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CIA Whistleblower: They Can See All Your Messages! I Was Under Surveillance In Pakistan!
01:45:38
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- [00:00]
Host
I mean, listen, if you've been listening to this podcast for any period of time, you've probably heard me talk about sleep a gazillion times. It was the single biggest priority that I ignored for the vast majority of my life until I realized that it was upstream from everything that mattered to me. And this brings me to our sponsor, Helix. They make high quality tailored mattresses and bedding that are customized to fit, and they help you to sleep better. That is their mission. In fact, a study found that around 82% of people in a study that slept on Helix mattresses. So an increase in their deep sleep cycle while sleeping on their mattresses. So if you're thinking that you're not sure about what the right mattress might be for you, their sleep quiz will look at you, look at your situation, your sleeping needs, and match you with the right mattress. And if it's not what you're after and you're not satisfied, you're still covered by their 120 night sleep trial. So you can either swap your mattress for another one or return it all together. Helix also offers a limited lifetime warranty. And because you listen to this podcast, you can get at least 20% off site w helixsleep.com diary that's helixsleep.com diary.
- [01:07]
John Kiriakou
Billions of dollars are spent spying on Americans, whether it's NSA or CIA or the FBI. And to make matters worse, we know that the CIA can take control remotely of a car's computer system in order to crash the car, take it off a bridge, or take control of your smart TV and turn a speaker into a microphone, even though the TV is off and broadcast back to the CIA.
- [01:29]
Host
Can they do that with devices and.
- [01:31]
John Kiriakou
Absolutely, and I'll tell you how we know. There was a CIA software engineer who was disgruntled, and he downloaded tens of thousands of documents classified above top secret. And instead of going to the Russians or the Chinese, he went to WikiLeaks and they became the Vault 7 documents. So our whole lives are out there potentially for someone to use against us. And every country has these capabilities. Listen, I spent 15 years in the CIA. I love this country. But one of the most important things in my life is the issue of ethics, which is why I blew the whistle on the CIA's torture program, because my superiors kept repeating that torture worked, but besides being illegal, immoral, unethical, it just wasn't true. And I would let them send me to prison again because it was the right thing to do. I mean, we know that they were experimenting on American citizens and spreading diseases in American cities.
- [02:20]
Host
This is the stuff of movies.
- [02:21]
John Kiriakou
It is.
- [02:22]
Host
And because you've been in this world that the average person really has no idea about, I have to ask you, who do you think is the real adversary of the West? What are you most concerned about in the world at the moment? And what about everything that's going on with Trump in Venezuela, Greenland, and then do you think Jeffrey Epstein was a spy?
- [02:37]
John Kiriakou
Yes.
- [02:38]
Host
Who do you think he was working for?
- [02:39]
John Kiriakou
The Israelis.
- [02:40]
Host
Why? Two things I wanted to say. The first thing is a huge thank you for listening. And tuning into the show week after week means the world to all of us. And this really is a dream that we absolutely never had and couldn't have imagined getting to this place. But secondly, it's a dream where we feel like we're only just getting started. And if you enjoy what we do here, Please join the 24% of people that listen to this podcast regularly and follow us on this app. Here's a promise I'm going to make to you. I'm going to do everything in my power to make this show as good as I can now and into the future. We're going to deliver the guests that you want me to speak to, and we're going to continue to keep doing all of the things you love about this show. Thank you. John Kirioku. The world knows your name. Why? Why does the world know your name?
- [03:40]
John Kiriakou
I can give you two answers. One, I'm proud to say that I blew the whistle on the CIA's torture program in a nationally televised interview with ABC News. The second reason is I blew the whistle a long time ago. And just in the past 18 months, I seem to have hit some sort of YouTube algorithm sweet spot. And all of a sudden my message is getting out there.
- [04:11]
Host
And you went to prison for blowing the whistle?
- [04:13]
John Kiriakou
I did. And I would do it again tomorrow. I really would. You know, I was giving an interview to the BBC the day after I got out of prison. They were the first outlet to ask for an interview, and so I gladly gave it to them. And the interviewer said, kind of perturbedly, you're not showing any remorse or contrition. And I said, no, I'm not remorseful. I'm not contrite. I would do it again. I would let them send me to prison again because it was the right thing to do.
- [04:50]
Host
And you were a spy in the CIA?
- [04:52]
John Kiriakou
Yeah, I was quite an accomplished spy in the CIA. I spent 15 years in the CIA. The first half of my career was in analysis. And I got bored, frankly. And so I made an unusual at the time change to counterterrorism operations. And then I was the chief of CIA counterterrorism operations in Pakistan after the 911 attacks.
- [05:14]
Host
And if I'd never heard about the CIA before, and I had never heard about your role in the CIA before, and I was a 16 year old.
- [05:22]
John Kiriakou
Right.
- [05:23]
Host
How would you explain to me what you did there, what your role was and what the CIA is?
- [05:29]
John Kiriakou
Sure. The CIA is an intelligence service whose job it is at its most basic level to recruit spies to steal secrets and to analyze those secrets so that the policymakers can make the best informed policy. After 9 11, we were expecting an attack, to use Osama Bin Laden's words, that would dwarf 9 11. And so my job was to infiltrate Al Qaeda by recruiting members of Al Qaeda to tell us when and where that next attack was going to come so that we could disrupt it, we could kill or capture the leadership and destroy the organization.
- [06:15]
Host
And give me a range of the things that you did during your time in the CIA just for a very top line range of the types of things you worked on.
- [06:23]
John Kiriakou
Oh sure. As an analyst, it was actually quite straightforward. We would write for the President, the Vice President, the Secretaries of State and Defense, and the National Security Advisor.
- [06:35]
Host
And who were the presidents during that time?
