social spheres is discussed, including Trump's engagement with Christian advisors and the alignment of Silicon Valley figures with Christian ideologies.

• U.S. Foreign Policy and Religious Motivations:
  The conversation touches on how religious beliefs influence support for Israel and the broader implications for U.S. foreign policy.

• Personal Anecdotes and Observations:
  Kiriakou shares a personal experience from Israel, highlighting the deep-seated tensions and historical grievances that continue to fuel conflict in the region.

Notable Quote:

"We have a broken system... It is broken because it forces negotiation."
— John Kiriakou (136:57)

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10. Conclusion and Future Directions (157:05 - End)

Key Points:

• Emerging Threats and Security Concerns:
  The potential for AI-driven espionage, the fragility of nuclear deterrence, and the ongoing conflicts in Iran and Ukraine are underscored as critical threats.

• Call for Transparency and Accountability:
  The hosts emphasize the need for greater governmental transparency, especially regarding high-profile cases like Epstein's, to restore public trust.

• Upcoming Projects:
  John Kiriakou mentions his new podcasts, "Deep Focus with John Kiriakou" and "Deprogram" with Ted Rall, focusing on in-depth discussions of intelligence and global issues.

Notable Quote:

"If you have nothing to hide, you didn't do anything, Right. Just come out with the truth."
— John Kiriakou (39:59)

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Insights and Takeaways

• Skepticism Towards Government Transparency:
  The conversation reveals a deep distrust in governmental institutions to fully disclose information, particularly concerning high-profile cases intertwined with intelligence operations.

• Interplay Between Intelligence Agencies:
  The dynamic between the CIA and Mossad is portrayed as complex, with mutual respect shadowed by persistent espionage and turf conflicts.

• Impact of AI on Security and Information Integrity:
  The hosts highlight the dual-edged nature of AI, recognizing its potential benefits while warning against its misuse in spreading misinformation and compromising national security.

• Legislative Challenges in a Partisan Environment:
  The inefficacy of the U.S. legislative process in the face of extreme partisanship is a recurring theme, suggesting systemic issues that hinder effective governance.

• Evolving Social and Political Landscapes:
  The rise of evangelical influence and the shifting dynamics within political parties indicate significant changes in the societal fabric, with implications for future policy-making and national identity.

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Final Thoughts

Episode #315 of the Danny Jones Podcast navigates through a labyrinth of complex and interrelated issues, from intelligence cover-ups and international espionage to domestic policy failures and the burgeoning role of AI in modern conflicts. Through the insightful dialogue between Danny Jones and John Kiriakou, listeners are invited to critically examine the undercurrents shaping today's geopolitical and social landscapes.

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Disclaimer: This summary is based on the provided transcript of the podcast episode and aims to encapsulate the key discussions and viewpoints presented by the hosts. It does not endorse or verify the claims made within the conversation.

Transcript

[Danny]

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[John Kiriakou]

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[Danny]

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[John Kiriakou]

Thank you. It's good to be back.

[Danny]

I'm excited to talk to you today. The world is up in smoke right now. Yeah, Lots of crazy going on.

[John Kiriakou]

Nuts.

[Danny]

Is Trump the most pro Israel president we've ever had in this country?

[John Kiriakou]

I, I would say yes.

[Danny]

I think it's by far probably, you.

[John Kiriakou]

Know, if you just look at the decision to move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, that in and of itself does it in. In the 1990s, Congress passed a law saying that the American embassy should move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, but not until there's peace with the Palestinians. So each successive president has put a hold on it. And then Trump's like, no, we're doing it.

[Danny]

All this stuff that's happening right now is just, is so crazy to watch, you know, especially all like these top political pundits who are backing Trump when he was running for president that are starting to question what he's doing, which I think is like a, a, a new thing. You know, like during Obama, like when Bush happened and you had all like the left wing pundits criticizing Bush's foreign policy and the war stuff, and then Obama comes in, start doing the same thing, then they weren't calling out the hypocrisy at all. But now, and still don't want to talk about and still. Right, exactly. But now, to the credit of the people like, like Elon and Tucker, even.

[John Kiriakou]

Joe Rogan have been Marjorie Taylor Green even.

[Danny]

Right, right.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah.

[Danny]

And he's doing, you know, he quite literally ran on, on releasing these Epstein files. And I think the whole idea of the Epstein files is kind of like gaslighting, because what even is, we don't care about that. Like the file. What are the files? We want the hard drive.

[John Kiriakou]

Right. Well, to parrot, to paraphrase Bill Clinton, it depends on what the definition of a file is, you know. Right, exactly.

[Danny]

Like, what is it? Like this, is this some concocted file somebody in some back office at Langley, you know, put together with a couple of names in the black book? Because the black book's been available for how many years now? Like, we can see all the addresses in there.

[John Kiriakou]

The black book went to auction recently.

[Danny]

Oh, really?

[John Kiriakou]

There's an auction house on Maryland's Eastern Shore called Alexander Auctions. They specialize mostly in World War II and even then, mostly Nazi stuff. But they. They also deal in Americana, like, you know, paintings by Charles Manson, for example.

[Danny]

Stuff like that.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah, it's cool stuff. They. They tried to auction the Black book recently. The estimate was 75,000 to 100,000, and it didn't sell. So the book is out there. Why then does the FBI not have a copy and then release the copy? If we know who was in the Black book, why haven't they told us? To me, that would be part of a file. It would be part of a record. What you're talking about is even more important. Virginia Giuffre, who recently committed suicide, but who very bravely testified against Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.

[Danny]

Are we talking about the lady who got hit by the truck?

[John Kiriakou]

Yes.

[Danny]

Okay.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah. She killed herself. A couple of weeks after that, she testified that there was a room at Epstein's mansion in the Caribbean where from the floor to the ceiling, it was just monitors.

[Danny]

Right.

[John Kiriakou]

And there were guys in there monitoring the monitors. Every room in the house and every bathroom in the house was wired for video. So where are the videos? Why have we not seen anything? Why have we heard nothing about. About Prince Andrew or about Bill Gates or Bill Clinton or Alan Dershowitz or any of the other, you know, a list people who we know for a fact were at that house.

[Danny]

Yeah. This whole. It's like the JFK conspiracy, where everybody knows if you pull every American in this country who's paying, you know, even a little bit of attention, they all know that this was some sort of conspiracy coup. You know, Oswald wasn't the only shooter, but the government just like says, shut up, talk all you want, make your podcast and your documentaries, but nothing. You're never going to find out the truth. It's almost the same thing here, where they're just. They're just holding it back. And they. They know. Everybody knows. Right, Right. Everybody knows Jeffrey Epstein was working on the behalf of Israel intelligence. They know. I mean. I mean, just the fact that uhub. Barack was at his apartment and working in his office all the time, was his handler. Yeah. All the stuff with, you know, even with Robert Maxwell and Maxwell.

[John Kiriakou]

Right.

[Danny]

Like it's.

[John Kiriakou]

It.

[Danny]

It's so obvious in plain sight. My question is, why can't Trump admit that?

[John Kiriakou]

I don't know. I was on another podcast yesterday and. Well, Patrick.

[Danny]

Yeah, yeah. Pbd.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah. And he said that. That this is the first real scandal in this second Trump administration. He said that. That the White House completely misread public opinion on this issue. That people not just believed him when he said he was going to release everything, they expected that it would all be released so that we could get to the bottom of this for once. And then you've got, I mean, you saw that press conference with Cash Patel and Dan Bongino. I felt pain for them. You could see it in their faces. Like neither one of them wanted to say he killed himself. And we didn't find anything.

[Danny]

Meanwhile, these are the guys who've been on, on podcast for the last two years.

[John Kiriakou]

Exactly.

[Danny]

Pounding the table that Bill Gates is lobbying Congress to. To squash the Epstein files. We got to get this out. To expose all these leftist blood sucking Democrats.

[John Kiriakou]

Right.

[Danny]

Second they get into power, it's like everything changes. They go into a dark room, they come out, Epstein killed himself. Gone. It's, it's, it's complete insanity.

[John Kiriakou]

You and I have talked about this in the past. I always believed that Epstein killed himself only because of my own experience in prison. And I can lay that out. But the only thing that gives me pause is that Dr. Michael Baden, who is one of the foremost forensic coroners in the world, said that his hyoid bone was fractured, which was indicative of a strangulation of a homicide. Is what he specifically said a homicide? Now, he may be wrong. There are lots of different ways to break your hyoid bone. It's very fragile. He could have broken it when he was strangling himself with the sheet, who knows? But for Dr. Baden to come out definitively and say, I believe this was a homicide, it gives me pause.

[Danny]

There's a lot of other things in there too, besides that that sure are very fishy. You know, like the noose.

[John Kiriakou]

All parts of it are fishy.

[Danny]

Yeah. Like, so the thing about the highoid hyoid bone is they, there was some sort of, there was some sort of statistic that was looked at in medical research where they, they looked at people that were hung or died by hanging. Like a legitimate hanging where your feet can't touch the ground. Right. Where there's actual, like, trauma.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah.

[Danny]

And you.

[John Kiriakou]

Right.

[Danny]

And, and, you know, out of, I think 25% of those hangings that they looked at, the autopsies. 25%. One to two of those bones around the hyoid bone were broken. Epstein, all three were broken. And he was, he was in a little cell.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah. With no real height to jump from. I mean, how high up the Top bunk on a bunk bed. That's not enough to, you know, do a Barzon to Creedy.

[Danny]

Right, right.

[John Kiriakou]

You know where his head popped off.

[Danny]

Yeah, exactly. And, you know, his brother, Mark Epstein has pointed out a lot of other weird things. Like the noose. They said that it was cut like. Like the actual photos they took. And. And the descriptions they gave do not match up at all. They said the noose was cut. They had cut it with scissors or whatever. When you look at the photo, it was actually a hemmed seam.

[John Kiriakou]

What?

[Danny]

Yeah. All kinds of very, very odd things that just don't add up whatsoever. And the photo they released of his jail cell.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah.

[Danny]

Right after it happened, was not the photo, not the image of the security footage?

[John Kiriakou]

No.

[Danny]

Completely two different cells.

[John Kiriakou]

Yes. In fact, they. I saw yesterday that there were 12 people in the cell after he was. After he died. Twelve people in the cell who had nothing to do with the case. They just went for, you know, take a picture with their phone or hang out or check it out or where they could totally contaminated the scene. Plus another thing. And granted, MDC Brooklyn is a maximum security penitentiary, and I was in a low security prison, but if a prisoner in my prison was suicidal, which happens every once in a while, what they do is they put them in a. In a cubicle where three of the walls are just glass. Okay. They take all your clothes, so you're naked, and they just give you this paper smock to put. To put over yourself. And they hire other prisoners. They give you five bucks for a four hour shift, and you just sit in a chair in front of one of those glass walls just staring at the guy. And if he tries to kill himself in there, you run and get a guard. So what they did with Epstein was they put him in a cell with another prisoner to watch him, but the prisoner was in on multiple murder counts. He was a serial killer. Why in the world would you put him in with a serial killer? Why don't you put him in with, you know, the trustee? Or better yet, take him to Medical, which is where they. They take suicidal prisoners in other prisons. Take them to Medical and just have him sit in Medical.

[Danny]

Right.

[John Kiriakou]

They knew he was suicidal. He said he was suicidal, and they.

[Danny]

Took him off suicide watch two days before he died.

[John Kiriakou]

Exactly. Why? Whose decision was that? You know, in my mind, there are so many different people who could be prosecuted for a whole bunch of different roles in this death. Whether he killed himself or somebody killed him, there are so many people, beginning with whoever was monitoring those monitors at the house. Whoever was serving drinks and saw girls. Underage girls being. Being. I'm sorry, I shouldn't say that word on YouTube.

[Danny]

Yeah, you can say it's fine.

[John Kiriakou]

Okay. Essayed. When. When Pam Bonnie came out the other day and said that there will be no arrests beyond what? Ghislaine Maxwell is the only guilty person here.

[Danny]

Right.

[John Kiriakou]

It was just. Yeah, just the two of them. They. They were super people, and they did all of this on their own. There was nobody else behind them. And then nobody wants to talk about Israel, as you said.

[Danny]

Right.

[John Kiriakou]

Nobody wants to have that conversation.

[Danny]

On top of that, we talked about last time you were in here with our friend Andrew Bustamante.

[John Kiriakou]

Right.

[Danny]

For that fun podcast.

[John Kiriakou]

That was a lot of fun.

[Danny]

That was electric.

[John Kiriakou]

I would do that. Again.

[Danny]

We. We mentioned Jonathan Pollard.

[John Kiriakou]

Right.

[Danny]

And Jonathan Pollard's handler was pardoned by Trump. Right.

[John Kiriakou]

Yes, yes. You know, I was on Piers Morgan a couple of weeks ago.

[Danny]

Okay. Yeah.

[John Kiriakou]

And. And one of the other guests on the panel, well, there were four of us, Scott Horton and I on the one side, and the other side was Alan Dershowitz and General Dan Danny. And the general, he had been the head of Mossad, and he's, like, chuckling and laughing. Like, I would say, israel spies on the United States. Oh, he would laugh. And then Piers Morgan says, does Israel spy on the United States? No, not since Pollard got caught. Then the Prime Minister said, no more spying on the United States. And I said, general, with all due respect, that's just simply not true. I joined the CIA in 1990, and literally on my first day, we were warned about Israeli espionage against the United States.

[Danny]

What year was Pollard caught?

[John Kiriakou]

He was caught in 95.

[Danny]

95. Okay.

[John Kiriakou]

And then I said, through the 1990s, the FBI identified 187 Israeli spies in the United States. 187. That was an FBI number. And where were they? They had infiltrated American defense contractors all across the country. But they're Israeli, and we're gonna probably give them 95% of that tech anyway, so nobody does anything about it. And then he just goes, ho, ho, ho, ho. Like, okay, you caught me. And then Dershowitz, you know, flipped out like a crazy person.

[Danny]

Right.

[John Kiriakou]

And when I said that, I believed. And I always couch my. I'm always very cautious when I talk about this issue. I say, I believe that Epstein was an Israeli access agent. And I lay out what I believe is a convincing argument for that. And I'm happy to repeat that here. And Dershowitz flipped out. And he said, if he was an Israeli access agent. He would have told me. I was his attorney, and I could have gotten him off. I could have gotten him less time. And I said, by confessing to espionage, you could have gotten him less time. I would have hung him from a gallows if he had been an Israeli access agent and he admitted to it. So who knows? My, my position is, and forgive me if I keep repeating myself, but if you are a foreign intelligence service, especially the Israelis, who have access to all aspects of American society, right? If you're an Israeli intelligence officer and you want tightly, closely held information that somebody like Bill Clinton has or Bill Gates or Alan Dershowitz or Prince Andrew, you're not going to recruit any of those people because they don't have traditional vulnerabilities that a CIA officer would be trained to look for, like a need for money, for example, or hatred of your government or, you know, you know, your, your wife is sick and she needs cancer treatment that's not available in your country. None of those work in a case like this, right? So you're not going to recruit Bill Clinton, you're not going to recruit Bill Gates. What are you going to do? Give Bill Gates $1,000 a month to answer your classified questions? Ridiculous. So you do the next best thing and you recruit the guy who has access to them.

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[John Kiriakou]

And you set him up in this beautiful mansion. You wire the house for video and audio. You give him plenty of money, so he hires the staff. You bring in young girls, underage girls, and you don't necessarily have to use any of those videos, but just in case you have them in reserve. And then over martinis, as you're becoming the best friend with these people, they start confiding in you sensitive information, maybe in some cases, classified information, and then you parrot that back to your handlers. That's what an excess agent does in and of himself. Epstein didn't have access to classified information, but he got classified information from people around him who had access. I told you once before, and I've said this on other podcasts, but I'm going to repeat it. One of my instructors at the CIA, when I was going through the operational training, told me that the best recruitment he ever had in 30 plus years was the copy machine repairman, because he was able to put a device inside the Prime Minister's copy machine. So every time somebody made a copy, it transmitted a copy back to CIA headquarters. That's an access agent.

[Danny]

Yes.