- [06:37]
John Kiriakou
When I started it was George H.W. bush, the father, and then it was Bill Clinton, then George W. Bush. There are several different publications. There's the President's Daily Brief, which is the most important. I covered Iraq the entire time that I was in analysis from well before most Americans had ever heard of Iraq. I was told actually that it was a training account because nothing ever happened there, nothing ever changed. And then Iraq invaded Kuwait the next day. I got to the office early. I was 25 years old, 26 years old. And my boss said, don't take your jacket off, we're going to the White House. I had never been to the White House before, except as a tourist. And so we got in a car, went to the White House. We're ushered into the Oval Office. It's the President, the Vice President, the National Security Advisor, the Director of the CIA, my boss and me. And then we all sit down. The President tells us, sit down. We sit down. And the President says, well, now what do we do? And everybody turns and looks at me. And it took me a second and I said, Yes. I said, Mr. President, as you know, Iraqi troops crossed the border at 2 o' clock this morning. The Royal family has run away to Saudi Arabia. They've named a new occupation governor, etc. Etc. Do we know who that is? I said, yes sir, I gave him the name and I said, actually he's the co founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The vice president shouts jesus Christ. And then the President says, gentlemen, thank you, thank you, we'll take it from here. And I remember saying to myself, my friends would never believe in a thousand years what I was doing right now. They wouldn't even believe me if I told them that's what an analyst does. When I switched to operations again, the job was very straightforward. It was to recruit spies to steal secrets. But then if you're involved in counterterrorism operations, there are a lot of extras that you have to be trained in. So you go through the normal spy training. This is how you ingratiate yourself. It's something called the asset acquisition cycle. Spot, assess, develop, recruit. I meet you at a cocktail party. You seem like a nice guy. I introduce myself, I ask, so what do you do for a living? Well, if you tell me you manage a shoe store, I'm going to say, well it was very nice meeting you and I'm going to go on to the next guy. But if you tell me you work at the port, you work in the Ministry of Defense, you work in the Chinese embassy, I'm going to invite you to lunch. I've spotted you, I've assessed you, and my assessment is I'd like to get to know you. Then I begin to develop you. I'll give you an example. I was in Pakistan. I got a tip that Al Qaeda, a group of mid level Al Qaeda fighters was meeting every single day in a coffee shop at 10 o' clock in the morning. My Arabic was absolutely flawless at the time and so I had a bushy beard that I grew for operational reasons.
- [09:54]
Host
Can I hear some of your Arabic?
- [09:56]
John Kiriakou
Yeah. Tasharaf Bimarftak, it's nice to meet you. Or Bismillah Rahman Rahim. Alhamdulillah Malik Yumadin Rahman Rahim. So I bought an Arabic newspaper and I went to the coffee shop and I just sat there and sure enough, at 10 o' clock the four of them came in. One of them looked at me and I looked at him and that was it. We made eye contact. I did that for a week. The second week I was there drinking my coffee, sitting with my Arabic newspaper and the one who had looked at me the week before, he nodded, so I nodded back. That was it. No communication otherwise. The third week I'm a regular now. He recognizes me. So he says to me, salaamu alaikum. I said, walakum as salaam. May peace be upon you. And I say, and upon you, peace. One day he came in alone, and I said, tafardal, please have a seat. Sit with me. No sense in you sitting alone and me sitting alone. So he sat down, we started talking, and I asked him how long he had been in Pakistan. He said, oh, I've been here for five years. I was in Afghanistan. I was making jihad against the Americans. And I said, oh, that must have been hell on earth. He said, oh. He said that the bombing of Tora Bora was hideous. That was the word that he used. It was hideous. And I said, and what about your family? How's your family? He said, my wife and son and daughter are in Cairo. I've never met my son. He was born just after I left to make jihad. I said, I'm so sorry. And he said, yes, I'm lonely and I want to go home. We continued this relationship and finally I said to him, let me take you to dinner. Let's get out of the coffee shop. The truth was, I didn't want one of his friends to walk in and see us. So we went to a restaurant for dinner. And I said, listen, there's something that I haven't been truthful with you about. I'm not Lebanese. And I said, actually, I'm American. Are you okay with that? And he says, I think so. I said, well, actually, I'm a CIA officer. And he says, okay. So he didn't run screaming from the room or pull a gun or anything. And he said, why do you want me? Why do you want to talk to me? I said, actually, you have access to something that I want. It was very specific. And I told him what it was. And he says, and what will you do for me? And I said, anything your heart desires. And he said, I want to go home. I said, I can do that.
- [12:49]
Host
You wanted information, presumably I wanted information.
- [12:51]
John Kiriakou
Very specific information which you can't share. No, now go right back to prison. So we got him a passport, I bought him a first class ticket and I took him to the airport, gave him some cash to get himself started again. And I said, before you go, I have to ask you, why did you agree to give me this information? I mean, presumably I'm the enemy. And he said, I've been here five years and you're the first person who ever asked me about my family. So I said, best of Luck never saw him again. That's the job.
- [13:34]
Host
I have to ask you. Take me on the journey of you being a young man in West Pennsylvania.
- [13:43]
John Kiriakou
Right.
- [13:45]
Host
To becoming a spy. What happened? Because I'll be honest, I don't really know what my perception of spies is, but it's not you.
- [13:54]
John Kiriakou
That's good. Yeah, that's good. See, because I kind of work under the radar.
- [14:00]
Host
That's really interesting. There's so many once you learn about spies as a pod. So if you go back a couple of years and someone had told me about spies, I wouldn't have believed them. I wouldn't have believed that these things actually happened.
- [14:13]
John Kiriakou
Oh, yeah.
- [14:14]
Host
You know, you hear about people going undercover and going to other countries and getting secrets and all of these things, and it's not until you meet the people that said, yes, that's me, I used to do that, that you're sort of. You have this paradigm shift in your mind and you go, oh, my God, what else might be going on? Because I lived in this world probably up until the age of, I don't know, 30 years old, where I kind of just assume things are what they are like, as I see them. And then, you know, you start to discover that there's layers of secrecy. Nations are against each other. They're doing all of these covert operations. And even, like, as a podcaster now, I have moments where I go, like, how do I know that you're not here to steal secrets from me?
- [14:57]
John Kiriakou
Right?
- [14:58]
Host
So you know what's funny? When I had Andrew Bustamante on the show, the comment sections are always the same. They're always like, once a CIA spy, always a CIA spy.
- [15:05]
John Kiriakou
I hate when people say that. It's so intellectually lazy.
- [15:09]
Host
But I do wonder, and I go, okay, here's a super conspiracy theory. What if the CIA have made spies do really well in the YouTube algorithm so that all of us, as long form podcasters, invite them on? And then they, you know what?
- [15:24]
John Kiriakou
I would agree with that. I would have agreed with that a year ago, because Andrew Bustamante has really made a handsome living out of selling his experience. And he's on every podcast. Yeah, but I am the most anti CIA former CIA person that's out there.
- [15:43]
Host
But wouldn't that be the perfect CIA agent?
- [15:47]
John Kiriakou
I mean, if I weren't constantly criticizing the CIA as a. As an organization that's just out of control.
- [15:54]
Host
Do you think the CIA have a strategy for podcasters and for podcasting?
- [15:58]
John Kiriakou
I think yes, now they do. It took them a little while to get Current. But just like they over time developed a strategy with Hollywood, sure. They're developing a strategy with podcasters. You know, it was only in the last 10 years that the CIA opened a branch within the Office of Public affairs, whose job it is solely to liaise with Hollywood studios. The FBI has been doing this since the, since the 40s. And the goal is that everything that comes out of Hollywood should be pro CIA. And, you know, we end up with, with Zero Dark Thirty and the Recruit and the CIA. Argo, the CIA is always the hero in these movies.
- [16:43]
Host
If you were still at the CIA now and your job was to infiltrate and use creators or podcasters as an asset for the CIA's objectives, how might you design that plan? If we were just hypothesizing, you would.
- [17:01]
John Kiriakou
Have to have a goal that would be specific enough that you could actually track the progress to it. So you can't just say, well, I'm going to pay this podcaster X amount of money and we're going to do something with the algorithm to make him vastly popular among men 18 to 30. Let's say. There's got to be more to it than that. It has to be a message. You've got to be able to get a specific, well honed message out there. And the message can be anything. It could be, you know, love the CIA, we're the good guys. It could be support the overthrow of the Iranian government. It could be, you know, any criticism of Benjamin Netanyahu is anti Semitism. It could be anything you want it to be. You just have to make sure that it's repeated enough. See, this was the danger with the torture program. This is one of the very important reasons that I went public when I did, because my colleagues, my superiors at the CIA kept repeating this lie over and over and over again. That torture worked, and that torture got us information that saved American lives. And that was just simply not true. It was a lie. Besides being illegal, immoral, unethical, it just wasn't true. And so I decided, before we go down this road anymore, I'm gonna go.
- [18:31]
Host
Public, so can you take me back then? We got a little bit sidetracked there, but sure. John, how did you come to be a CIA spy?
- [18:41]
John Kiriakou
When I was nine years old, I told my parents that I wanted to be a spy when I grew up. It came time to apply for college, and I only applied at one university, George Washington University in Washington, because it was two blocks from the White House, and it was one of only three schools in America that offered a middle Eastern Studies program. I was one of only four people in that brand new Middle Eastern Studies program. I stayed for a master's degree in Legislative affairs with a focus on foreign policy analysis. I was taking a class in that program called the Psychology of Leadership. It was taught by an eminent psychiatrist named Dr. Gerald Post. And he gave us an assignment one day where we had to shadow our bosses. We had to just follow our bosses for a week.
- [19:34]
Host
Your bosses?
- [19:35]
John Kiriakou
Yeah. I worked at a labor union called the United Food and Commercial Workers Union. And so we were just supposed to follow our boss around for a week and then write a psychological profile. I used dozens of footnotes from psychological psychology texts and I ended up saying that he was a sociopath with psychopathic and possibly violent tendencies. And I had these citations. I passed the paper in. Dr. Post gives it back to me a week later, gave me an A. And then he wrote, please see me after class. So I went up to him after the class And I said, Dr. Post, you wanted to see me? He says, come to my office. So we went down there, he closed the door and he says, listen, I'm not really a professor here. I'm a CIA officer undercover as a professor here. And I'm looking for people who would fit into the CIA's culture. I think you would fit into the CIA's culture. Would you like to be a spy? And I said, yes, I would. He picked up the phone and called a number and he said, bob, this is Jerry. I've got a good one for you. Do you have some time? And he said, sure. He writes an address on a scrap of paper and he says, be at this address in 20 minutes. It was only one subway stop away, so I jumped on the metro. I went to Rosslyn, Virginia, just across the river. I had to buzz to be let in. And a woman opens the door. She says, are you here for Bob? And I said, yes. She says, come on in. I'm sitting there for a moment and then this like 6 foot 6, 350 pound giant barrels out of his office. And he says, john, Bob, how the hell are you? I want you to be at the George Washington University Medical School Saturday morning at 8 o'. Clock. We've got some tests for you. I said, okay. And then we shook hands and I left. So Saturday morning I went to the GW Medical School auditorium. There were like, I don't know, 200 people there and they hand us a test. My wife picked me up. She said, how did you do? I said, I have no idea.
- [21:50]
Host
Does your wife at this point know that you're applying for the CIA?
- [21:53]
John Kiriakou
Yes. And that was going to be pretty much the extent of what she ended up knowing. Cause once I got in.
- [22:00]
Host
But you were allowed to tell her.
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John Kiriakou
I was not allowed to tell her no.
- [22:04]
Host
So you told her anyway?
- [22:06]
John Kiriakou
Yeah. When I first applied, they said, listen, don't tell anybody because you may go undercover, you may go under deep cover, and we can't have people out there who know that you're a CIA officer.
- [22:19]
Host
Presumably the CIA are smart enough to be able to check if you've told her.
- [22:23]
John Kiriakou
Yeah. And they ask you on the polygraph, did you tell her?
- [22:26]
Host
Really?