[John Kiriakou]

That's gold.

[Danny]

Now, one of the things I think a lot of people are confused on is conflating Mossad working on operations and the CIA working on operations. When it comes to anything, especially, you know, things like Epstein, or even like stuff that's happening in the media. Is there any chance that the CIA and the Mossad work together on things and share intelligence?

[John Kiriakou]

Not on an. Not on an issue that includes American citizens or more specifically, what are called U.S. persons, American citizens, or anybody in the United States on a green card. So?

[Danny]

So? So how would you imagine if the CIA was involved in Epstein and he was a Mossad access agent? What would be the CIA's involvement?

[John Kiriakou]

The CIA's interest would be in doubling him back. But the CIA doesn't spy on Israel.

[Danny]

Do you think it's possible the CIA does not spy on Israel, sir?

[John Kiriakou]

Not since Richard Nixon was president.

[Danny]

Okay.

[John Kiriakou]

Forbidden. Seriously?

[Danny]

Really? So do You. Do you think it's possible that CIA caught wind of what Epstein was doing and what the Mossad was using him for and said, hey, we see what you're doing. You got to pay your tax to us, to Epstein, and made him be like, you got to give us whatever it is. 1% of this information that you're giving to Mossad.

[John Kiriakou]

Possible, but not likely, because what they would have had to do. This would have been a turf battle, like, to end all turf battles. You know how the CIA and the FBI are with each other.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[John Kiriakou]

So the CIA would have had to go to the FBI, and the FBI would have made that approach, because not only are you dealing with American citizens, you're dealing with American citizens who, for the most part, are doing these things on American soil.

[Danny]

Right.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah. So the f. The CIA, certainly, you know, it would have come to their attention, sure. But they would have had to go immediately to the FBI.

[Danny]

So in the CIA, and the Mossad work together. They work together in foreign countries on foreign operations.

[John Kiriakou]

Exactly.

[Danny]

Like something with. With Iran or something like that.

[John Kiriakou]

Exactly. Right.

[Danny]

But in a case like Epstein or anything to do with America, American institutions or American people, there would be no chance.

[John Kiriakou]

Zero.

[Danny]

What is the. Like, what is the overall sentiment at the CIA of the Mossad?

[John Kiriakou]

There is great and deep respect for the Mossad's operational abilities, and that was enhanced greatly by this pager and cell phone operation against Hezbollah. I'd love to talk about that if we have a minute. Otherwise, there's. We've. We've never gotten along with.

[Danny]

Over the years, like, going back to when you started.

[John Kiriakou]

Not close at all. Not close at all.

[Danny]

Why don't you get along?

[John Kiriakou]

Because they're constantly trying to recruit us, to spy on us, to plant bugs in our headquarters. They harass our officers, like, as a matter of policy. And then, you know, the chief has to go in and say, stop harassing my officers. You know, that they're not working against you. They're working with you, and you still harass them. And then they say, okay, okay. And they back. Back off for a year or two, and then they start up again. You know, they. They. Somebody. I'll put it this way. Somebody shot out the ambassador's tires, right? And, you know, some very helpful fellows happen to pull right up and to help them, you know, change the tire. And then when the ambassador and the driver got back in the car to. To continue on, he realized his briefcase was missing. Oh, my God. How could that happen? Stuff like that. Like, is that really necessary that.

[Danny]

That's basically the picture that's been painted to me by not just you, but by other people that I've talked to, like former intelligence community folks is not the same thing. It's, it's, it seems like more of a like fed up, annoyed. Just like they're, they're kind of a nuisance to us.

[John Kiriakou]

Yes.

[Danny]

Because they are, they are so effective and they are so persistent and oh.

[John Kiriakou]

My God, they're so effective. And they're effective because they, they can't lose. If they lose, they die. Right, right. Like this thing. I'll tell you kind of something funny. The, the day after the pager operation where they essentially decapitated Hezbollah. Right now Hezbollah doesn't exist as, as what it was. It's going to come back, of course, but right now there is no Hezbollah. So the day after I got a call from a Russian news channel and they said, would you come on and talk about this operation? I said, sure. And they said, so this is a war crime, right? And I said, well, yeah, technically, because, you know, several cases where the guy that had the pager, took the pager off his belt, put it on the table, sat down with his family to have dinner, the pager blew up and killed the nine year old daughter. Right. So technically, yeah, that's a war crime. So yeah. Can you say that? Can you say it's a war crime? And I said, well, no, I think the point is that this is probably one of the most brilliant acts of genius operational planning I've ever seen in my life. Imagine the moving parts involved in an operation like this where you have to control everything from manufacturing.

[Danny]

Right. They had to start a shell company in some other country. Right.

[John Kiriakou]

In multiple countries. Hungary, Taiwan. Not only do you have to, do you have to manage manufacturing, you have to manage the entire supply chain. Intercept these things at some point, pack them full of C4, but not too much because they need to still work as pagers and then put them back into the supply chain again. And then once they arrive in Lebanon, make sure they get to your targets.

[Danny]

And wasn't it like something around 10 years from the time they sold them to Hezbollah? Yes, from the time they actually, they.

[John Kiriakou]

Were like the bomb, six generations old. Crazy. Yeah. But Hezbollah didn't have the money for, you know, the new stuff. So they, they said, well, you know, we can get thousands of these.

[Danny]

I remember watching this. Incredible. I think it was a 60 Minutes thing I saw on this. But they were show, they were. They created like full on advertising campaigns, commercials, beautiful websites. They had Sales people that were showing and displaying all this stuff to these people and like, like they literally created a, a whole fake company marketing campaign that was totally believable.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah.

[Danny]

To these people. And, and I think in that, I mean, I don't know how accurate or how real 60 Minutes is. I mean, I'm sure it's pretty produced to some point, but they had a Mossad agent that was like under, behind a shadow, under a mask. He changed his voice or whatever. And he was Saying to this 60 Minutes interviewer, he said, we are the directors, the writers and the producers of the movie that you call reality. He's like, it's all a stage.

[John Kiriakou]

He's like, that's actually pretty profound. You think in that case.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[John Kiriakou]

In the case of the, of the exploding pagers.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[John Kiriakou]

You know, having, having worked in operations for quite some time at the CIA through things like, you know, the manhunt for Miriam Alkanzi who, who murdered two CIA officers and, and wounded whatever it was, seven others in front of headquarters to, to the hunt for Osama bin Laden or Carlos the Jackal. Right. I've been around some pretty creative guys, and they're almost exclusively guys. Pretty creative guys. I've never met anybody in my life who could come up with an operation like that. Nobody. This was genius.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[John Kiriakou]

And then the Russians were like, well, so do you think that somebody's going to be prosecuted for this? And I said, on the contrary, somebody's going to get a promotion and a medal and a picture with the director of Mossad. This is like the greatest thing in somebody's career, whoever came up with this.

[Danny]

Right. And what other operations do they have cooking right now?

[John Kiriakou]

Seriously. Right, right.

[Danny]

That are like that or even more impressive.

[John Kiriakou]

We've talked about Fowda, the TV show Fowda that streams on Netflix. And that's amazing that Shin Bet, which is the domest counterpart of. It's the FBI of, of Israel.

[Danny]

Right.

[John Kiriakou]

And, and look at the, the Hollywood esque operations that they come up with. So multiply that times 10 and then throw in the Iranians and the Houthis and Hezbollah. Incredible. Looking back historically, what was that guy's name? It was like Eli Cohen or something like that. I think it was Eli Cohen. Do you mind googling it? Yeah, I think it was Eli Cohen. Anyway, in the 50s, the early 60s, there's this guy, Eli Cohen, he works in a dry cleaners in Tel Aviv and he applies to Mossad because it sounds exciting. And they're like, yeah, thanks. We don't have any Openings for dry cleaning clerks. But he spoke absolutely perfect accentless Arabic. And so a couple of years later.

[Danny]

Steve, There we go, there we go. Eli Cohen.

[John Kiriakou]

There he is. Eliyahu Cohen. Eli Cohen.

[Danny]

Egyptian born, Israeli spy.

[John Kiriakou]

Right. So they call him back a couple of years later and they said, hey, we decided we do want to hire you for Mossad. So they hire him and they said, we want you to move to Syria, we're going to give you money, and we want you to wine and dine all the movers and shakers in Syria and secretly report back to us. He was so good that he ends up being considered to be the Deputy Minister of Defense of Syria.

[Danny]

Wow.

[John Kiriakou]

So the Russians, the kgb, said to the Syrians, there's something about this guy that's not right. So the Russians started to surveil him. He didn't see the surveillance and he had collected classified information. He was secretly transmitting it back to the Israelis. And the Russians picked up the radio, burst the transmission.

[Danny]

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[John Kiriakou]

And so they were able to triangulate the source of the transmission. And his house was right in the center. And they got him and they hung him in the main square in Damascus. He's a huge hero in Israel. There are schools and streets named after him and all kinds of stuff. He was going to be the Deputy Minister of Defense of Syria. He's a frigging Israeli citizen and an Israeli Mossad spy. And then they did the same thing in Egypt around the time of the Suez crisis. So, you know where we at, the CIA sit around a table and like to think that we're so smart and we're coming up with these outside the box. I hate that term, but these outside the box operations, we could never come up with something like what the Israelis come up with.

[Danny]

How many undeclared spies do you think are in the country now? Do we. Do they even need them anymore? Because they have. They basically have the Congress bought and paid for. Right?

[John Kiriakou]

Like, bought and paid for. They probably have a couple of hundred. And you know, the crazy thing is, I'm going to use the F35.

[Danny]

And what do you think they're doing specifically?

[John Kiriakou]

Oh, it's all. It's all about defense.

[Danny]

All about defense.

[John Kiriakou]

All about defense. Because they have convinced themselves over the years that we're not giving them everything, and we pretty much are, but they think that there's more, that we're holding back. And the F35 is the best example. So when Lockheed Martin came up with the F35, it's supposed to be the fighter jet that beats all other fighter jets, Right? That was a mistake. But we're committed. So we've got this billion dollar plane. And the Israelis said, we want the first ones. And we said, okay, we'll give you the first ones. But what we're going to do is we have the F35 and we're going to give you the F35. I. We're going to call it I for Israel.

[Danny]

Yes.

[John Kiriakou]

And we're going to just very slightly degrade the avionics just in case, God forbid, you guys get shot down and the plane is confiscated by the Russians or the Syrians or the Iranians. Then they don't have the top, top secret avionics while they set out to just steal the avionics because, damn it, they wanted the F35, the same one that we flew. And then the Emiratis are like, look, we love you, you love us. We want the F35. We said, okay, we're going to give you the F35. We're going to call it the F35E for Emirates and the Avionics are going to be slightly degraded. And they said, okay, why didn't the.

[Danny]

Israelis, I wonder, like, how deep they've gotten into some of our, the military private sector companies that are developing, like, super sophisticated tech.

[John Kiriakou]

Well, you've seen, you've seen the TV series the Americans, of course, about Soviet sleepers in the United States. Oh, you're going to want to binge this. The Americans. It's written by a former colleague of mine, Joe Weisberg. Joe is a. Was a real sweetheart. He. He worked in the counterterrorism center when I was there. And recruiting spies to steal secrets just wasn't for him. He had a conscience and he just wasn't good at it. And so he resigned. And he decided since he was unmarried and didn't have any kids, he's going to go to Hollywood and find his fortune. So he writes a novel that was actually very good. It was heavily redacted. Even though it was a novel, it was fiction. They still heavily redacted it. But people are like, hey, this guy's a really good writer. And then he came up with a pilot for the Americans. It was bought by, I think it ran on amc and it ran for six seasons. And he made more money than he can count.

[Danny]

Wow.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah, he really made it. But, man, they showed Russian sleepers. Russian sleepers in Falls Church, Virginia. And the reason I brought it up is because it's very, very similar to what the Israelis do where, you know, there's this guy over here, and he's the manager of a travel agency, an insurance. An insurance agency. Is he really? Or is that his cover? And he's actually recruiting employees of Lockheed Martin to steal those, those avionics plans.

[Danny]

Right.

[John Kiriakou]

You know, or is he trying to recruit A, a PhD physics student at Stanford, that kind of thing.

[Danny]

Right?

[John Kiriakou]

The. The PhD physics student is going to end up in DARPA. And who wouldn't want to have a source inside DARPA? And remember, the Israelis, the good guys, right? They're not the Russians, the Chinese, they're the Israelis. We love the Israelis. We're friends with the Israelis. We share everything with the Israelis. Right?

[Danny]

I just find it like, going back to the Trump stuff, you know, like in that video of him and Pam Bondi at the, when the, when the reporter asked her the question, not well handled, and he was like, look, are we still. Are we over this? Do we still interested in this?

[John Kiriakou]

Like, this creep?

[Danny]

Why are you campaigned on this? Yeah. What do you. What do you mean?

[John Kiriakou]

Right?

[Danny]

And like, you know, that combined with the cash Patel stuff. And another thing about Trump is like, he's not an idiot. He, he very, he has the temperature on culture.

[John Kiriakou]

He really does.

[Danny]

And he can really read the room on every single topic and see where the consensus is in the public, online.

[John Kiriakou]

And he's, he's wrong on this issue.

[Danny]

On this one, it's like he's Helen Keller.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah.

[Danny]

It's like he just, he doesn't know what's going on. So. So what the hell is that? It's so bizarre.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah.

[Danny]

You know, that combined with the fact, like, he doesn't seem like the kind of guy who would just be like, caving to every demand of a foreign leader to support their war. I mean, especially when he campaigned on ending all the war.

[John Kiriakou]

He is.

[Danny]

And he's literally doing everything this guy is telling him to do.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah.

[Danny]

Which is not his M.O. at all.

[John Kiriakou]

See, that makes me think that Patel and Bongino went to him and said, Mr. President, we found some fucked up stuff and it's not what we thought we were going to find, it's this. And he says we should probably try to kill this. That's the only conclusion I can draw.

[Danny]

But here's my thing, though. If Epstein was an Israeli access agent and he had obviously, we know he had every single room wired with hundreds of cameras and he has obviously multiple hard drives with lots of video footage on it. Right. That is a thermonuclear weapon.

[John Kiriakou]

Absolutely.

[Danny]

For whoever, I would assume Israel.

[John Kiriakou]

Absolutely. Right.

[Danny]

Right. So if you let that information leak out to the CIA, you, Your weapon is worthless.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah.

[Danny]

So how do you think Bongino and Cash Patel would. Would be able to see and know what they have? How would they have access to this stuff?

[John Kiriakou]

Well, I mean, in a perfect world, the FBI would have access to all of it. Now, yeah, you and I know that that's not the case, but I think I would expect they would have access to significant portions of it at least. And then getting back to Trump. Well, just because the federal government has been working this case for so long, Remember his. Epstein's first conviction was in 2006.

[Danny]

Right.

[John Kiriakou]

So, I mean, they've got to be volumes of files on him, volumes of them. It's not like they're starting from scratch. They've known for a long time who Jeffrey Epstein was and what he was doing.

[Danny]

Right. There's probably. Right, yeah. There's probably endless amounts of, of footage and evidence that, that probably implicates a lot of people.

[John Kiriakou]

Tapes.

[Danny]

But I bet you like 1% of that with like the Bill Gates and Donald Trump's of the world.

[John Kiriakou]

Right.

[Danny]

Those ones are locked away in a vault.

[John Kiriakou]

You know what? There was a guy who was very, very close to President Reagan. His name was Bloomingdale. He was the founder of Bloomingdale's department stores. And the guy was a billionaire. And he was a member of what used to be called Reagan's kitchen cabinet. So it was all these, these multi millionaires and billionaires, old white men. They were all friends with Reagan going back to the 40s, right. So when he would return to California, they would always get together and at the ranch and they would play golf and they would talk about the issues and he would take advice from them. So Bloomingdale was banging his girlfriend and he had a heart attack and he died on top of her. Okay. And somebody leaked the story to the press. And so Reagan's knee jerk reaction was to say, yeah, you know, I didn't really know him very well. I met him a few times. And then people are like, come on, man, he was your best friend. You've known him for 50 years. And so somebody inside the White House got to Reagan and said, come on. So he came out and he made a completely different statement and he said, he was my best friend. I liked him and trusted him.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[John Kiriakou]

I'm sorry that things worked out the way that they did. That's between him and his God. It's like, okay, now doesn't it feel better to tell the truth?