- [22:26]
John Kiriakou
And I said, yeah, I told her. She's my wife. What am I going to do, you know? But it got to the point where I'd get home from a day where, you know, I broke into some guy's house and planted a camera on a bug. And I'd get home and she'd say, how was your day? I'd say, great. What'd you do? Not a darn thing. And then my phone would ring at, you know, midnight, and a guy would say, the rain in Spain falls mainly in the plain. And I'd say, mare's eat oats and doezy notes and little lambs eat ivy. And that means, meet me at the yacht club parking lot in three hours. And then I'd leave. She would say, where are you going? It's midnight. I gotta work. So I'd leave, I'd do my meeting. I'd come home, six o' clock in the morning, just in time to shower and shave and get dressed to go to work. And she would say, what was her name? And I remember this one terrible time. That's what she said to me. What was her name? The truth is, I had been sitting in a garbage dumpster waiting for a guy to drive by down the alley and throw a bag of documents in. And I stunk of garbage. And I said to her, do I seriously smell to you like I've been with a woman? Seriously. So we ended up getting a divorce.
- [23:48]
Host
So you do the assessment, presumably you get in and you do training.
- [23:53]
John Kiriakou
He called me, like two weeks later, Bob did, and he said, you blew the doors off those tests. I said, oh, great. Okay. So a month later, they summoned me to headquarters and I was interviewed by the Office of Near Eastern Operations, the Office of Near Eastern Analysis, and the Office of Leadership Analysis. I was offered the analysis job on the Iraq desk.
- [24:20]
Host
And what is the sum total of the training you were given in the variety of different Roles that you had, like, how do they train a spy?
- [24:27]
John Kiriakou
That's a good question. That's a good question. And the answer is vastly different depending on where you start your career. So because I started mine in analysis, the immediate training was in mastering the CIA's writing style. So the most important product that the CIA writes every day is the pdb, the President's Daily Brief.
- [24:51]
Host
And it tells the President what, what.
- [24:53]
John Kiriakou
You think he needs to know.
- [24:55]
Host
Okay.
- [24:56]
John Kiriakou
So, for example, when the Iraqis began moving to the, to the Kuwaiti border, we had this big debate, Are they going to cross the border? Yes or no? So I said, listen, why don't I call the American defense attache in Baghdad and I'll just ask him to drive down there and look and tell us what he sees. He drives down there, drives back, he calls me and he says, literally the entire Iraqi military is on its way to the Kuwaiti border. So we wrote a thing for the President saying Iraq is going to invade Kuwait and it's probably going to happen in the next 48 hours.
- [25:34]
Host
And when did the President see that particular briefing?
- [25:37]
John Kiriakou
At 7am the next morning.
- [25:39]
Host
Okay. And is there ever situations where the President would get it in the middle of the night?
- [25:42]
John Kiriakou
Yes. Yeah.
- [25:44]
Host
And be told in the middle of the night that, yes.
- [25:47]
John Kiriakou
There are these levels of immediacy. There's routine, which is like, who cares? And then there is priority, which means, eh, I'll get to it sometime today. Then there's immediate, which means you should probably read it first. But then there's flash, which means, oh, my God, something terrible just happened. You should probably wake the President. And then there's critic, which means they're coming over the embassy walls. We're at war. Wake up the President. Scramble the jets.
- [26:22]
Host
9, 11.
- [26:22]
John Kiriakou
9 11. That's a critic.
- [26:27]
Host
So going back to this question of your training.
- [26:30]
John Kiriakou
Yeah.
- [26:31]
Host
What is it that the CIA teach you about human nature and how to use human nature to your advantage that could be transferable to other disciplines in life like business or.
- [26:45]
John Kiriakou
Well, this is going to sound not very nice, but it's real life. It's everyday life, especially in business. The CIA actively seeks to hire people who have what they call sociopathic tendencies. Not sociopaths. Sociopaths have no conscience. They'll just blow right through a polygraph exam. But they're impossible to corral. They're impossible to keep under rain. And it's because they're not able, their brains won't allow them to feel regret or remorse. Now, in business, most CEOs are sociopaths most, not all, but most, especially in big companies, because they claw their way to the top, usually on the backs of the people around them. They don't feel bad screwing the next guy to get that next promotion. The CIA wants people like that because those are the people who are going to break into a foreign embassy. A normal person would not advocate breaking into a foreign embassy. That's sovereign territory of a foreign country. I would. I'd be glad to do it.
- [28:02]
Host
Why?
- [28:03]
John Kiriakou
Because we're the good guys.
- [28:05]
Host
So do you have sociopathic tendencies?
- [28:07]
John Kiriakou
Absolutely.
- [28:08]
Host
And what are your sociopathic tendencies?
- [28:11]
John Kiriakou
My sociopathic tendency was to operate in legal, moral, and ethical gray areas. Specifically. That's what it was.
- [28:24]
Host
I'm really curious about what we can learn about human nature from someone whose job was to meet strangers and to get them to basically at some time to turn against their own country. I'm really interested in, and I think it's informative because so many of us, you know, when we think about what good leadership is or what good sales man or woman ship is, it seems like there's transferables. I guess for some people it's family. I guess for some people it's something else. That hook that you're talking about, that thing that gets them and the word.
- [28:56]
John Kiriakou
That they use at the CIA for the hook is a vulnerability. And it's not really a vulnerability in every case. Now, 95% studies have been done about this internally at the CIA. 95% of the people who agree to become spies for us do it for the money. Right? It's a simple cash transaction. You give me money, I'll give you secrets. 95%.
- [29:25]
Host
So are you telling me that you think human motivation is 95% driven by money?
- [29:29]
John Kiriakou
Yes.
- [29:30]
Host
Really?
- [29:31]
John Kiriakou
Yes. The rest was love and family ideology, revenge and excitement. You're going to get a handful of people who are hooked on James Bond movies, and they will do it. I mean, you're going to pay them anyway, but they will do it just for the adrenaline rush.
- [29:52]
Host
It's interesting because when I look at this list of things and I compare it to business, I would say it's slightly different from my experience of hiring people. Specifically of hiring people. I tend to think that one would ask themselves, why would someone leave a company right now, like, I don't know, OpenAI, and go work at a startup? They're gonna get paid way more. At OpenAI, you've got this equity and these grants, but people are en masse doing that. And even when I think about the early days of Google, People left the big conglomerates that would pay them more, and they went and worked for Larry and Sergey getting paid way less.
- [30:30]
John Kiriakou
Right.
- [30:30]
Host
But to be involved in something small, from the ground floor, exciting. And so I. And this is what I think about when I sit. I've had thousands of people in my life now across my businesses, and money is a factor, but it doesn't tend to be the biggest factor. It tends to be, in my experience, there's a particular hero's journey in their mind that they want to be seen through, they want to complete. You know, there's a particular way that they see themselves, and they want to fulfill that.
- [31:03]
John Kiriakou
Oh, I could get that. I work with a very, very tiny startup right now called Ivy Cyber, and it focuses on privacy software. You know, things like scrambling your data so it can't be intercepted, that sort of thing. And I've participated in a couple of pitches to angel investors, and they all say exactly the same thing that you did.
- [31:29]
Host
And this is why I was confused when I heard that money was 95%. Because I just think, especially in the work that I don't know. Especially in the work that you do, I would assume.
- [31:40]
John Kiriakou
But look at it this way. I think this would explain the discrepancy. You're comparing people who are making a life versus people who are betraying their country.
- [31:51]
Host
True. And what's interesting as well is in those examples that you've given, money is actually a proxy. To be able to take care of my family and to be able to, you know, fulfill my ideology and maybe to get excitement and revenge. Do you know what I'm saying? So even that guy that wanted the plane ticket so he could fly home. Yeah. The money could have got him home if you'd just given him. Sure. The reason why he wanted to go home was because his family.
- [32:18]
John Kiriakou
His family, that was it.
- [32:20]
Host
What's the extent of the things that the CIA can get as a incentive for someone to turn against their nation?
- [32:28]
John Kiriakou
To give secrets, quite literally, anything you can imagine.
- [32:31]
Host
Even if it's against the law.
- [32:33]
John Kiriakou
Well, they're not gonna get drugs or child prostitutes or. No, not stuff like that.
- [32:41]
Host
What if someone said, I want you to, um, get me a green card?
- [32:50]
John Kiriakou
Oh, yeah, sure.
- [32:51]
Host
What if they said, if the information's.
- [32:53]
John Kiriakou
Good enough, not a problem.
- [32:54]
Host
What if they said, I want you to. I've got this tax bill. I want you to make the tax bill go away.
- [33:01]
John Kiriakou
Okay, Give me the plan, stat. Russian tank. We'll make it happen.
- [33:05]
Host
What if it was in America? Would they speak to the irs? Here and just get rid of it.
- [33:09]
John Kiriakou
Oh, if it was an American citizen, you mean?
- [33:11]
Host
Yeah. No, but why no?
- [33:17]
John Kiriakou
We normally don't recruit American citizens. By law, the CIA can't operate domestically, although they have offices all over the country. Those offices are generally to debrief business leaders, C suite officers who travel to denied areas. For example, if you take a trip to North Korea, let's say I'm going to call you and I'm going to say, you don't know me, but I'm from the CIA and I understand you just went to North Korea and I was wondering if I could come over to your office for an hour and just ask you about your trip. 99.99% are going to say yes because they're patriots. So I go to your office, I give you my business card, and we just chat about, you know, your impressions of the place and that kind of thing.
- [34:06]
Host
Just to close off on this point, are there any skills that the CIA taught you or trained you in that you think are transferable for business that we haven't talked about?
- [34:18]
John Kiriakou
They trained us also in lying and lie detection. That was actually quite important at the CIA. You're a trained liar. And this is why the divorce rate's so high. It's the highest divorce rate of any entity in the US government. It's upwards of 80% trained to lie.
- [34:38]
Host
How do they train you to lie?
- [34:40]
John Kiriakou
Hi, my name is Dave Phillips. I work for an import export company.
- [34:44]
Host
But do they teach you the art of lying?
- [34:46]
John Kiriakou
Oh, yeah.
- [34:47]
Host
And what is the art?
- [34:49]
John Kiriakou
You know, it's hard to pin down. You just sort of have to have it. You have to have that ability. But the hard part is you have to keep the lies straight. And I'll give you another example. I've never told this story before. I was asked by headquarters. I was overseas in the Middle east, and I was asked by headquarters to target one specific officer of this foreign country.
- [35:15]
Host
Target?
- [35:16]
John Kiriakou
Yeah. Hi, how are you? Oh, we've never met. I'm John. So nice to meet you. Let me take you to lunch. He had access to. To information that we really needed. So they told me to accidentally bump into him. So I surveilled him for a week and he was single. And on Saturday morning, he went to a coffee shop. So I go into the coffee shop and I'm looking at him and he's looking at me and I said, I know you. Ministry of Foreign Affairs? He said, yes, do I know you? I said, I am John from the American Embassy. Oh, nice to. Nice to See you. I said, hey, good to see you, too. You live in the area? Yes, I do. I said, oh, so do I. I didn't. I lived, like, across town. Oh, fancy meeting you here at this coffee shop. I come here all the time. Do you? Yeah, he says, I come here all the time. Why don't you have a seat? He says, so I sit down. At the end of the conversation, I go back to the embassy and I read a cable. And I said, he's gay. I'm 100% sure he's gay. So then we started this conversation, Headquarters and I. How can we use that to our benefit?
- [36:19]
Host
Did he have a wife?
- [36:20]
John Kiriakou
No, he was single, which was unusual at his age.
- [36:23]
Host
How did you know he was gay?
- [36:25]
John Kiriakou
Oh, I. I just. It was a vibe.
- [36:28]
Host
Okay.