[Danny]

Right. Yeah.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah. If you have nothing to hide, you didn't do anything, Right. Just come out with the truth. That's how I feel about the Epstein case. Why are they still hiding it? If, if, if Cash Patel and Dan Bongino and Pam Bondi and Donald Trump are not involved, just come out with it. What do they have to lose? They have a lot to gain.

[Danny]

There's a hard drive sitting in Tel Aviv right now.

[John Kiriakou]

There has to be. There has to be. That has to be it. That's the only thing I can come up with. Right.

[Danny]

This is the most obvious thing. Right. If we want to obey Occam's razor.

[John Kiriakou]

Exactly.

[Danny]

That's the most obvious thing. It's lazy, you know, like the COVID up is very, very lazy.

[John Kiriakou]

Yes.

[Danny]

If there is a cover up and it's not, it's not thought out. And especially when you have Elon going nuclear like this on everything. Like, he just said Steve Bannon was in it.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah.

[Danny]

And we know Steve Bannon, the day, the day Trump fired him, drove to Epstein's house in New York and Did that interview with him.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah, right.

[Danny]

Which is allegedly hours long. Footage has been released of it where like Epstein basically said, Trump was my best friend for two years. You know, talked a lot, said a lot of crazy details that came out, which was like two minutes or five minutes or something like that. But we know Bannon's been really close to him and has a bunch of footage of him. So, you know. Yeah, it's just a. It's just a messy entangled web and there are lots and lot. It seems like whatever it is, it's got to be like the Rosetta stone to basically kneecap every single powerful in the world.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah. Except for Dershowitz, because remember, he kept his underwear on. At least he told us that he kept his underwear on as the 16 year old was massaging his 86 year old body.

[Danny]

Oh my God. One of the victims, the first two victims, the two sisters, it was Maria Farmer and I think Annie Farmer.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah.

[Danny]

Were some of the first three. They were ignored when they talked about, they gave their stories in the very beginning before Epstein died. And they came out and they were explaining, you know, how, you know, Maria Farmer, she worked at the front desk at his Manhattan office and she talked about Bill Clinton and, you know, all of the, the right wing Clinton haters were like, thank you, Maria Farmer, for coming out and exposing this Bill Clinton stuff. And she was like, you guys are living in La La land. Yeah.

[John Kiriakou]

You don't get it.

[Danny]

She's like, you don't understand. Trump was here three days a week and she's t. And there was the, and there was an interview where she was on video saying, talking about the day that Epstein brought Trump in for the first time. And he was like looking her up and down, like. And then Epstein goes to her, says to Trump, she's not for you. Like, they want to ignore that. Right. Like everyone, everybody was, was a part of this. And it's like it is, it's. It's mutually assured destruction if it gets out.

[John Kiriakou]

What an awful system.

[Danny]

And it is. It's fucking disgusting. And you know, but I will never.

[John Kiriakou]

Ever accept that there is not one single person worthy of an indictment besides Ghislaine Maxwell. It's just not possible.

[Danny]

Yeah, and then the whole Diddy thing too, you know, apparently like the Diddy thing was, was also like a similar operation.

[John Kiriakou]

But I'm proud to say that from the very beginning of the Diddy thing, I followed it very closely. I said, he's an. But I'm just not seeing a crime here.

[Danny]

Right. And that's That's. Yeah, a lot of people. And that's another. Another take that I've heard from my friend. I was actually recently on here. I was asking about the Diddy stuff, and he was like, I don't care. He was like. He goes, Gavin McGinnis. He goes, I assumed Diddy was doing this.

[John Kiriakou]

Sure. He's like, He's a billionair. You can do anything.

[Danny]

Exactly. It's like, oh, oh, oh, you were raped. What was? The cage they were keeping you in, what did that cage look like? Oh, you went home every night. Oh, what did the cops say? Oh, the cop. Oh, you didn't. You didn't go to the cops? Get the out of here.

[John Kiriakou]

Oh, he gave you $50,000.

[Danny]

Right, right. Oh, and the same thing with Harvey Weinstein. Right?

[John Kiriakou]

Same thing.

[Danny]

One of the victims, like, oh, my God. He said if I didn't fuck him, I couldn't be in a bunch of movies. Like, what would Harvey. What would you say to Harvey Weinstein if he said, blow me and I'll put you in a bunch of movies? Yeah, no, I. I guess I'm not going to be into much of movies. Yeah, I guess I'll find another trade.

[John Kiriakou]

And wasn't it Brad Pitt who went to, like, punch him in the nose dating somebody? Oh, it was Goop. Whatever her name is, that punched him in the nose. He was dating her. The one that sells the vagina scented candles.

[Danny]

Oh, I don't know who is.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Her mom was a big Broadway star. She won an Academy Award.

[Danny]

Gwyneth Paltrow.

[John Kiriakou]

Thank you. Gwyneth Paltrow. He's dating Gwyneth Paltrow. And she went back from this meeting, back home from this meeting with Weinstein, and she said, he told me I couldn't get the part unless I gave him a blowjob and.

[Danny]

Right, exactly.

[John Kiriakou]

Drove over there to punch him in the face. Really? Yeah.

[Danny]

Yeah. I mean, I think, like, are these people, like, sick?

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah.

[Danny]

But, you know, it takes away from the real atrocities of, like, hundreds of thousands of children missing being trafficked across America.

[John Kiriakou]

Got that.

[Danny]

You know, everyone was paying attention to Diddy and the sex parties and, you know, and these. These people that are 18 and older doing sick depraved to better their careers and to rub shoulders with more powerful people. But it's all a distraction.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah. And then you. You go to the. For example, the New York Post every day. I do. And they're like, lara Trump shows off her amazing abs in beach photo. What you need to know. It's like this, this is the news.

[Danny]

Yes.

[John Kiriakou]

That we need to know.

[Danny]

Right. So another thing I want to talk to you about is not only this debacle with all the Epstein file stuff, but this, this whole war in Iran.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah.

[Danny]

Another thing that Trump campaigned on was no more wars. We're going to end all this war stuff. And it's not just Iran now he just said he's going to give a bunch of more weapons to Ukraine.

[John Kiriakou]

And it turned out that Hegseth cut off the weapons to Ukraine just a couple of days ago without telling Trump.

[Danny]

Oh really?

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah. That was what the Associated Press reported today. So Trump reversed him.

[Danny]

Oh, Trump reversed it after he cut it off.

[John Kiriakou]

Mh.

[Danny]

And then I want to talk about Russia too. But so the Iran stuff like that, that's another thing where it's like, it must be some sort of unbelievable leverage that he's able to pull Trump into this war with Iran.

[John Kiriakou]

I've told you before, every single time Benjamin Netanyahu came to, to Washington going back to the, the early 90s, he's been here three times this year. 80s. Yeah. He would ask whoever happened to be president to bomb Iran.

[Danny]

Yes.

[John Kiriakou]

I mean he, he was not even prime minister at the time. Early on he was, he was Israeli ambassador to the United Nations. You have to bomb Iran. Help us. Bomb Iran. Bomb Iran. Bomb Iran. And every single president said no until Donald Trump.

[Danny]

Right.

[John Kiriakou]

Said sure, we'll bomb Iran for you.

[Danny]

And you know, I know they have their slogan, death to America. Yeah, everyone's gonna have their slogan though, you know, and watching the Tucker document or the Tucker interview he did with the, with the guy, the president the other day was like 45 minute interview. Whether he's full of or not. It seems like his, the sentiment there was, was like he doesn't want to fight. He doesn't, right?

[John Kiriakou]

No, they don't want to fight. Things are actually going really well for the Iranians right now economically. They've got robust trade relations with the Russians, the Chinese and the Indians. And despite the fact that we pulled out of the jcpoa, they continue to trade with the uk, the European Union and Japan. So why upset the apple cart? I have a very, very close friend who is Iranian American and goes to Iran two, three times a year.

[Danny]

Oh really?

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah. And she, she told me she has sent me like she's sort of live streamed while she was there so I could just see what, how long ago? A few weeks.

[Danny]

Oh, wow.

[John Kiriakou]

And they lack for nothing. They have everything they need. It would be nice for Them if they could buy spare parts for their old Boeing 727s, it would be nice if they could buy American dredging equipment to, you know, make it easier for ships to come in to pick up their oil. But they don't have to have that stuff.

[Danny]

Right?

[John Kiriakou]

So our sanctions have failed.

[Danny]

Oh, yeah. Failed especially in Russia, too.

[John Kiriakou]

Right? Yeah. Like they're. Yeah. Oh, no, they're. They're perfectly fine.

[Danny]

And what is that? What does that tell the rest of the world when they find out our. Our sanctions are just.

[John Kiriakou]

We're a paper tiger.

[Danny]

Paper tiger.

[John Kiriakou]

You know, I went to Hong Kong last year. Last year, and one of the things, really, the only thing that surprised me about Hong Kong was in most places I went, I couldn't use my credit card. They didn't take MasterCard and Visa. They took what they called Panda Card. And so I asked a Chinese national, a businesswoman, what's with this Panda card? What is that? And she said, oh, it's our version of a credit card. And I said, why use that instead of MasterCard or Visa? And she said, because every MasterCard and Visa transaction goes through New York and then is subject to sanctions, and Panda Card goes through Shanghai, and then they can tell us to screw our sanctions.

[Danny]

Wow. Yeah, it's crazy. And Tucker posted those videos in Russia of the grocery stores, and he said it was beautiful. And this amazing. Messing with them at all.

[John Kiriakou]

Mh. And all the bricks, all the gas that they could no longer sell to Western Europe. The Indians said, we'll take it.

[Danny]

So do you think. Do you think Iran has a ton of sleeper cells here in this country that could threaten us?

[John Kiriakou]

No, I think they have some sleeper cells, yes. Not just here in the United States, but in Canada as well. And probably in. In the UK and France in the 80s, they were far more active with sleeper cells, and they assassinated a lot of people, mostly in France, like former prime ministers, a former president. The FBI has arrested a handful of people for allegedly targeting Iranian journalists or Iranian dissidents in Brooklyn and Toronto and Vancouver, places like that. But then, you know, other Iranians say those. Those people that were being targeted allegedly were nobodies with no. With no authority, you know, among the diaspora. And so is this governmentally sponsored or is it just criminal activity? But my guess is sure they probably have sleeper cells. We all do. Every. Every, you know, major country that has a serious intelligence service is going to have sleeper cells.

[Danny]

And. And obviously, there's a lot of foreign countries that, like, affect our media and that try to disseminate propaganda in the U.S. how much do you think, how effective do you think they are or active are that as Iran in. When it comes to like media and propaganda in the US Almost, they're, they're.

[John Kiriakou]

Not very active and. No, no, and not much of an influence at all. In fact, you can't even go to Press TV anymore. Press TV is the Iranian English language outlet. The FBI seized PressTV.com back in 2019, maybe just like they seized Telesur, the Venezuelan website. So you can't even, you can't even get Press tv. You have to go around it now. It's like Press TV ir, I think is what it is. But no, it's, it's, it's hard for them to, to sort of get a foothold in the American media. You know, the Russians were accused of, of having done that very successfully. And now we all know that's bullshit. And now right now John Brennan and Jim Comey are being investigated for lying to Congress about it.

[Danny]

Yes, I saw that.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah. And God forgive me for gloating, but it's about time these guys got a taste of their own medicine. It's about time.

[Danny]

So what do you think is going to happen with this Iran conflict? Like what, what, what if you like in your best guess how this plays out with your experience and what you know about these places, these guys that are behind all this. What, how do you think it plays out?

[John Kiriakou]

Well, I'm going to give you two answers. I'll give you how I think Donald Trump wants it to turn out and then how I think it's going to turn out. Trump really is the deal maker. He wants the big overarching all settling deal, which is what he sees the Abraham Accords being. You bring in the Saudis eventually and declare victory and get your Nobel Peace Prize and go home. So I think what he wants and I think what he thought he was going to get by attacking Iran was that he was going to frighten the Iranians into going to the negotiating table. They were already at the negotiating table. We had had at least three rounds of negotiations, still at the technical stage, but negotiations nonetheless face to face for the most part.

[Danny]

And the day of this was like a 60 day negotiating period or whatever. And like the last day.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah, and then he bombed them. And then he says now they're gonna go to the table. And they were like, screw you, we're not going to. We were already at the table. And then you bomb us.

[Danny]

Yeah, Israel bombed him, right?

[John Kiriakou]

No, we bought, we bombed him with the 50000 pound bombs. The 30, 000 pound bombs.

[Danny]

I thought we did that after Israel bombed.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Israel bombed the first.

[Danny]

Right, right.

[John Kiriakou]

And then we went in with the big ones to the bunker busters.

[Danny]

Yeah. It's like we were sitting at the negotiating table and then Israel blew up the negotiating table, which was the plan.

[John Kiriakou]

So I think Trump believed that this would force the Iranians to accept a deal that they might otherwise not have accepted. What I think is going to happen is, hey guys, if you're not already.

[Danny]

Subscribed, please hammer the subscribe button below and hit the like button on the video back to the show.

[John Kiriakou]

Because we're the only ones who don't seem to realize that sanctions don't work and the Iranians don't really need the United States for anything. And we're too fickle to deal with anyway. If you're Iran with banking sanctions and personal sanctions and dual use sanctions. I mean we can't even bring carpets and caviar back into the country. So they're like, it's just not worth dealing with the Americans. They'll negotiate a deal, then pull out. Then they want to negotiate essentially the same deal. And then they blow us up and then they tell us we want to negotiate a deal. Screw that. We're going to go with the Russians and the Chinese.

[Danny]

Right.

[John Kiriakou]

I think that's what's going to happen.

[Danny]

It's interesting that the Russian there doesn't nothing that I've noticed no chatter from either of their governments about this Iran isn't that interesting.

[John Kiriakou]

I said the same thing in an op ed that it was very surprising to me that even the Russians didn't say anything. Yeah, nothing. You know, the Chinese have this long history of anti imperialism Tibet aside, we can have a whole conversation about Tibet, you know, someday. But they had like a little border skirmish in the 70s with, with Vietnam. They had a little border skirmish, two of them, with the Indians, where they'll fire, you know, a couple of rounds across the border. That's it. The Chinese don't go around invading other countries. They just never have. It's just not right. I mean they were invited into North Korea, but anyway, they're not like us, where we, we will invade, you know, Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia and Libya and Syria and move here and move there. And the Chinese don't do that.

[Danny]

Right.

[John Kiriakou]

So the Chinese will make a little vanilla statement at the United nations saying it's wrong to bomb Iran. Shouldn't have done that. And then that's, that's it. That's the end of it. They would much rather focus on belt and road and investing in infrastructure and you know, exchanging cultural delegations. They're much better at that than we are.

[Danny]

Well, I can see like from Iran's point of view, I don't know whether they have been trying to make a nuke or if they do have a nuke or. Well, I don't know. I don't know Jack. But I would imagine if I was Iran, I would want to have a nuke.

[John Kiriakou]

Well, now you have to.

[Danny]

You have to. Right. Because the only people we don't with are the ones that have nukes. That's it. Like look at North Korea.

[John Kiriakou]

That's right.

[Danny]

Kim Jong Un is probably going to die in his bed of old age.

[John Kiriakou]

That's right.

[Danny]

Because he decided, because Kim Jong Il decided to start the nuclear program. They have tons of nukes.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah.

[Danny]

And we don't mess with them.

[John Kiriakou]

So I agree. If, and I don't believe that they had a weapons program. You know, the CIA has consistently published national intelligence estimates saying that in 2003, Ayatollah Khamenei ended what had been a nuclear weapons program. And they have not had a program for the last 22 years. They just made a policy decision not to have it. But the more we were a threat and the more the Israelis were a threat, then they started enriching uranium to more and more purity. So from 9% it went to 35. From 35 to 67. It needs to be in the 90s to be weapons quality. Even then they don't have a delivery system. But you know, if they wanted to have weapons grade plutonium, they could. They've chosen not to. I think now they're going to have to, to protect themselves. And then what happens? Then the Saudis are going to want, I mean the Saudis have long wanted a nuclear weapons program, but they never had the guts to do it, you know, in, in the face of American opposition. So did the Saudis then try to develop a program? Did the Egyptians.

[Danny]

We must know. We must have people. We must. The CIA must have people embedded in Iran's nuclear program or in, inside with the scientists. Right.

[John Kiriakou]

I don't know, man. I'm not sure that we're really that good. I know the Israelis do, of course, because the Israelis are constantly killing these guys. Whether, you know, it's in Tehran or it's at some seminar in Vienna or Geneva or whatever. I'm just not sure that we have the language abilities or the ability to get inside the Country. See, one of the things that the Iranians are very good at is when the Israelis started killing nuclear scientists outside of Iran, they just stopped letting their scientists go outside of Iran. So you have to actually be in Iran to do it. Well, we don't have a presence in Iran because we don't have an embassy anymore. There's no diplomatic relationship. But the Israelis have a lot of Iranian born Jews who speak fluent, flawless, accentless Farsi and who can fit right in. And they can identify the apartment blocks where these guys live. And then the Israelis can fire a rocket. And if they have to kill everybody in the apartment building or everybody on that block, they'll take out every leader of the Iranian weapons program.

[Danny]

See, I was just watching this show. It was called, what was it called? It was a show on Apple about basically about CIA, about this guy who worked for the CIA and there was this girl that they were bringing up, this young girl and they were basically training her to go to college, go to the, she has to go to this college, has to get her degree in this, in this program with this, this group, some sort of scientific thing. And she had to rise all the way to the top. And the head of that PhD department at that school picked three people every year to go to Iran to do, to work on some sort of abroad program that Iran invites people to do. And she figured out a way to make that happen to where like she got picked by this university to go into Iran. And it was just like everything about her was fake, right? Like she, like she wasn't even interested in that, in that, that study. But she had to do it. She had to get the degree, the PhD over years somehow like convince herself to like, to like seduce the guy who made the picks who got to go to Iran at the top, top of the college program and like, and like eventually get into Iran and like the people within the IRGC starts like interrogating you when you get there. So like, I don't know, I mean obviously it's a fiction show, sure. But you know, usually the, the, the, the sci fi stuff or like the, the fiction is more close to reality than like the documentary stuff.

[John Kiriakou]

See and that's something that the Russians have been so good at for so many decades. We don't have sleeper cells like the Russian definition of a sleeper cell. We have non official cover where you're, you know, some deep non governmental cover and you're in a country for 10 years or 20 years or whatever. Not 20, but 10 years. The Russians though will send you you know, you. You turn 18 and they'll send you to college here, and nobody knows you're Russian because your English is so good. Or they think you're, you know, Brazilian, which actually happened a couple of years ago. Just. Just a couple of years ago, this Brazilian guy was arrested and turned out he wasn't Brazilian at all. He was Russian pretending to be Brazilian. But they'll have you just work a normal 9 to 5 job, and you might do that for 10, 12, 15 years until you're activated. And then when you're activated, then you go operational and you do what they trained you to do. But you may sit there for decades and do nothing, just knowing that someday you're going to get that call.

[Danny]

Yeah, I was reading an article about this, that this guy, Jack Murphy did, and he was talking about these. These sleeper cells that were inside Russia that have been in there for decades or over a decade. And they had. I forget what the word was, but they had places where they buried ammunition and weapons.

[John Kiriakou]

Right.

[Danny]

And they would, like, those were the marks, like when they got the call or when they got the. The signal to activate, they had to go into the woods and like, dig up all the weapons and stuff that they buried there, you know, a long time ago. Yeah. And this was like, I think during the beginning of the Ukraine war, whatever. And these guys were conducting, like, sabotage operations inside Russia.

[John Kiriakou]

Right.

[Danny]

And it was a proxy. It was like a proxy. It was a NATO proxy intelligence service or whatever.

[John Kiriakou]

Sure.

[Danny]

Because CIA couldn't. Wasn't allowed.

[John Kiriakou]

No, can't do it. It's denied area. Did you watch the Sopranos?

[Danny]

Oh, of course.

[John Kiriakou]

So do you remember when Junior was first starting to lose his mind? He couldn't find his money. And he said, he said Pussy Malanga had stolen his money. And Tony said, did you wrap it properly? If you didn't wrap it properly, it can get moldy. It's because they bury their money. It's the same thing. All that stuff has to be perfectly preserved so that it doesn't get rusty, it doesn't get moldy, it doesn't just sort of fall apart because someday you're going to need to give somebody a map with a little X on it so he can dig it up and use it for an operation.

[Danny]

Right? Yeah. Could you imagine what a decade would do of a, like an assault rifle being buried or like an explosive? Yeah, that's.

[John Kiriakou]

Seriously.

[Danny]

What do you make of this? This stuff that just came out. Trump said that he's going to bomb Moscow for some reason or Whatever. Like, he's not getting along with Putin right now. What is this all Trump is.

[John Kiriakou]

Trump is just apoplectic that Putin is not doing what he tells him to do. When Trump said during the campaign, I'm going to end this war in 24 hours, he believed that he was gonna end the war. Not in 24 hours, of course, but he believed that it was just a question of talking tough and forcing both sides to the table. And I think Trump really believed during the campaign, too, that it was the Ukrainians who were being intransigent. And as it turns out, it's not the Ukrainians being intransigent.

[Danny]

It's rut meat. What is that word?

[John Kiriakou]

Intransigent. That they don't want to do as they're told. They. They don't want to. To go to the table and give up their liberty and their sovereignty. Okay, so he's had several conversations with. With Putin, and Putin has told him, go fly kite. And then Putin made a comment the other day, and this is what led to the Trump statement. Putin made a comment that, you know, maybe I'll take all of Ukraine after all, because the official Russian policy has always been Donetsk and Luhansk. Right. The Donbass and Crimea.

[Danny]

Right.

[John Kiriakou]

Well, now maybe I'll take the whole damn thing.

[Danny]

And what led him to say that?

[John Kiriakou]

I think he's tired of Trump calling him up and yelling at him and saying, settle this thing. He doesn't want to settle it. Yesterday. Yesterday, the White House announced new sanctions on Russia.

[Danny]

I saw that.

[John Kiriakou]

Like, what sanctions could possibly be left?

[Danny]

Right. Yeah. And how would. How would that work, do you think? There was something. This. I just read it this morning, where there was drone swarms Russia was sending into Ukraine.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah. On an unprecedented level. Yeah. Hundreds and hundreds of drones. And they're hitting civilian targets, too.

[Danny]

Right.

[John Kiriakou]

They blew up.

[Danny]

Up.

[John Kiriakou]

They blew up one of the Ukrainian orthodox cathedrals yesterday. Like, in. In.

[Danny]

Can you find that story?

[John Kiriakou]

Is it Sumi, I think, is the name of the town.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[John Kiriakou]

Cathedral's like, 800 years old. They just blew it to bits. Collapsed the dome. Yeah.

[Danny]

It seemed like it was calming down, and now all of a sudden, it seems like it's heating back up. And, like, how would. And he's sending more money to Ukraine now.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah.

[Danny]

What. What the. Is happening?

[John Kiriakou]

Well, you know, I think. I think that. That Putin is making a. Making a tactical mistake here, too, in that he feels emboldened because he has essentially an unlimited number of North Korean troops that are being sent to fight. Right. And The North Koreans fight to the death. They don't want to be taken prisoner and their bodies are found like with propaganda stuffed in their, in their pockets that your last sentence has to be to glorify the great leader, for example. But where I think he's underestimating the effect of the war is that every Russian family has been touched by loss. It's like how during the American Civil War, every American family was touched by loss. A lot of people have died. Like, how much, how much longer can you go? There are only so many North Koreans that are going to fight for you. But otherwise, you know, this whole generation has been devastated.

[Danny]

Did you see there was. Okay, what is this? Oh, the CNN Russian drone swarm. Kiev from all sides. An apparent shift of tactics. Go to the the top. Hundreds of Russian drones flying from all directions attacked Kyiv. Can you zoom in a little bit? Overnight into Thursday, in an apparent new Russian tactic making a second consecutive night of ferocious, ferocious attacks on Ukraine, at least two people were killed, including a 22 year old police officer. Wow. Russia launched 400 drones and 18 missiles, including eight ballistic, six cruise missiles. According to telegram post from Ukraine President Voldemort Zelensky. This just posted. Wow.

[John Kiriakou]

Oh, that's, that happened just in the last couple of hours.

[Danny]

That was just posted this morning. Yeah.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah. Wow.

[Danny]

Aren't they conscripting everyone from the prisons in Russia? Yeah, they're sending prisoners out there.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah. Right.

[Danny]

So what do they say? They're saying, they're saying you can be, be released and go fight. Go fight and try to try to survive and try to save your country or you can stay locked up.

[John Kiriakou]

It's not a good situation. I actually feel for Trump on this because I believed what he believed, that there was this issue of saving face and if both sides could save face, I thought that the, I thought that the Ukrainians would agree to give up the Donbass and Crimea. I mean they've already, they lost Crimea 11 years ago. But just to make it official, all those people that live there are ethnic Russians anyway.

[Danny]

Right.

[John Kiriakou]

And then there would be a fast track to European Union membership. But, but no, I was wrong.

[Danny]

So I don't understand like why, what is getting in the way of this? He's not like, so, so what does Trump want from Putin? That Putin is not willing to, not willing to work with him on this and making him do stuff like this and send these 400 drones and just like escalate it even more?

[John Kiriakou]

He wants that agreement. Yeah, he wants that agreement.

[Danny]

That he won't push past Don Boss in Crimea and Putin's saying, no, no, see, that's not what I. That's not what I imagined was gonna. I. I thought before all this.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah.

[Danny]

Before Trump got in. I imagine Trump or Putin would be more than willing.

[John Kiriakou]

We all did. Yeah, we all.

[Danny]

Even in the beginning of the war. I think you might be the person. You might have been the person who told me this in, like, the first year, maybe even exactly one year into the war, one of the top military generals came out and talked about how we had Russia on their heels after this one big battle victory that we made, that we had, and that was the time to go to the negotiating table.

[John Kiriakou]

Right.

[Danny]

And then Biden administered. The Biden people just said, no, off. We're not negotiating.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah. No negotiations. That was the Biden position. No negotiations.

[Danny]

Yes.

[John Kiriakou]

Remember, it was even regime change for a little while.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[John Kiriakou]

It's like. And who are we to decide who's going to lead Russia or any other country?

[Danny]

Do you think it's. So what was his. Lindsey Graham came out and said, there's trillions of dollars, trillions of dollars worth of natural resources and minerals. I remember that in Ukraine.

[John Kiriakou]

Rare earth metals.

[Danny]

Rare earth metals, yeah. And we can't let China get them.

[John Kiriakou]

Right. Well, you know, the ugly truth of that is that the Chinese are the only ones willing to take the financial loss of mining and refining the ore. Rare earth metals, of course, are important because they go in everything. Everything from, you know, from missile cruise systems to our cell phones to car bumpers. They're in everything. And we. We really need them. And most of these rare earth metals are in places like the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mexico, Mexico, Australia, the United States, especially Alaska, under the Salton Sea in California, Afghanistan and Ukraine. The problem is that you've got a mine like tons and tons and tons of Oregon to get just a little bit. I mean, of Earth to just get a little bit of these rare earth metals. So they're money losers. Well, we don't refine any of it because it's so expensive, and you just can't make a profit. Chinese are happy to do it. So almost all the rare earth metals that are mined are processed in China. So here's the United States. We need, let's say. I can't even think of chromium. We need chromium for something, and we don't have chromium. Oh, thanks. We don't have chromium. So we buy it from the Chinese. Well, what if we need it for our missile systems? Are the Chinese Going to cut us off. Maybe they haven't in the past because we would treat that as an act of war. And, you know, it's an existential threat. So, I mean, I don't know, are we willing to take that on? So far, the answer is no.

[Danny]

Yeah. And it's crazy, too, that the Chinese, that they're mining lithium everywhere, you know, including right on the American Mexico border. Yeah, that's crazy. And they're hiring the cartels to be. To be. Security.

[John Kiriakou]

Security. That's right. You know, I saw something in the Associated Press today that was shocking to me. You know how. Sorry to change the subject, but talk about the border. You know how when you go to a bank, if you deposit or withdraw $10,000 or more, you have to fill out a form for the irs, Right. And it's to prevent money laundering. Today, the Trump administration changed the rule so that if you're in a border county, that is a county that borders Mexico, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, the limit is 200 bucks.

[Danny]

Before you have to fill out 200.

[John Kiriakou]

Bucks, like, how can you live?

[Danny]

That's crazy.

[John Kiriakou]

Every time you go to the grocery store and you stock up on groceries, you have to tell the irs, there it is.

[Danny]

That's it.

[John Kiriakou]

There it is.

[Danny]

El Paso, Texas, the federal government is expanding its financial surveillance efforts targeting cash transactions over 200 in select border communities, including El Paso. The new Geographic Targeting Order gto issued by the Treasury Department will require businesses to fulfill money orders and cash checks to report any transactions over 200. Wow.

[John Kiriakou]

Amazing.

[Danny]

So this scares the.

[John Kiriakou]

Out of that money laundering by Mexican cartels.

[Danny]

This scares the absolute crap out of me. A couple months ago.

[John Kiriakou]

Look at all those counties. Look at all the zip codes.

[Danny]

Oh, my God.

[John Kiriakou]

Incredible.

[Danny]

That's insane.

[John Kiriakou]

Wow.

[Danny]

There's 1, 2, 3, 4 in Imperial County, California San Diego County. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. At least seven in San Diego. That's a lot.

[John Kiriakou]

That's a lot. Yeah.

[Danny]

Yeah. The. The bank. What's happening, like the banking, the central banking system is really scaring me lately, especially because what happened to me a couple months ago, I tried taking a bunch of money out of my. One of my bank accounts, one of my checking accounts, and putting it into Coinbase.

[John Kiriakou]

Sure.

[Danny]

And yeah, I went to the. I had to do a wire and I tried to do the wire online, wouldn't let me do it. So I went into my local bank branch and sat down with the guy in the little cubicle office or whatever and, like, walked it through, brought my show to my id. I need to wire this amount of money to this Coinbase account. And I was like, okay, yeah, no problem. Whatever. We did it. I sat there for 10, 15 minutes, we did it. And it got denied.

[John Kiriakou]

What?

[Danny]

I got. I got a call from Chase Fraud, and they made me answer all these weird questions like, what was the color of your first car? Have you ever heard of Coinbase? Who told you about Coinbase? What. What is your education on crypto? Who told you about crypto? All these really obscure questions that was like. It was like going in a circle. And it was like, some of them are irrelevant. Some of them make sense. Right. If you want to confirm that I'm me transferring this money out of my account. Right. But I was just sitting in there with the guy at the. I gave him my id.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah.

[Danny]

And I answered all the questions, whatever for. On the phone, 10 minutes with this person, and then I get a message an hour later, you're. You're denied. The. The fraud department says, no, this is too risky. So I went in again, then the following week to do the same thing again.

[John Kiriakou]

Wow.

[Danny]

I end up going into the bank, the bank, physical bank, doing this process, like, six times. And every single time, fraud kicked it back and would not let me wire my money out of my bank account.

[John Kiriakou]

Your own?

[Danny]

My own. My own money. Eventually, after, like, two months, I finally got it to work after they, like, they escalated it and escalated up the chain of command at the bank because they're like, we have no idea why this is happening. Like, usually there's like, a. A reasonable amount of security when you're trying to transfer. Do a wire to a crypto company like Coinbase for the first time. Right. But this is ridiculous.

[John Kiriakou]

Wow. This is ridiculous.

[Danny]

And that scared the. Out of me, like, how much of my money do I really have access to if I need it?

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah.

[Danny]

You know, like, you really have to diversify out of these things first I've heard. Yeah.