- [36:30]
John Kiriakou
So headquarters says, we want you to pretend that you're gay. I said, oh, come on, you guys. Now we really need the information. You gotta pretend that you're gay. I said, okay, I'll do it. I'll do it for Uncle Sam. So I call him and I said, hey, I have two tickets to this show, and I was hoping maybe you'd be free. Maybe we'll grab some sushi afterwards. He said, yeah, I'd love to. So we go to the show. He thoroughly enjoyed it, and we go for sushi afterwards. And then we go out again. And he says, why don't you come over to my place some night and I'll make dinner. I said, great. So I go over to his place. He made a lovely dinner. And then I thought, well, I have to invite him to my place. So I told my wife, you're going to have to, like, get out. So she left. I made dinner. I removed all the pictures of us together. And we had just gotten married. So we had, like, our wedding picture up and everything. At the dinner, he leaned in to kiss me, and I instinctively backed off. And he said, oh, my God, I'm sorry. I thought you're gay. And I said, oh, no, I am gay. I'm not into hairy guys. And he's like, oh, okay. I said, I'm sorry. I think you're great, but I'm not feeling it.
- [37:58]
Host
You didn't kiss him?
- [37:59]
John Kiriakou
No. So we remained friends, and in the end, he gave me the information because we were friends. And then he opened up. He's like, I can't tell anybody I'm gay. They suspect I am. And they pass me over for promotion. And my boss asked me, is there something in your personal life that you're not telling me? He Knows I'm gay. I said, listen, your culture's backwards. Don't tell them you're gay. Just say that you've just never met the right woman, and inshallah, the right woman is coming, you know, in your life at some point. And I actually googled him a couple of years ago, and he did become an ambassador finally, and he's still working.
- [38:38]
Host
In that country now. Does that kind of stuff happen a lot in the CIA where you have to take one for the team?
- [38:43]
John Kiriakou
Yes.
- [38:45]
Host
Have you ever taken one for the team?
- [38:46]
John Kiriakou
No.
- [38:47]
Host
I'm not sure you're telling the truth?
- [38:49]
John Kiriakou
Well, it came close.
- [38:50]
Host
When did it come close?
- [38:52]
John Kiriakou
So I was overseas. I was a brand new operations officer, and there was a woman in this foreign intelligence service who was the ugliest woman I've ever seen in my life. Like, you want to avert your eyes? Like, she came off the side of Notre Dame. She was a, you know, a stone gargoyle with a giant mole right here with a giant hair coming out of it. That kind of ugly. So I took her to lunch, and she was very nice. And then I thought I did something kind of gutsy by CIA standards, because it was early on in our relationship. I invited her to go to lunch on a Saturday. Now, as a rule, the people in this country were not allowed to socialize with us privately. It had to be like their whole office or several of them together. So I asked her just to meet me privately for lunch on Saturday. Don't tell anybody.
- [39:55]
Host
So she was someone from the Middle East?
- [39:56]
John Kiriakou
Yes. And she agreed. And I was like, oh, my God. She said yes. And I ran back to the office. I was like. She said yes to a lunch on Saturday alone? And my boss says, okay, here's what I want you to do. I want you to fuck her. And I said, what? I said, have you ever seen her? And he said, I know, but we're the good guys, and you're gonna have to take one for the team. And I go, oh, my God. I said. I go, okay, I'll do it. And he says, no, you're not gonna. Fucker. We don't do that. I said, I don't know. I just started this. I've never been an operations guy before. How am I supposed to know? He said, come on. He said, just develop her like a normal person. You don't have to fuck her. I said, oh, my God, you almost gave me a heart attack.
- [40:48]
Host
But they. They might not be mad if you.
- [40:51]
John Kiriakou
Did, so long as I reported it. And I got the Recruitment out of it.
- [40:54]
Host
It wasn't illegal to, you know, sleep with assets.
- [40:58]
John Kiriakou
Yeah, you're not supposed to sleep with assets. It has happened to a couple people I know, and they end up being pulled back to the United States. You have to sit in the penalty box if you do that. You're not supposed to do that. But, yeah, it happens sometimes.
- [41:11]
Host
So sextortion isn't a real thing.
- [41:13]
John Kiriakou
It can be. We don't. When I first got hired, one of the old timers told me the story about an ayatollah that they were trying to recruit, and they set this ayatollah up with a prostitute. And he had sex with this prostitute in a room where they had cameras everywhere. And so they bumped him afterwards. They bumped into him and said, hey, we have all these pictures. And they laid out the pictures of him, you know, butt naked with this prostitute. And he said, yeah, give me that one. An eight by ten. Give me two, five by sevens of that one. How about some wallet size for this? He's like, get out of here. And he said, you know, after that, we just stopped doing that. It doesn't work. When you recruit somebody, you really do need the relationship to be based on.
- [42:03]
Host
Mutual trust, not coercion or pressure or threatening.
- [42:06]
John Kiriakou
Threatening somebody, it's not going to result in a productive relationship. The Russians do it, the Israelis do it, but most intelligence services around the world don't.
- [42:16]
Host
Because you've been in this world. What is it that you know about the nature of the reality that we all live in that the average person really has no idea about? Do you know what I mean? Yeah, because, you know, going back to what I said earlier three years ago, before I started doing all this podcast stuff and started interviewing people that had been involved in spy work and the CIA and all this, I was kind of like naive to the way that the world works. I thought. I thought, if I have a password on my device, my device is secure. And I thought that, you know.
- [42:49]
John Kiriakou
Right.
- [42:49]
Host
All these kind of just simple things. But what is it that you know about the nature of reality that most people don't?