[John Kiriakou]

This happening.

[Danny]

Yeah. And then, like, what we're talking about before the show started with this. With this genius act and the stable coins, I had this lady come on here and articulate this really beautifully to me. Her name's Catherine Fitz. She was the head of the. She was head of the department of HUD during Clinton, I think. Or no Bush one, maybe. Bush. I thought it was hw. HW Bush. Okay, there we go. Yeah. Because it was during. It was during all the financial fraud. It was the.

[John Kiriakou]

Oh, sure.

[Danny]

The housing fraud stuff. Sure. And she was brought in to try to, like, fix that problem. Right. She's Like a math genius. And she was explaining to me how with the genius act and how they want to bring in these stable coins and make this like the primary way the transactions are done. And she was saying, like, to incentivize people to use these stablecoins, like they're going to start like giving you loan incentives. Like, remember how they dropped off all those pallets of cash in Afghanistan? It's like it's going to be the same thing with stablecoins. They're going to get everyone hooked on these stablecoins and they're going to use that to control people with a, with a digital social credit score system or whatever. Because, so, so this is right out.

[John Kiriakou]

Of Black Mirror, this is how she.

[Danny]

Explained it to me, right? I mean, and this can be, you know, sometimes really, really smart people can be crazy, right? And this sounds crazy at face value, but, but just, just try to stick with me here. She says Elon, which is true, has been really obsessed with the, the Chinese WeChat system, where basically they have social media, banking, communication, personal communication, all in this one little WeChat thing. Right, right. Where the CCP can monitor it and everything.

[John Kiriakou]

And if you're not Chinese, you have to be invited into WeChat by a Chinese.

[Danny]

Oh, I didn't know that.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah.

[Danny]

So when he bought X, he was kind of like bragging about how impressed he was with WeChat and it would be cool to be able to do all this kind of stuff on X. So then he did doge to find all this waste, fraud and abuse, right? And he started ripping through the IRS data, the HHS data, the treasury data, and he was at the same time getting a bunch of money with, with Xai. And he was developing Xai and he was partnering with Palantir's AI.

[John Kiriakou]

Yes.

[Danny]

And Palantir, just like two, three weeks ago, got an 800 million dollar paycheck from the Pentagon to do whatever the hell Palantir is doing with their AI. And so, so he's using XAI and Palantir AI and integrating it with all this data that they're sucking out of the irs, the HHS and the Treasury Department. She said, if I wanted to create a complete digital social control grid in the United States, that's exactly what I would do to do it. She goes, I would take all that data and then I would bring in stable coins and it would be the perfect fucking digital social credit system in the United States. If you got all, if you had all that data and you integrated it with AI and Then you brought in stable coins.

[John Kiriakou]

You know that one friend who somehow knows everything about money?

[Danny]

Yeah.

[John Kiriakou]

Now imagine they live in your phone. Say hey to Experian, your big financial friend. It's the app that helps you check your FICO score, find ways to save, and basically feel like a financial genius. And guess what? It's totally free. So go on, download the Experian app. Trust me, having a bff, like, this is a total game changer. My God.

[Danny]

So that just like has me freaking.

[John Kiriakou]

Out, jumping up and down about, about.

[Danny]

Well, this is her other point. The day before 9, 11, what was it? Rumsfeld came out and said there was $2 trillion missing from the Pentagon.

[John Kiriakou]

Right, right.

[Danny]

That's now since ballooned to like 20 something trillion dollars.

[John Kiriakou]

I think it was. 23 was the last number.

[Danny]

So she goes, if I'm Elon and I'm looking for missing money, waste, fraud and abuse, The Pentagon has $21 trillion missing. Why are you around with the IRS?

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah.

[Danny]

And so. And HHS and all and all this stuff.

[John Kiriakou]

Yep.

[Danny]

Right.

[John Kiriakou]

Yep. In fact, Trump, not too terribly long ago when, when he was still speaking to Elon, said that he was going to pursue a 40% cut at the Pentagon over, I think it was 10 years or eight years or whatever it was. And I was like, oh my God, kudos to him. The thing needs to be slashed. And then that just went away. And in the latest budget, you know, they have over a trillion dollars just for the Pentagon.

[Danny]

Yeah, that's exactly what the debt is too. Right. I think that. I think our debt, our, our interest per year is like a trillion dollars. That's insane.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah.

[Danny]

I was just listening to the interview with Thomas Massey. He did an interview with.

[John Kiriakou]

Great.

[Danny]

He did an interview with Theo Vaughn.

[John Kiriakou]

Right.

[Danny]

And he was explaining that stuff. Thomas Massey, interesting guy, man. You know, he lives in like a trailer or something like this. And he like does his own farming.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah.

[Danny]

He has these chickens. He raises his own chickens. And the chicken coop is like a Roomba. It like moves around the yard so the chickens can roam and not be like in their own all the time.

[John Kiriakou]

That's funny.

[Danny]

Wild.

[John Kiriakou]

I've been to a couple of baseball games with him. My friend and attorney, Bruce Fine is his attorney and legislative advisor. And Massey's a big baseball fan, so we got a. A few Nationals games every year. He is a sweetheart of a guy. His wife just died though, last year.

[Danny]

Yeah, last year.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah. It was my understanding that she had been suffering from cancer for a while.

[Danny]

Right, right.

[John Kiriakou]

But one of the things About Massie. He's the young Ron Paul, and he's not afraid of anybody.

[Danny]

Right.

[John Kiriakou]

There is a. There's a piece in the Washington Post today saying that, you know, Trump is already laying the groundwork to primary Massey. Right. They're going to find somebody to run against Massie, and in Massey's district, nobody cares. They love the guy. He does exactly what he says he's going to do.

[Danny]

Right.

[John Kiriakou]

And so they're not afraid of any primary challenger to him.

[Danny]

Yeah. He was explaining how his relationship with Donald Trump has been up and down over the years.

[John Kiriakou]

It has been. Sometimes they're. They're as close as close can be, and other times they're at open war.

[Danny]

Yeah. Well, he was. He was explaining a moment where after his wife passed away, how Trump called him up or sent him a long text, one of the two, and he was just, like, you know, really, really apologetic to him and just like, saying, you know, I'm really sorry. You know, all this stuff, you're. You and your wife. Your wife was tough, so were you, and all this stuff. He was being very kind to him. And Thomas was like, you know, I'm glad you called, because I was thinking about endorsing you. He's like, oh, that's great. Isn't that wonderful? But, like, it seems like they. They have it like a. I don't know how. What their relationship is now, but it's. He didn't really. He had a lot of nice things to say about him.

[John Kiriakou]

Well, it's funny. Trump says a lot about Massey. Massey never says anything about Trump. Yeah. Massey talks about policy.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[John Kiriakou]

And policy disagreements that they have, but he never, ever attacks Trump.

[Danny]

Interesting. Yeah. So. So the story with Massie, he is one of the only guys in Congress that will not accept any sort of political donations.

[John Kiriakou]

Absolutely.

[Danny]

Is that it, right. Or is it only from. For a government.

[John Kiriakou]

Oh, no, no. You can't accept anything from a foreign government.

[Danny]

Oh. But apac. APAC is technically American. They're. They're special, right?

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah, they're special.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[John Kiriakou]

They're. I. Last time I was. I was here talking to you, we talked about William Proxmire. Do you remember that? And the Golden Fleece Award.

[Danny]

We talked about that.

[John Kiriakou]

Huh. So William Proxmire was a senator, a Democratic senator from Wisconsin. He won a special election in the 1950s to replace, oh, I remember Joe McCarthy. Ye.

[Danny]

Yes.

[John Kiriakou]

And he would give this Golden Fleece Award every couple of months. He would just pour through the federal budget line by line, and he would find, like, oh, $6 million to study the sexual habits of, you know, cockroaches. Right?

[Danny]

Yeah.

[John Kiriakou]

That's waste, fraud, abuse. Actually, there is no program to study the sexual habits of cockroaches. That is a CIA black budget program that's just embedded in the budget that nobody's supposed to notice.

[Danny]

Yes. So they hated studying gay monkeys in the Congo.

[John Kiriakou]

But anyway, in the Almanac of American Politics, every two years, when it would be republished and it would have the campaign finance information, right? Where everybody's like, how much money did they spend in their last reelection campaign? 36 million, 120 million for Proxmire Zero. Every single time he would go to the local courthouse, he would pay the $15 filing fee out of his pocket, and then that was it. There was no advertising, there was no campaign office. There was no travel. There was no nothing.

[Danny]

How many times did he win?

[John Kiriakou]

He won from 19, like, 57 until 1990.

[Danny]

Wow.

[John Kiriakou]

Six, maybe. 98. Yeah. Yeah.

[Danny]

That's wild.

[John Kiriakou]

Massey's like that.

[Danny]

Yeah. Yeah.

[John Kiriakou]

I have great respect for him. Well, because you can tell.

[Danny]

You can tell he's speaking from the heart. You can tell he's being honest.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah, he's.

[Danny]

He's the actual complete opposite of Ted Cruz. Oh, did you see the Ted Cruz Tucker Carlson?

[John Kiriakou]

I did. Tucker humiliated him.

[Danny]

Oh, my God.

[John Kiriakou]

And he walked right into.

[Danny]

Why did he even agree to that?

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah, why?

[Danny]

Because the second. The second the camera started rolling, it was just like they were going at it already.

[John Kiriakou]

He is so arrogant to think that he just doesn't have to prepare for things like that. And Tucker Carlson is one of the most intelligent people I've ever met in my life.

[Danny]

He knows every little obscure fact.

[John Kiriakou]

He does.

[Danny]

Every conflict that's ever happened that the US has been involved in anywhere. Like, it's crazy.

[John Kiriakou]

That's right. You know so much, and he can. He can do deep dives on all kinds of different issues. So Cruz went in there like, what a fool. He just didn't bother to prepare. Like, you want to launch war on Iran and you don't even know how many people are there. What kind of military planning are you going to participate in?

[Danny]

It's amazing to see people like, I talked, like I told you in the beginning, people like Tucker, people like, you know, lover or hater, whatever your feelings are on her. Candace Owens.

[John Kiriakou]

Sure. I've actually begun turning on Candace Owens.

[Danny]

Yeah, yeah.

[John Kiriakou]

She's actually been okay.

[Danny]

Yeah, she hasn't been bad. There's some crazy stuff.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah, yeah, there's crazy.

[Danny]

The whole thing with the with, like. Like, you know, God bless her. But she's doing this whole thing on the McCrone thing, like. Right.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah, like that.

[Danny]

And then she, you know, whatever. Anyways, like, so. So her, Tucker, Elon, even Rogan, like, these guys seem to be, like, slowly starting to, like, peel themselves away from the Trump thing. And they all, like, fully endorsed him, obviously.

[John Kiriakou]

Yes.

[Danny]

But there's, like. It seems like there's a shift happening, and I don't know if it's ever going to be possible for there to be another party. Like a third party.

[John Kiriakou]

Not a chance.

[Danny]

Like Elon's talking about.

[John Kiriakou]

Nope. But it's not 1880 anymore.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah. No more third parties. Not real ones, anyway.

[Danny]

But it's wild to see that because all those people have the biggest voices, right?

[John Kiriakou]

They sure do.

[Danny]

And it's. It's insane to me that these people in Congress, even Trump, can just go about their days ignoring this, you know, when it's like a very strong undercurrent in society right now.

[John Kiriakou]

Yes.

[Danny]

That everyone's talking about.

[John Kiriakou]

Don't forget, though, Trump doesn't. Trump isn't running for re election.

[Danny]

Right. That's true. He's got, like, 1200 days left.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah. I'm not sure he really cares. I think he's starting to think about his legacy, like every president does in the second term. He's thinking about the Donald Trump Presidential Library. He's thinking about that Nobel Peace Prize, and he wants to leave something that's permanent, like. Like the Abraham Accords, for example. I think he doesn't really care if there's a split between the maga, Republicans and the neocons. He got his big, beautiful bill through Congress. I think he probably has concluded he's going to lose the House in the next election. I think Republicans are safe in the Senate, but he'll lose the House. So any big legislative act has taken place. It's done. His big, beautiful bill. That's going to be the end of it.

[Danny]

All right, hold that thought. I got to take a leak real quick. We'll be right back. Really?

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah.

[Danny]

Why are they saying that?

[John Kiriakou]

Because he can't run for reelection. Oh. DeSantis can't run for reelection. And. And the Senate seats are taken, so he's. He's done. Done.

[Danny]

Really?

[John Kiriakou]

He's gonna go practice law someplace nobody's ever gonna. They're not even gonna remember his name in a couple years.

[Danny]

It's crazy because he was, like, on the top around Mount Rushmore in Florida.

[John Kiriakou]

During COVID and he was. Love handled it very well, yeah, he.

[Danny]

Did the best, probably.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah.

[Danny]

The best, Right. You know, we had the monoclonal antibodies before Biden pulled them.

[John Kiriakou]

Yep.

[Danny]

And this whole thing about him literally going to a foreign country to sign a freaking blasphemy law in Florida about like, it's like a. It's like an affirmative action law, right? Basically, yeah. Isn't it? We had the last 10 years or whatever of like your feelings and snowflakes.

[John Kiriakou]

That's right.

[Danny]

And then now we come and do this and it's like, oh, it's like a. We're just adopting all. All the stuff the, the right wing people are just adopting all like the DEI woke stuff that they were accusing the left people of.

[John Kiriakou]

Absolutely true.

[Danny]

Implementing.

[John Kiriakou]

These parties are the same.

[Danny]

They are.

[John Kiriakou]

They really are. That's why, you know, I got such. I am getting such chuckle out of this America party. We've got a right of center party and we have a farther right of center party. And now we're going to have a party that's in the middle of the two right of center parties. It's like, what kind of system is that?

[Danny]

Is there any way to fix this stuff? This, this lobbying in Congress and, and like stuff that Thomas Massie points out?

[John Kiriakou]

Not if you are not willing to go after apac. You have to go after apac.

[Danny]

And that's our fault, right? That's not their fault.

[John Kiriakou]

That's our fault.

[Danny]

That's our fault. We let them do.

[John Kiriakou]

Yes. From the very beginning.

[Danny]

How do you, how do you get rid of that? Who's blocking that? Is it the people just in the government? Just like the big money people, how they are.

[John Kiriakou]

Everybody's afraid of apac because if you look at them cockeyed, they're going to primary you and nobody wants that. And they have success. You know, look at Cori Bush. She was a congresswoman for what, two years? And they were like, yeah, we don't like her. She's gone. And then she was gone.

[Danny]

But don't other foreign countries lobby too here? Like, like do it through shell companies?

[John Kiriakou]

Kind of like the way they, they hire lobbyists. And those lobbyists register as. Sorry, do I keep kicking you?

[Danny]

No.

[John Kiriakou]

Oh, good. Okay. They register as, as representatives of a foreign, of a foreign government. You just fill out a form.

[Danny]

Okay.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah, yeah.

[Danny]

Oh, wow.

[John Kiriakou]

But the Israelis are like, oh, no, no, no. AIPAC is totally independent of the Israeli government. There are no ties to the Israeli government. They're acting completely on their own. They don't represent us.

[Danny]

Right.

[John Kiriakou]

It's like, okay, sure.

[Danny]

And Now, I guess Harvard is suing Trump and Trump's suing Harvard.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah.

[Danny]

And because they're saying, if you protest. If you protest the Israel war, if you protest against Israel, you're anti Semitic, and then you lose all your funding.

[John Kiriakou]

That's it.

[Danny]

Or if you're illegal, you get deported.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah. And he did the same with Colombia, which is. First of all, it's distracting because it's stupid. It's just a stupid policy.

[Danny]

Right.

[John Kiriakou]

And secondly, it. It does damage, like constitutional damage to freedom of speech. You know, GW is the same way. I stopped giving. I graduated from gw, I had both my degrees from gw, and I stopped giving money because I got one of these automated emails from the new president of the university. This is when the little tent cities were popping up on campuses.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[John Kiriakou]

And she said, we will do whatever we can to crush them. And we are bringing in the metropolitan police, and they're going to work with campus police, and we're going to destroy the tents and rest assured, we stand with Israel. Why? Why do you stand with Israel? Were you standing with Israel when they blew up the oldest continually operating church in the world, Saint Porphyrius, and killed 24 women and children inside? You standing with them then? Are you standing with them as they blew up all seven of Gaza's hospitals and killed now how many hundreds of thousands of civilians?