- [42:56]
John Kiriakou
Well, I guess it's a couple of things. You know, John Kennedy called the CIA the best and the brightest. And we're not. We're just average people. And we're not as smart as we think we are. We're not as worldly as we think we are. We've pretty much missed every major global development since 1947, from the, you know, the rise of the Berlin Wall to the fall of the Berlin Wall. To the fall of the Soviet Union, to the Suez crisis and the Iran hostage crisis and 911 and everything else. We missed it. We're really good at day to day, you know, updates for the President. We're really good at recruiting minor hangers on around terrorist groups. But the big picture items were just not good at it, number one. Number two, until 9 11, it was against the law like in stone, to spy on Americans. And now billions of dollars are spent spying on Americans. Whether it's NSA or CIA or FBI or intelligence community contractors. Nothing is secret. Nothing. And to make matters worse, let's say maybe you did do something that law enforcement might be interested in. They don't need a warrant anymore. They don't need to go to a judge and say, well, we have reason to believe, blah, blah, blah. All they have to do is just buy your metadata because it's for sale. Just go to the carrier, just buy it. They don't need a judge's order to do that. It's all out there. We've made ourselves vulnerable. All of our lives are out there, whether it's on Facebook or X or Insta or whatever. If they really want to get you, they're going to get you. Which reminds me of a book written by Dr. Harvey Silverglate. He's a professor of law at Harvard and it's called Three Felonies a Day. And he argues in this book that we are so over criminalized, so over regulated in this country, that the average American, on the average day going about his or her normal business, commits three felonies every day. You may not mean to, but you do every day. So if they decide they want you, they don't like your politics, they can get your metadata, they can go through that metadata, find crimes that they can charge you with and ruin your life. And there's nothing you can do to.
- [45:33]
Host
Protect yourself to some extent. They did that to you.
- [45:38]
John Kiriakou
Yeah, they did. They did that to me.
- [45:40]
Host
Because you spoke out about a torture program that was happening in the CIA.
- [45:44]
John Kiriakou
Yeah. John Brennan wrote a letter to Eric Holder and said, charge him with espionage. And Holder wrote back. Eric Holder was the Attorney General. Holder wrote back and said, my people don't think he committed espionage. And John Brennan wrote back to Holder and said, charge him anyway and make him defend himself. So they arrested me, charged me with five felonies, including three counts of espionage. Espionage can be a death penalty case. Charged me with espionage. They waited until I went bankrupt 10 months later with $2 million in legal fees, and then they dropped the Espionage charges. And they said, we can re add the espionage charges or you can take a plea to this lesser charge. What are you gonna do? Roll the dice knowing that the government wins 98.2% of its cases, according to ProPublica, or do you just take the deal and make it go away? And that's what I did.
- [46:42]
Host
And you got roughly two years in jail.
- [46:44]
John Kiriakou
Yeah, I ended up doing 23 months.
- [46:48]
Host
And for anyone that doesn't know, this was because at some point in your career, you spoke out about torture programs that were happening in Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere.
- [46:58]
John Kiriakou
Yeah. And at secret prisons that the CIA had set up around the world. Right.
- [47:03]
Host
And going back up to the top of my question here, I'm really trying to speak to Jane. Dave, who's listening to this right now.
- [47:09]
John Kiriakou
Sure.
- [47:10]
Host
They have a normal life.
- [47:11]
John Kiriakou
Yep.
- [47:11]
Host
They're not really aware that spies exist and the extent of the work they do. They kind of assume that everything they see and people they interact with are normal and they think their devices and everything else is secure. What message do you have for them? A word of war, warning or caution about the reality?
- [47:25]
John Kiriakou
Yeah, that's a good question. Elliot Spitzer, the former governor of New York, when he was Attorney General of New York, he said, don't nod when you can motion, don't speak when you can nod, and don't ever put anything in a text message. At the CIA, on our very first day, they told us not to ever say or do anything that we would be ashamed to see on the front page of the Washington Post. I took that seriously. The truth of the matter is, because of technology the way it is today, our whole lives are out there potentially for someone to see, for someone to use against us. So be careful what you say, be careful what you write, even in jest, because it can be taken out of context to target you.
- [48:28]
Host
And what about digital security? You talked about the fact that it's possible for these forces, and not just the US but other countries, to be able to hack and crack your devices and see anything on your devices. I think we will go around assuming that our devices are secure.
- [48:44]
John Kiriakou
They're not secure at all. At all. It's not just, you know, nsa, CIA, FBI that you have to worry about. It's the British, the French, the Germans, the Canadians, the Australians, the New Zealanders, the Russians, the Chinese, the Israelis, the Iranians. I mean, everybody has these capabilities. Everybody. So you've got to be very, very careful.
- [49:08]
Host
Capabilities to do what?
- [49:09]
John Kiriakou
To intercept communications.
- [49:11]
Host
I've heard you say that they can hack car Systems. So they could theoretically hack into my car?
- [49:18]
John Kiriakou
Yes, we know that from WikiLeaks. There was something in 2017 called the Vault 7 Revelations. There was a CIA software engineer who was disgruntled, and instead of going to the Russians or the Chinese, he went to WikiLeaks and he downloaded thousands, tens of thousands of pages of documents classified above top secret. And they became what WikiLeaks called the Vault 7 documents. So they included things like the CIA, for example, will hack into, let's say, the Iranian Ministry of Interior computer system, but they'll leave little electronic clues all written in Cyrillic.
- [50:06]
Host
Cyrillic is what?
- [50:07]
John Kiriakou
The Cyrillic is the Alphabet. The Russian Alphabet. Yep. Or they can take control of your smart TV remotely and they can make the speaker turn into a microphone, so even though the TV is off, it can still hear everything that's being said in the room and broadcast back to the CIA.
- [50:31]
Host
Can they do that with devices?
- [50:33]
John Kiriakou
Oh, they could do that. When I first got hired, they were able to do that.
- [50:37]
Host
So you could be doing that right now with my.
- [50:39]
John Kiriakou
Oh, totally, absolutely, yes. That's old technology. And then the thing about the car, this was revelatory. They can take control again remotely of a car's computer system in order to. Well, I mean, in order to kill you.
- [50:59]
Host
Crash the car.
- [50:59]
John Kiriakou
Crash the car. Take it off a bridge, take it into a tree. Sure.
- [51:05]
Host
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- [52:59]
John Kiriakou
Yes.
- [53:00]
Host
What is a sleeper agent?