[Danny]

Right.

[John Kiriakou]

Because if you're standing with that, I'm not standing with you.

[Danny]

Yeah, yeah. Like, why is it. Why is it our responsibility to.

[John Kiriakou]

Exactly.

[Danny]

Unfuck Gaza?

[John Kiriakou]

Exactly.

[Danny]

That sounds like children.

[John Kiriakou]

Not a. Not a we problem. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[Danny]

When 17, 000 kids are reported to be dead.

[John Kiriakou]

Exactly.

[Danny]

Right. What is there for us? Real estate? Property. Is that really it? Is it real estate? Like, what. What is it?

[John Kiriakou]

I do think that Trump is that cynical, that it's. It's about real estate in the back of his mind, or maybe it's in the front of. But my God, the problem is so much more important than that. You know, I went to Israel twice in 2022. The second time, I was there first. Yeah. No, the first time I was there in 2022, I went for the elections to cover the elections, and I was much more portly back then. And my very last day, I had a stretch of time where I was free almost the whole day. So I thought, I'm gonna go do the things that I haven't had a chance to do. So I wanted to see, like, the Virgin Mary's tomb, for example, and I wanted to go to the Garden of Gethsemane. Jerusalem is very small. You can walk to everything. It's. It's really, like, crazy.

[Danny]

Where's the Garden of Gethsemane?

[John Kiriakou]

It's directly across from the Dome of the Rock.

[Danny]

Really?

[John Kiriakou]

Outside the. The walls? Yeah. Crazy. It's like. Yeah, that's Steve.

[Danny]

I need a photo of the Garden of Gethsemane. I'm sorry.

[John Kiriakou]

So continue.

[Danny]

Sorry.

[John Kiriakou]

I was Port Lear at the time by about 115 pounds, and it was hot that day. So the Garden of Gethsemane is up on the. On the Mount of Olives? Yeah, that's it right there.

[Danny]

Wow, look at that. It's beautiful.

[John Kiriakou]

It is. It's gorgeous. And those olive trees are direct descendants of the olive trees that were there 2,000 years ago.

[Danny]

Really?

[John Kiriakou]

They've done DNA testing. It's very cool. They're unique to. To that location.

[Danny]

Those trees have seen some stuff.

[John Kiriakou]

Seriously. So I'm walking around, and it's really hot, and I thought, I'm gonna go back to the old city and buy a souvenir for, you know, my kids. So you go down the Mount of Olives into the valley, and then you come back up at what's called the Iron Gate. The Iron Gate is the sort of the back entrance to the old city of Jerusalem. And I was winded, and I'm sweaty, and there's a. There's a bench there right outside the Iron Gate. So when I say right outside, I mean, like, 20ft. Okay. And there's a woman sitting there, and I sat down. She says, hi. I said, hi. I said, where are you from? She's from Brooklyn. I said, oh, I'm from D.C. you here for vacation? Yeah, here for vacation. So as we're talking, I'm looking at the gate, and it's not really a gate, it's just an opening called the Iron Gate. And it's been there for, you know, a thousand years. A little more than a thousand years. There are three IDF soldiers standing in the gate, and there's this hustle and bustle of Palestinians just in and out, and they're balancing, like, crates of fruits and vegetables on their heads. And you're going about their business, normal business for a morning. But there's this one Palestinian guy, and he's just kind of milling around. So I notice him. I'm looking right at him as I'm talking to this woman, and one of the IDF guys notices him. So he walks, like, eight feet over to ask the guy, what are you doing here? But before he could even get the words out. The Palestinian pulls out a knife and stabs him twice in the stomach. And then one of the other guards shoots him and kills him right there in front of me. 20ft away, this woman screams. And I said, we better get the fuck out of here. So we ran. I was directly across the footpath from the back entrance to the Rockefeller archaeological campus. So we. We ran there, separated. I went back to my hotel. Armored personnel carriers are coming. They. They steal off the gate, helicopters flying around. So I wrote it up as fast as I could. And I turn on the Israeli news, and they said there was this assassination attempt at the Iron Gate. And then they're interviewing Israelis. I didn't see any Israelis there. This was the Palestinian part of the old city. But they start interviewing these Israelis, and they're like, they hate us more than they love life itself. It's like, seriously? That's what you're gonna go with here?

[Danny]

Wow.

[John Kiriakou]

That's what you took from this? They hate us more than they love life itself. There's a complete disconnect in that country.

[Danny]

And the crazy thing about it, too, is their ancestry is identical.

[John Kiriakou]

They're all the same.

[Danny]

Both of them came from the Canaanites.

[John Kiriakou]

Exactly. And then at some point in history, they went like that. But they're the same people.

[Danny]

Same exact people.

[John Kiriakou]

Exactly. Just nuts. It's an awesome place to visit. I can't imagine living there. I can't imagine it.

[Danny]

You know, I would hope that that would never get to that kind of a fever pitch in America. But it seems like here we're, you know, in this country of mostly the same people, but with, like, the more, you know, the more it seems like the more technology develops, the more people have the ability to just communicate their. Communicate their random thoughts off the top of their head before thinking about it and before processing it.

[John Kiriakou]

You're right.

[Danny]

It seems like it's. It's. It's dividing people more and more. And when that kind of stuff is able to be exploited by people that want more division, whether it be foreign agents or bots or whatever it is to. You know, some people think that. Which is probably pretty legitimate, that, like, countries like China are doing this specifically to just create more divide in the United States. But, like, if we go in that direction, could we ever end up like that? You know, like, it seems like.

[John Kiriakou]

Imagine.

[Danny]

It seems like the people that are the most different get along the most. Yeah, right. Like, if you go to a place like Brooklyn or New York.

[John Kiriakou]

Right, right.

[Danny]

Like a melting pot, all these people where they make fun of you for your race.

[John Kiriakou]

Right?

[Danny]

Right. You make fun of the, you make fun of the Arab, the Muslim or the Christian guy or the Jew. Right. But they do it like in like.

[John Kiriakou]

A friendly way, good fun.

[Danny]

It's part of like building a relationship and trust with somebody. Right. It's almost like if you go to Brooklyn or these places and, and you can't make fun of somebody else or you're. They're not making fun of you for your race or your ethnicity or whatever, it's like you almost don't trust that person. You know what I mean? And the more and more people are the same, the more it seems like in just that case specifically, it's like the more they, they want to like, just find differences in themselves.

[John Kiriakou]

You know, Texas is in the process, or was. It has been in the process this week of passing a state law in the legislature to ban Sharia law in Texas. First of all, I didn't realize Sharia law was a problem in Texas. Secondly, I don't think any of them actually know what Sharia law is.

[Danny]

Right. What is it?

[John Kiriakou]

Well, it's a combination of different things. It's the way that you address the day to day aspects of life. For example, Sharia law says that when the head of the household dies, half of the money goes to the wife and the other half of the money goes to this, to the sons. Okay? Big deal. Sharia law says that you can't charge interest on a loan. It's not appropriate. It. You can charge a user fee, but, but you can't charge interest.

[Danny]

Okay.

[John Kiriakou]

You can't call it interest, you can't call it usury.

[Danny]

That's Sharia law, is there, there's no religious stuff baked into it.

[John Kiriakou]

You know, occasionally there are little tenants, but not really. No, no.

[Danny]

Yeah, it's. It seems like all like here too. Like, not just with that law, but there's a, it seems like there's a, A, a huge undercurrent or, or a rise in Christianity. Yeah, right. Like Trump appointed somebody to be like the head of Christian something in the White House. Right?

[John Kiriakou]

Yes.

[Danny]

What was that about?

[John Kiriakou]

Reach. Yes.

[Danny]

See if you can find what that was, Steve. There was somebody who has like a, their little, their literal title.

[John Kiriakou]

You've seen that YouTube video of that blonde woman from Frederick, Maryland, who's his Christianity advisor.

[Danny]

Oh, she's like, that's what I'm talking.

[John Kiriakou]

In Africa. In Africa and Africa. Africa and Africa. Remember that video? Absolutely freaking hilarious.

[Danny]

I don't remember that.

[John Kiriakou]

Oh, you have to see it, it's, it's like nuts.

[Danny]

When. How do, how would he find it? Yeah.

[John Kiriakou]

Put Trump, Christian advisor. Africa.

[Danny]

How long ago was this?

[John Kiriakou]

It was in the first term.

[Danny]

Okay. Yeah. And there's also, like, this lady who just went up in front of Congress who was supposed to be. I think she got axed, but she was going to be like the, the, the, the liaison to the UN or to the, to NATO or something like this, and the ambassador to the UN maybe, I think it was. And she was saying in front of Congress, they asked her, like, do you think Israel has a biblical right to the West Bank? And she says, absolutely, they do.

[John Kiriakou]

There's a piece in the New York Times yesterday about one of the last Christian villages in the West Bank. It's being invaded by Israeli settlers from New Jersey and New York. They're throwing all the, all the Christians out and just seizing the land, confiscating it.

[Danny]

Holy.

[John Kiriakou]

It's, it's bad.

[Danny]

Yeah. And then on top of that, you have, like, Peter Thiel.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah.

[Danny]

Who.

[John Kiriakou]

That's her. Oh, my God. Paula White.

[Danny]

Oh, my God.

[John Kiriakou]

The, the.

[Danny]

Can you find.

[John Kiriakou]

The YouTube video is ridiculous.

[Danny]

I, I think, I think I found it. I'm not quite sure. All right.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah, that's it. That's it. And there's a guy just wandering around behind her.

[Danny]

Oh, I think I have seen it.

[C]

When I walk on White House grounds. God walks on White House grounds. I had every right and authority to declare the White House as holy ground because I was standing there and where I stand is holy.

[John Kiriakou]

This woman's been divorced three times, by the way.

[Danny]

That's right on par. Yeah. Right on brand.

[C]

Say no to President Trump would be saying no to God.

[John Kiriakou]

And there. And I won't do that.

[C]

We are in a spiritual war right now. Let every demonic network that has aligned itself against the purpose, against the calling of President Trump, Let it be broken. Let it be torn down in the name of Jesus. I'm going to tell you what my thoughts are. The thoughts of the King of Kings, the thoughts of the Lord of Lords. I'm downloading heaven.

[Danny]

What is that?

[John Kiriakou]

Oh, she's speaking in tongues. Because the Holy Spirit has seized her.

[Danny]

Oh, my God. Personal pastor and spiritual advisor.

[C]

A little bit cute.

[John Kiriakou]

All right.

[C]

I am Paula, who is pretty. Well, maybe I'm not going to be pretty when I'm 90 years old. Here's this former messed up Mississippi girl, lived in a trailer that they called trailer trash. Daddy committed suicide, got pregnant out of wedlock. Been married, been divorced. Not just once. You know twice people go, well, how three times the President. We'll get to that later. It's all in there. Michael Jackson, Kid Rock, the President. It's all in there.

[Danny]

All right, thank you, Paula. What a great job you do do the evangelicals. I hear we're more popular than ever with the evangelicals. You're the only one. And she'll tell the truth. She'll only tell the truth.

[C]

Southern California is looking at. Well, there's already law that's passed through the governor that says the Bible is a book of hate speech and to ban the sale of it. Snapchat was created as the largest human trafficking because the greatest people on there were human traffickers, because the FBI and because intelligence could not do it. Because it's live and it's real time and they can track your kid and in less than a second and take them. There's a Department of Treasury. God is watching over everything you do and you are storing up eternal treasure that will go so far beyond I think that we can even begin to imagine. You need to send in $3,500. You need to send in 35,000. You need to send in that hundred thousand dollar check. If you do not write that P.O. box and you do not call that toll free number and you do not become a ministry of sustain or you will never see sustainment in your life and your dream will die. Your call will die.

[Danny]

Wow.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah.

[Danny]

Damn.

[John Kiriakou]

Oh yeah.

[Danny]

$3 million condo.

[John Kiriakou]

Look the now they're laying the laying on of hands.

[Danny]

Do you really think he's like religious?

[John Kiriakou]

Not at all.

[Danny]

He's just using this stuff as a.

[John Kiriakou]

Absolutely.

[Danny]

Like there's the video of him from his first term where he's holding the Bible and he's holding it like it's a dirty diaper.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah.

[Danny]

I think he's just using this stuff to like pander to.

[John Kiriakou]

How about when he autographed the Bible?

[Danny]

Oh my God.

[John Kiriakou]

You know I've seen him for sale autographed Bibles.

[Danny]

Is there a more obnoxious signature that exists other than like that is the most obnoxious signature in the world.

[John Kiriakou]

It's a very, very unique.

[Danny]

But anyways, like. Yeah. And then so Peter Thiel is.

[John Kiriakou]

There it is. Autographed Bible.

[Danny]

Oh, look at that.

[John Kiriakou]

Oh, it's only $7,000 signed by Donald.

[Danny]

That's 37, 000. Wow. We need to get one of those.

[John Kiriakou]

Oh my goodness.

[Danny]

That's amazing.

[John Kiriakou]

Wow.

[Danny]

Yeah. So like Silicon Valley is now becoming the Christian. Like Peter Thiel is trying to map Christianity onto everything. Silicon Valley is doing, you know, a place that's been historically kind of like not religious, right. Almost. Almost anti Christian.

[John Kiriakou]

Sure.

[Danny]

And now it's becoming very Christian. There's this church there that all these people are going to, and all of these defense contractors, the head of Anduril and Peter Thiel are holding these big Christian conferences, inviting all these people from Silicon Valley there. That's curious. That's interesting. You know, I'm like, why? Why? What is he doing?

[John Kiriakou]

Right. Does he know something that we don't?

[Danny]

I don't know.

[John Kiriakou]

Is he covering his bets? I don't know. I don't know what to make of that.

[Danny]

I, I don't know what to make of that either. You know, unless it seems like, you know, he obviously, he's very much invested in the national security. He makes literally, you know, he makes most of his money from the Defense Department with, with Palantir. All right. They created Palantir, was originally funded by In Q Tel. That's right. And they get all their money, you know, they, they, they just got another 800 billion or. 800 million.

[John Kiriakou]

That's right.

[Danny]

From the DOD for Palantir. And like, one of my kind of. I think it's kind of a weak hypothesis, but it's a hypothesis is that maybe he thinks that if the United States was a co. The majority of the citizens of our country all subscribe to one religion, maybe that would make the United States a better, more powerful country. You know, like, because there's. I, I. When it comes to wars, you have people in other parts of the world that are so devoted to their God or their religion that they're willing to strap a bomb to their chest and die for it.

[John Kiriakou]

Right.

[Danny]

We don't have that at all.

[John Kiriakou]

Right.

[Danny]

Maybe he thinks it's like a national security thing that we need to be, you know, the whole country needs to be, you know, devoted to Christianity. And it would.

[John Kiriakou]

That, that would be a common evangelical theme. You know, there are a lot of people who believe that.

[Danny]

Yeah. And you see it too, like, with people on the Internet. You know, a lot of, like the biggest political pundits and a lot of the biggest podcasters are, are like, converting to Christianity and like getting baptized on YouTube. You know, one of the guys was Russell Brand, you know.

[John Kiriakou]

Right.

[Danny]

He's a big one, right?

[John Kiriakou]

Yes.

[Danny]

So, like. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what to make of it. I just find it super, super interesting, this, like, sort of like groundswell of Christianity.

[John Kiriakou]

I think I've mentioned to you in the past that from. From 2008 to 2012, I was an adjunct professor of intelligence studies at Liberty University, which is Jerry Falwell's evangelical university. When they called me in 2008 to offer me this job, I said, why would you want me? We probably disagree on 99% of the issues. And the dean said, because torture's not Christian. And I said, okay, I'll do it. And I liked it. I enjoyed the job. I enjoyed the people that I worked with, really good people. But they have some really scary political views. And this blind support for Israel is not really what it seems to be at first glance. There's no real love of Israel. The reason why they so stridently and steadfastly support Israel is because they want to hasten the second coming of Christ. The Bible says, the book of Revelation says that when all the Jews return to Israel, that's when the Messiah comes and the end times are upon us. So they think that through political activism they can help to force this, to squeeze the timeline and make it happen like now, sooner.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[John Kiriakou]

Rather than later.

[Danny]

Peter Thiel talks about that a lot too. You know, an interesting thing Rogan was telling to me. He has this, he has this idea of the second coming of Christ and if like Jesus coming back in another form and he, he was using like the analogy. So like Jesus was born of a virgin. Right. He's like, well, if Christ is going to come back, something that's divine and something that is, comes from God or that is like a God, he's like, wouldn't that be AI if AI became sentient? Oh, and if we reach the technological singularity, AI would be like a God and it would be, it would be of a virgin.

[John Kiriakou]

Okay, that's iRobot.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[John Kiriakou]

And yeah, we don't want that to happen.

[Danny]

No, no.

[John Kiriakou]

Oh my God.

[Danny]

That's pretty crazy. Just the, I mean, and like the unregulation, the unregulated race to AI is, is also.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah.

[Danny]

You know, scary because we don't know. We can't, we can't. Like it's, it's, it's a double edged sword because, like, can we. Do we regulate it? Is China regulating their AI? You know, we're gonna have to do something, afford to do that.

[John Kiriakou]

I fear that it, that we can't in the near term because we don't fully understand it.

[Danny]

Right.

[John Kiriakou]

You know, AI lies to us and, and it makes up. I've been trying to experiment with it a little bit and when it was first released, I went on And I wrote, who is John Kiriakou? And it says, john Kiriakou is a former CIA officer, whistleblower, author, blah, blah, blah. Okay? He earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Maryland and a master's degree in peace studies from the University of Ghent in Belgium. First of all, I don't even know where the University of Maryland is. I know it's called College Park. I've never been there. I've never been on the campus of the University of Maryland. Not sure how I'd even find it. I didn't know there was a University of Ghent in Belgium. I've never seen it. I did not get a master's degree in peace studies there. So I wrote, you are incorrect. John Kiriakou earned bachelor's and master's degrees at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. enter. And it comes back. It says, no, you are incorrect. John Kiriakou studied at the University of Maryland and the University of Ghent. And I just stopped.

[Danny]

Which I. Which AI was this.

[John Kiriakou]

This was chatgpt. And then recently I was teaching this class in Spain. It's a graduate school class in intelligence. It was the history of. Of terrorism. So this is my sweet spot, right? I. I love this stuff. So I. I wrote this very detailed syllabus, and then I put a bunch of books that, you know, friends of mine have written, professors and spies and stuff like that, on Carlos the Jackal and the Palestinian groups and all the. All the different eras. So I put it into chat gbt, and I asked if it. If it would give me links to scholarly journal articles specific to each one of the. The notes, right? So we start with, you know, terrorism in the bible. And then we go to, you know, whatever the medieval times. And then we go to, you know, the Israelis doing terrorism against British troops in the Palestine mandate, all the way to the current times. So it gave me all these different. It was like 14 scholarly journal articles for the seven nodes, and every single one of the links was fake. There were no such journal articles. It just made shit up.

[Danny]

Whoa.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah. Literally not a single one of them was real. So I don't know what to make of this AI.

[Danny]

Someone was explaining to me this story the other day on how the Russians were using AI LLMs to convince Ukrainian soldiers to lay down their weapons and retreat and. And quit the war. They were using. Somehow. They were somehow getting into their phones and reading, like, all their communications with their relatives. And they were. The LLMs were faking, texting them or, like, messaging them, being their relatives, convincing them be like, come home. We want you back. We want you to leave, like, emotionally.

[John Kiriakou]

Well, just what? This week, some. Some hacker called Marco, not called Marco Rubio, spoofed Marco Rubio his voice through. Through AI and called what, three foreign leaders claiming to be Marco Rubio.

[Danny]

Oh, I didn't even see.

[John Kiriakou]

This buddy of mine that's. That's here with us today was telling me about it.

[Danny]

No way.

[John Kiriakou]

This stuff is very dangerous, you know.

[Danny]

Oh, yeah, oh, yeah.

[John Kiriakou]

What if, what if, what if somebody spoofs the Turkish, you know, president and has him call the Greek prime minister and says, you know, I think you suck. We're going to invade. We're going to invade in two hours.

[Danny]

Right.

[John Kiriakou]

You know, or. Or Putin's voice saying, hey, I'm sorry, there's been a military coup. The rockets are flying. Take cover. Oh, there it is.

[Danny]

Foster uses AI to impersonate Rubio and contact foreign and US Officials. What is the first. What does the sub line say? Wow. The state department is warning U. S. Diplomats to attempt. And that was an attempt to impersonate secretary of state Marco Rubio and possibly other officials using technology driven by artificial intellig intelligence, according to two senior officials. And the cable sent last week to all embassies and consulates.

[John Kiriakou]

This is a major security incident.

[Danny]

Yeah, because, like, how do you address it? Right? Like how, like, like, you know, how often do all these people and these leaders stay in contact with each other? Right, right. Like, this was the big thing about. In Annie Jacobson's book about nuclear war, she was saying, you know, it's not like a quick thing for the president to get on the phone with Putin.

[John Kiriakou]

Right. Like, it takes time.

[Danny]

If, like, if there was a nuclear war and there was. If. If our satellite Systems detected some ICBM in the atmosphere, like, we only have a.10 minutes to respond to, like, to retest, because we have our user lose it. Nukes, like, in the Midwest that are like the ones that are stationary.

[John Kiriakou]

That's right.

[Danny]

Like, if we have a rocket coming towards us, we have to use those or they're. We have to assume that they're going to be hit and they're going to be destroyed.

[John Kiriakou]

That's right.

[Danny]

So we have 10 minutes to get on the phone with Pooh Putin, and we have 10 minutes to figure out where this thing came from. Right. And then if it did come from, in her book, the hypothetical situation was it came from North Korea. And if we had to launch our nukes back at North Korea, they would have to overfly Russia. Right. So we would have to get Putin on the phone immediately to tell them to tell him. We have. We have ICBMs going for North Korea. They're going to overfly Russia. They're not coming for Russia. But, like, when's the last time we got Putin on the phone? In less than 10 minutes.

[John Kiriakou]

Who just told me a story today or yesterday about Jimmy Carter, about something like this happening with Jimmy Carter. I don't remember if it was Sean, my buddy, or maybe it was yesterday. I can't remember. But anyway, the way the story went, I have no idea if this is true or apocryphal, but NORAD said that they detected one missile coming from the Soviet Union over the Pole, and it was on its way to the United States. And they asked Carter, you know, what do we do? Do we launch? We have to defend ourselves. And Carter said, I'll call Brezhnev. So he calls Brezhnev, and Brezhnev said, no, it. It's not us. It's probably some kind of, you know, magnetic anomaly. And so Carter told NORAD to stand down. And this general, I guess, asked him, how can you be so sure? And he said, because I woke Brezhnev up. And he said, I've spoken to him many times. I know what he sounds like. He was sleeping. If they were launching a nuclear attack on the United States, he wouldn't be sleeping. And it turned out to be nothing. Just one of those magnetic anomalies.

[Danny]

Yeah, that's. That's a close call.

[John Kiriakou]

Ah, there. There it is. There it is, right there. Oh. But it says 1400 Soviet ballistic missiles.

[Danny]

Oh. Oh, yes, I remember. I remember hearing about this.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah. Jimmy Carter.

[Danny]

Yeah. One of the scary things, too, that Annie was telling me is that we only have 44 interceptor missiles.

[John Kiriakou]

Are you kidding?

[Danny]

44.

[John Kiriakou]

So much for the.

[Danny]

There's, like a golden dome, right? Yeah. There's a couple in. At Vandenberg, and then there's a bunch of them that are in Alaska.

[John Kiriakou]

Right. Because they would be coming over the Pole.

[Danny]

Yeah. But if you. If you. If you initiate a nuclear war, you don't just send a couple missiles. You send the mother load. Right. So 44. And the. The accuracy of those interceptor missiles is like something around 40 accuracy, because it's like. It's equivalent. It's like shooting a bullet out of the sky with another bullet.

[John Kiriakou]

That's right.

[Danny]

You know, it's exactly what it is. And they're murdered. A lot of them are merged. So they have, like, multiple warheads. Yeah. After they get into the atmosphere, multiple RE entry vehicles. But like. Yeah, so the, the golden dome. And then like the Star wars stuff where they're. They're trying to. They're trying to get satellites into space to take out ICBMs.

[John Kiriakou]

I'm gonna fly back home.

[Danny]

I mean, it makes sense why. It makes sense why Elon's not gonna attack the Pentagon for all the missing money. Because I'm sure a lot of it's going to stuff that he's doing.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah, sure. Definitely.

[Danny]

Launching into space.

[John Kiriakou]

Definitely.

[Danny]

Unit.

[John Kiriakou]

No. Huh? And Bezos too.

[Danny]

And Bezos too.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah, with Amazon. Aws, Amazon. I don't know, something services. Anyway, that's the, that's the unit of Amazon that deals with the CIA.

[Danny]

Oh, really?

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah.

[Danny]

You know, they asked. They asked him about UF. Every time he gets asked about UFOs, he's like, I don't think it's anything. He's like, if there's aliens, it sure. They sure are. They sure are sneaky because I've never seen any evidence of that. It's. He's weird.

[John Kiriakou]

Oh, man.

[Danny]

And then, you know, with the, with the stuff that he's doing too. Another thing, I should have brought this up in the beginning when we were talking about the Epstein stuff, but, you know, he's like going. He's on a jihad right now on this Epstein Trump stuff, saying, like, you know, Trump's implicated the Epstein files. Bans. Implicated in the Epstein files.

[John Kiriakou]

See, but he wouldn't have access to the Epstein files. So where does he get his information? I don't know.

[Danny]

Right, right. Well, the interesting thing is Trump sues everybody. Right. Anybody who talks about him, says a lie about him.

[John Kiriakou]

Oh, yeah.

[Danny]

Whether it's the news or whether it.

[John Kiriakou]

Releases a poll that he doesn't like.

[Danny]

He calls his lawyer. I mean, he sues. He sues anybody and everybody. You know, if the wind's blowing the wrong direction, he's gonna sue. God. But he didn't sue Elon.

[John Kiriakou]

No.

[Danny]

Why didn't he sue Elon?

[John Kiriakou]

Good question.

[Danny]

If, if he did sue Elon, would there have to be some sort of discovery?

[John Kiriakou]

Yes. Although the FBI could do exactly what the CIA does. You go into the. The courtroom and you say, your Honor, national security. And the judge says, case dismissed.

[Danny]

So in the case where there was, there did have to be discovery and they did have to bring evidence of. Of these files or whatever there is, and Trump being implicated in them. There would be a way for them not to.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah.

[Danny]

Not to bring it into discovery. Even if it was definitely CIA.

[John Kiriakou]

Does it. All the time. All the time.

[Danny]

So you don't think it's possible that Trump said to his lawyers, go sue Elon. And they're like, we can't sue Elon because then this stuff will have to come into, into discovery. Like that's, that's not possible.

[John Kiriakou]

I think, well, it would probably be called into discovery. And then the Justice Department would have to say, you know, based on national security grounds, we can't go forward with the suit. So. Wouldn't make any sense. Yeah, like when Maher Arar, the, the Canadian professor that we kidnapped and sent to Tunisia for torture, Syria for torture, sued the, sued the CIA, and we tortured that poor guy mercilessly for like nine months. And then the Syrians come back and they said, you know, we think this is the wrong guy. And so the CIA's position was we never, we, we never grabbed him, we never sent him, rendered him to Syria. And it turned out that he had flown back to jfk, the FBI grabbed him, we're coming off the plane, turned him over to the CIA, CIA flew him right back to Syria. But he had bought a pair of sunglasses for his wife on the onboard duty free. So the guy just vanishes for a month. His wife finally gets the credit card bill and there's the purchase. Because the airline kept saying, nope, he wasn't on the plane. Never got on the plane, Never got on the plane. American government's like, we never heard of him. We don't know what's going on. And there it was. He bought these sunglasses on the plane. So then they said, okay, well, you know, he's, he's Al Qaeda. He's connected to Al Qaeda. So, you know, he's, he's being detained, he's being tortured. And then they said, that's the wrong guy. So he flew back, he filed a lawsuit against the, the CIA. And they go into court in the Eastern District of Virginia and he says, you know, the CIA kidnapped me, they sent me to Syria, they tortured me mercilessly, and so I'm suing. And then the judge says to the CIA, your response? National security judge says, case dismissed. And that was it.

[Danny]

Wow.

[John Kiriakou]

So he ended up suing the Canadian government because the Canadians, of course, were in cahoots because it's a five eyes country. And we told the Canadians, look, he's Al Qaeda. And they said, okay, we're just going to pretend we don't know anything. So he won $6 million. But the last time I spoke to him, the guy's a guy's A political science professor at the University of Toronto. The last time I spoke to him, he told me that his PTSD is so severe that he hadn't left his house in six years. He teaches his classes online. That's how traumatized he is.

[Danny]

Yikes. There's this. What. What do you think about this new Guantanamo they're opening up in the Everglades?

[John Kiriakou]

Oh, yeah. They even have streets erode signs.

[Danny]

Alligator.

[John Kiriakou]

Alligator. Alligator Alcatraz.

[Danny]

Alligator Alcatraz.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah.

[Danny]

Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[John Kiriakou]

I don't. Yeah. Not. It's not good. It's not good. You know. Okay, you want to.

[Danny]

What happens when. When like a super left wing person gets in power again? AOC gets in power and wants to. To, you know, use that to. To lock up her enemies.

[John Kiriakou]

Exactly. Where's the national consensus on these issues? Because, you know, it's going to flip. It always does. And then what? Right Then you're going to start screaming about this, you know, hellhole dungeon that's down in Florida.

[Danny]

Right.

[John Kiriakou]

There was one funny thing that happened this week. I don't know if you happen to see it in Politico. The administration wanted to sell, like, vast swaths of public land out west, right?

[Danny]

Oh, yes. See this? Yes, I did see this.

[John Kiriakou]

See, it was Republican senators who killed it. And did you happen to see why? Because Hakeem Jeffries said, you know what, this is a great idea. Let's sell off all these giant parcels of land because when the Democrats take over again, and we will. He said, we're going to use it to build affordable housing for poor people.

[Danny]

Right.

[John Kiriakou]

And they were like, oh, no, no, no, nothing's for sale. The whole thing's dead. It's killed.

[Danny]

Well, there was a huge. When they were, when they were trying to put that in the bill, there was like, everybody was losing their. On social media. Like, people were doing podcasts about it. People were like, you know, you know, big time, like activists and like, hunting. People were like, complaining about it. Yeah, like, why? Why?

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah, why?

[Danny]

For Section 8 housing. Like, and it's amazing that they were able to strike it out of the bill.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah, yeah.

[Danny]

You know, and that's, that's one of the things that. And was that in the big beautiful. Where. What was that?

[John Kiriakou]

It was originally supposed to, it was.

[Danny]

Originally supposed to be about that. And that's, you know, that's one of the interesting things that Thomas Massey was explaining to Theo von. And that thing how they just pack these bills full of so many things that.

[John Kiriakou]

Do you know why? Because there's A rule in the Senate that you cannot filibuster a budget bill.

[Danny]

What is, what is English?

[John Kiriakou]

So if you sponsor a bill, you're a senator.

[Danny]

Yes.

[John Kiriakou]

And you sponsor a bill to make, you know, national Spring water Day.

[Danny]

Okay.

[John Kiriakou]

Maybe I don't want to make a national spring water day. So I'm gonna say, well, I, I'm gonna, I'm gonna give a speech and my speech is going to be unlimited in time, because I don't like this spring water idea. So in order to force me to stop talking, you need 60 votes. Right. But if there's the federal budget and you put a little amendment. Oh, and it's the federal budget, the national spring water bill day day bill, you only need 51 votes, right.

[Danny]

Well, the federal budget is tied to it.

[John Kiriakou]

If the federal budget's tied to it. So there are 53 Republicans and 47 Democrats and they're so partisan that the votes are going to be 53, 47, 52, 48. If it's somebody that's really unpopular, like Kennedy, it's going to be 50, 50. And then Vance breaks the tie. 51, 50. So. So they're not gonna pass anything in the Senate. Nothing's getting passed. Cuz you need 60 votes. Except for the budget. That's why the big beautiful bill had literally everything that Trump wanted. Budget or not budget or just stuff that he pulled out of the sky and had them put in one day because he knew that this was his one and only shot to get this stuff passed into law.

[Danny]

And the other thing that he was saying that they do is they'll put things in there like, you know, they'll put something in there, for example, that like the Democratic Party will absolutely never vote for and they don't want. And they'll put. Also. So like if, if you're voting against it, they'll put in there like support for homeless veterans.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah.

[Danny]

And they can say, oh, you, you don't care about homeless veterans.

[John Kiriakou]

Exactly. Do you remember the Simpsons movie?

[Danny]

Yeah.

[John Kiriakou]

Okay, so remember there's gonna be this dome over Springfield.

[Danny]

Yes.

[John Kiriakou]

Glass dome.

[Danny]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[John Kiriakou]

So Congress, Congress takes up the issue of evacuating the citizens of Springfield. So they're in the House of Representatives and they're, they're debating it and it's gonna be unanimous. They need to save the people of Springfield. And then at the last second, this liberal congressman puts up his hand and says, Mr. Speaker, I would like to attach an amendment to the Save Springfield Act. It is to appropriate $100 million for the perverted Arts. And then the speaker says, all those in favor of the Save Springfield Fund, the Perverted Arts bill, say aye. All those opposed?

[Danny]

No.

[John Kiriakou]

The bill fails.

[Danny]

That's hilarious. Yeah, that's exactly.

[John Kiriakou]

Because that's what they do. That's Washington.

[Danny]

And they don't even have the time between when. When they're brought to the floor and when they're supposed to be voted on. They like, there's no time to read all these hundreds of pages of stuff and let alone for the public to go through it.

[John Kiriakou]

The big, beautiful bill was 1600 pages long.

[Danny]

That's insane.

[John Kiriakou]

And the Democrats insisted. On the Senate side, they insisted that every word of it be read. Right. It was a stalling tactic.

[Danny]

Okay?

[John Kiriakou]

Because usually no bills. Get ready floor. It took 14 hours. 16 hours. 16 hours to read the bill. That's why it was delayed a day on the Senate side. Remember, the House voted, and the Senate was supposed to vote the next day. It was two days later. But then they also pulled another procedural thing. I have a master's degree in Legislative Affairs. I love this stuff. What happens usually is the House passes a version and the Senate passes a version. Right. But the House, they put. But maybe AOC has an amendment and Massey has an amendment and somebody else has an amendment, and then the Senate does it. And then maybe Murkowski wants to build another bridge to nowhere and Lindsey Graham wants to give money to the homeless veterans or whatever. So the bills aren't the same. They'll vote on it in the House. Let's say it passes. The Senate votes on its own one and it passes, but the bills are different, so they can't go to the President. So they go to something called conference committee. So the Democrats appoint their representatives to the conference committee from the House and from the Senate. The Republicans also do it from the House and from the Senate. They negotiate the differences between the two bills. They come up with one unified bill, and it goes back to the House for them to revote and then back to the Senate for them to revote. And if the identical bills are then passed, then it goes to the President for his signature. This one was so close and so controversial that the House passed its version, the Senate passed its version, which was different. And then the speaker of the House said, whatever you guys passed, we just. We'll take it. We don't need to hammer whatever. Just ignore our amendments. We'll just take your amendments.

[Danny]

Why?

[John Kiriakou]

Because they were afraid that the likes of Thomas Massie were going to convince just two more people to vote no. And the Whole thing would have been dead.

[Danny]

Wow.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah. Right now, because of deaths and retirements, mostly deaths, the Republicans have a majority in the House of three and it's the smallest majority in American history. So Massey's a no vote that only leads to malcontents. If they flip their vote, it's all over.

[Danny]

Jesus. This whole thing, I mean, the, the whole congressional bill passing stuff.

[John Kiriakou]

Our system's broken.

[Danny]

Confusing. I think it's designed to be confusing.

[John Kiriakou]

It is, it is because. Because it forces negotiation. You know what I mean?

[Danny]

Yeah.

[John Kiriakou]

It forces bipartisanship.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[John Kiriakou]

Or in the beginning of the Republic, multi. Partisanship. And now it just pisses people off.

[Danny]

So, like, now that the big beautiful bill is passed, like, other than the fact that they've, like, what are like, the biggest things in your mind about that bill?

[John Kiriakou]

That huge amounts of money for border protection.

[Danny]

Okay. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It was like $15 billion more money.

[John Kiriakou]

Than they'll be able to spend and, and gigantic increases yet again for the Pentagon. It's crazy.

[Danny]

Yeah. 15 billion for border production. Seems insane.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah. What are they gonna do with all that?

[Danny]

Yeah. Like, how do you.

[John Kiriakou]

I mean, like, literally, what are you gonna do with all that? I don't know.

[Danny]

Yeah. The raid, I mean, like the, the ICE stuff and like the rays, like that, that's another thing. We haven't even talked about, but that's another thing. All, all of the like, like the. Would you call them, like the high IQ MAGA people are, are really, really questioning and pushing back on, like. Right.

[John Kiriakou]

Because these guys are wearing masks. They're not wearing uniforms. There's no identification. You don't know if they're ICE or if they're a kidnapper or a cartel guy or, you know, some nut who, you know, wants to be.

[Danny]

And they're showing up at construction sites and Home Depots and arresting workers.

[John Kiriakou]

Right.

[Danny]

And, and handcuffing six year olds.

[John Kiriakou]

Yes.

[Danny]

And not going after, like, real rapists and criminals and people who are, like, doing really bad.

[John Kiriakou]

I, I know that you didn't intend for this to be the, you know, the Massey Appreciation Society show, but Massey was talking about this on, on the floor of the House the other day, saying this doesn't make any sense.

[Danny]

No.

[John Kiriakou]

If you want to, if you want to fulfill your campaign promises. Promises, let's grab the murderers and the rapists and the robbers and people who've been convicted of a crime or even if they've got minor crimes on the record, if they're career criminals, grab those people and send them back to, you know, Send them to wherever they came from. You know, there's this situation in Djibouti right now too. Have you followed this?

[Danny]

I have not.

[John Kiriakou]

So we've got eight guys that we grabbed. Every one of them has been convicted of either murder or. Or armed robbery.

[Danny]

Oh, I did hear about this.

[John Kiriakou]

And they're being held at the, at the joint U. S. Chinese drone base in Djibouti. Camp Lemonier. I've been there. It's the, it's like out of the twilight zone.

[Danny]

And we're find Djibouti on a map I need to see. I can't picture where the hell Djibouti is.

[John Kiriakou]

It's a little teeny tiny right in the Horn of Africa.

[Danny]

On the, on the. Oh, the Horn of Africa.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah, just at the top of the horn. So. So the Trump administration wants to expel them to South Sudan. Hell on earth. Literally the poorest and most war torn country on the planet. None of these guys are from South Sudan, but the supreme court said last week. There's Djibouti.

[Danny]

Zoom out. Okay, yeah, that's where I thought it was.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah.

[Danny]

Right next to Yemen.

[John Kiriakou]

Yep. 16 miles right across the Babel Mandeb. That's where the Houthis are, are rocketing ships, right?

[Danny]

Oh, really?

[John Kiriakou]

Right here?

[Danny]

God.

[John Kiriakou]

Yep.

[Danny]

So these dudes, where are they originally from?

[John Kiriakou]

They're from all over Africa.

[Danny]

They're from all over Africa.

[John Kiriakou]

None of them are from South Sudan.

[Danny]

And, and who call them CIA?

[John Kiriakou]

No. Well, it's unclear. Maybe. Okay, yeah, could be CIA, could be FBI.

[Danny]

We want to take him out of Djibouti and send them to Sudan.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah.

[Danny]

Why? What? What?

[John Kiriakou]

Because they're living, they're living on the base right now.

[Danny]

Oh, on our base?

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah.

[Danny]

Okay.

[John Kiriakou]

And we just want to get rid of them. I mean they'll, they'll likely starve to death in two or three weeks in South Sudan like everybody else is, right?

[Danny]

Yeah, yeah. The crazy thing about the, the ice stuff is like, so my friend, I have a good friend who has a big concrete construction company and he. All his Mexican, like his whole company's Mexicans, basically all the workers, even like the, the project managers, the supervisors, all the top guys are Mexicans and they have like their crews or whatever. And like he knows that they're trying to raid construction sites and stuff. So he's for paranoid.

[John Kiriakou]

Oh yeah. It'll put him out of business.

[Danny]

One of his guys got pulled over and got popped. One of his big top guys. And then they put him in a holding facility. This dude Just had a kid three weeks ago. So he's got his like two wife who's in her mid 20s and her newborn who, like they're, they're some of his co workers that worked with him at the construction company are like helping her, like giving her money to help like feed the kid or whatever. But the guy is just like, he, I think he's waiting, I don't know how long he's going to be in this like detention facility before they figure out what to do. And I don't know, like, I don't know what his options are. I don't know. Like, I, I heard that you can elect to just be deported.

[John Kiriakou]

Yes.

[Danny]

Or you can stay there.

[John Kiriakou]

It's called a self deportation.

[Danny]

Self deportation. But I don't know if he's allowed to take his w. Wife and kids with him or whatever. But so what my buddy did now is he's hired all of his Mexicans to have personal drivers who are legal. So now like if they get pulled over, the, the cops can't ask for their IDs.

[John Kiriakou]

Right.

[Danny]

So, so like he's like protecting himself. But it's crazy. He's paranoid. His head's on a swivel all the time because he's worried about this stuff happening. And these aren't, these aren't bad guys.

[John Kiriakou]

No, no.

[Danny]

These dudes, literally their biggest concern is can they work Sunday too? Like they want to work eight days a week. That's all they care about is working and like paying for their families or whatever, whatever they're doing with their money. But like, these guys aren't committing crimes. They, they aren't freaking kidnapping people. They aren't bad people. And like, there's got to be some sort of like middle ground there where you, if you have, if you are my friend who owns that company and you have a bunch of illegals working for you, he's not underpaying them by any means. Like he would pay them the same price he would pay some white dude. But they work harder.

[John Kiriakou]

Yes.

[Danny]

They work more.

[John Kiriakou]

Yes.

[Danny]

So like, can't you figure out a way to make those people who own those companies like, responsible for them somehow?

[John Kiriakou]

You know, in, in the six or eight months before the 911 attacks, the Bush administration had negotiated a deal with the Mexican government to change the status of undocumented workers in the United States. Mexican workers, specifically, where they would be given nine month work visas, they would have to pay federal income taxes. At the end of the nine month visa, they would go back to Mexico for three months and reapply for the following year. So they could work nine months a year in the United States and then Mexico, three months. The only reason why that wasn't ratified was that 9, 11 hit and it went out the window. But that was the closest that we've ever come to solving this problem.

[Danny]

And that's another thing, like the taxes.

[John Kiriakou]

And it's not amnesty because there's no path to citizenship. You want to work picking vegetables, God bless.

[Danny]

There's no path.

[John Kiriakou]

Americans don't want no path.

[Danny]

Right.

[John Kiriakou]

You have to go. Go back. But if the idea is, and I agree with you 1000%, these guys will work harder than any American we've ever met.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[John Kiriakou]

To support their family, in many cases extended families back home. And so they'll take whatever opportunity they can get if they can be legalized like this so they don't have to constantly look over their shoulders. It's better for all of us.

[Danny]

So is it. And I'm, I'm. I don't know how it works, but if you are, if you do own a company and you are paying a bunch of illegal guys to work do.

[John Kiriakou]

It's a federal.

[Danny]

Do you pay them under the table?

[John Kiriakou]

In, in most cases, you can't just.

[Danny]

You can't write them. They can't get a W2. Right.

[John Kiriakou]

They don't have. Yeah. They don't have W9. They don't have Social Security numbers. Right, Right. So everybody's in trouble.

[Danny]

Right? Everybody's in trouble. Right. Yeah. There's got. Yeah, there's got to be some sort of loophole where like you can, if they are illegal, you could figure out a way to take, to tax them and give them some sort of. Like. That makes a lot of sense.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah.

[Danny]

Because you need that labor.

[John Kiriakou]

Definitely. We need it.

[Danny]

And it's not incentivized for people. People aren't going to college to work construction. They aren't going. They're going to college to learn. Ask any young. They don't want to learn trade work, you know.

[John Kiriakou]

You know, if you look at things like, like chicken and pork processing plants. No Americans work there. That is really hard work. And they're all Latin Americans. Go to any restaurant in New York. None of the, the kitchen workers are Americans. Maybe the chef is. But everybody else, for whatever reason, they, they tend to be Ecuadorian. I mean, the whole country's economy is going to just grind to a halt.

[Danny]

Yeah. Is. Is ice raiding Nobu in Los Angeles.

[John Kiriakou]

Exactly. Exactly.

[Danny]

Oh, God, it's craziness, man. We're living in the Twilight Zone. Mr. Karaoke Man.

[John Kiriakou]

I'm not liking it very much.

[Danny]

Well, thanks for coming on and thanks for having me explaining all this stuff to me.

[John Kiriakou]

It's always great to see you.

[Danny]

Yeah.

[John Kiriakou]

Always very happy to come, of course.

[Danny]

And you just started a new podcast on YouTube, is that correct?

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah, I've got two. One by myself is called Deep. I'm sorry? It's called Deep Focus with John Kiriakou. We get down in the weeds on these issues. The other one is with my friend Ted Rall, who was. He was the editorial Cartoonist at the LA Times for more than 20 years. Two time Pulitzer finalist. That one is called Deprogram.

[Danny]

And then no more Sputnik Radio.

[John Kiriakou]

No more Sputnik radio. No more RT television.

[Danny]

Oh, there we go. Deep Focus.

[John Kiriakou]

That's awesome. That's badass, dude. I had to. Ted and I had Jake Tapper last week. And we have Iranian. Like. This is Muhammad Morandi. He was a member of the Iranian nuclear negotiating team.

[Danny]

Oh, really?

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah, he was good. Got a lot of different.

[Danny]

This is perfect for you because you have all these people that you've been around in your whole career. You know these people?

[John Kiriakou]

For the most part, they're my friends. Yeah.

[Danny]

Funny enough, you got to get the. The king of Bahrain. Not Bahrain. Him too, but the other guy. The king of. The guy who lives in New Jersey and goes to the shopping malls. Jordan. The king of Jordan. Aren't you friends with him?

[John Kiriakou]

No, but. No.

[Danny]

Maybe it's the wrong country. I'm thinking of the wrong country.

[John Kiriakou]

The. The Shah of Iran lives in Potomac, Maryland. The shop Iran.

[Danny]

Oh, yeah.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah. Although he was just in Jerusalem on his knees in front of the Israelis.

[Danny]

Oh, my God.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah. Oh, he'll be popular in Tehran.

[Danny]

Yeah. That's amazing.

[John Kiriakou]

Yeah. The crown prince of Bahrain and I went to college together. We still text each other.

[Danny]

Really? Yeah.

[John Kiriakou]

But he's. He's too important to come on. You know, John's podcast.

[Danny]

You got to get Sasha Baron Cohen on there.

[John Kiriakou]

I thought about that.

[Danny]

That. All right, John, thank you so much, man. We'll link all your stuff below.

[John Kiriakou]

Thank you.

[Danny]

We have some Patreon questions for you.

[John Kiriakou]

Okay.

[Danny]

Our Patreons people asked you some questions, so we'll go do those. We'll wrap up the podcast now for YouTube. Thanks again. It's always super enlightening. Thanks for your time. Good night, everybody.