- [53:02]
John Kiriakou
Yeah, the Russians are very good with sleeper agents. We Americans don't have. No other country that we know of uses sleeper agents. A sleeper agent is someone who is taken virtually from birth and trained to be of another nationality. For example, let's say you're born in Russia and from the age of two they take you from your family with your family's acquiescence, and they take you to an American style town that they've built out in the hinterland in Russia, and they teach you to speak English with an American accent. You watch American TV shows, you watch American movies, you eat American food, you get an American style education. So I have no idea that you're not American. You speak English just like I do. You know all the same social references that I make you follow, the Philadelphia Eagles or the San Francisco 49ers or whatever. And then they send you to the United States with a fake id. What they'll do is they'll go through I was born in 1964. So they'll go through death records from 1964 and they'll look for deaths where the person was only a day or two old. And they'll take that name and the birth date and they'll get a Social Security card with the birth date. And then they'll use the Social Security card to get you a passport, an American passport. So you come here on your American passport. Everything's legit now. Your name is, you know, Bob Smith, which was really that baby's name that died. And you get a job, let's say as a Travel agent. And you may work as a Travel agent for 20 years and never hear from them, but then they'll activate you, and they'll say, we want you to go take care of this target over here.
- [55:12]
Host
Kill him.
- [55:13]
John Kiriakou
Yeah. Or, we want you to get a job at the Defense Department and give us everything that you can steal. Whatever. There's a woman in my neighborhood who was outed as a sleeper about a year ago. She was an elementary school teacher, and they grabbed her, and they ended up trading her back to the Russians for two Americans. So they're out there. I interviewed a sleeper, a former sleeper, on my own podcast a couple of weeks ago. He was from the East German intelligence service, and he was raised as an American and sent to New York. He got a job. I forget, doing what? Like, restaurant supply company or something like that. And he got married, and he had a daughter. And he told me as soon as I looked at her face the day she was born, I realized this life wasn't for me anymore. So they sent them an activation. What they do is they'll send you a radio message. And he didn't respond to it. And he told me he was on the subway one day. He's just standing there holding the strap, and this guy came up to him, and the guy grabs the strap next to him and whispers in his ear, if you don't report back, I have to kill you. And so he ran straight to the FBI field office in New York, and he said, I'm an East German sleeper, and I want to turn myself in. And he became a prolific source for the FBI.
- [56:49]
Host
So he was taken as a young person.
- [56:53]
John Kiriakou
Yes.
- [56:54]
Host
What was his story?
- [56:55]
John Kiriakou
Yeah, taken as a young person, sent to Russia to become American. They set him up with this phony identity. And then after he had gone through all the training, he came over here young. He was like, 20 or 22, and did this for 25 years. And then he said as soon as his daughter was born, he was like, wow, this is what life is for, not being a sleeper.
- [57:23]
Host
Do you think the average person listening to this conversation right now is interacting in their life at this exact moment in time with someone who is involved in espionage, spying, the CIA, or some international equivalent?
- [57:40]
John Kiriakou
Probably not, because they're mostly focused. Foreign intelligence officers are going to be spread out all over America. If a listener of this podcast is working in a defense company, a defense contractor, anywhere in America, then my answer is yes. Yes. You're probably encountering espionage of some sort or somebody committing espionage, whether it's Russian, Chinese, or Israeli. They're the three biggest ones that go after us in Washington. I mean, foreign spies. There could be as many as 10,000 in Washington. I remember my first wife, she was teaching ballet at a small private school. And one of the students there, they were all like, 4, 5, and 6 years old. One of the students there, her father was a Belgian diplomat. And so we would sit and talk and, oh, aren't the kids talented? And, oh, this is so much fun. They look so cute in their little tutus. And then I went to work one day, and as I was walking in, he was walking in, and I said, oh, come on, Peter. And he's like, you know, I thought you were a spy. And I said, I actually didn't think you were a spy. He was just going for a liaison meeting. We had a good chuckle about it. And I said, listen, don't tell anybody. Right, right, right, right. Sorry.
- [59:15]
Host
So I'm trying to figure out, how many spies do you think there are in the United States? If you think about foreign spies. Foreign spies, domestic spies, people that are basically undercover.
- [59:28]
John Kiriakou
Including Americans.
- [59:28]
Host
You mean including Americans.
- [59:30]
John Kiriakou
The number of CIA employees is classified. The number of CIA employees undercover is actually even more highly classified. I can give you a guesstimate.
- [59:40]
Host
But also, you know, Russia, China.
- [59:42]
John Kiriakou
Yeah. 50 to 60,000 altogether.
- [59:45]
Host
50 or 60,000 in the United States. So by a couple of degrees of separation, if you know 100 people.
- [59:53]
John Kiriakou
Yeah. You're probably gonna know one. Sure.
- [59:58]
Host
You said there's probably about 50,000 in the United States. So I've just done some quick math on my notepad here, which means that in order to know one, you'd need to meet 6,600 people.
- [60:12]
John Kiriakou
Okay.
- [60:13]
Host
Because the US population is roughly 330 million people.
- [60:15]
John Kiriakou
That's right.
- [60:15]
Host
And I. And then I did some other maths and did some research, and I asked the question I was trying to figure out is how many people does the average person meet a year? And it's roughly about 3 to 10,000 people. So theoretically.
- [60:29]
John Kiriakou
So the chances are good every year.
- [60:33]
Host
Statistically, according to my napkin math, you're meeting one of these undercover spies. One a year.
- [60:44]
John Kiriakou
There it is. Now, that number I gave you is. I'm lumping, like, all CIA people and all foreign intelligence officers in the United States.
- [60:55]
Host
Interesting.
- [60:57]
John Kiriakou
But again, if you work for an American defense company, Northrop, Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, any of them, your chances of encountering a foreign intelligence officer are even money.
- [61:11]
Host
Can't you, as a spy with the United States, ask the United States to give you loads of Money, like can't you say, ugh, you really want me to go do that? Can I have a million dollars? Because you're giving, you're potentially giving away a lot of money to other people.
- [61:24]
John Kiriakou
Oh my God. Giving away like unlimited amounts of money.
- [61:27]
Host
Because your budget when you were a spy, how much was it after?
- [61:29]
John Kiriakou
Nine, eleven? It was unlimited.
- [61:31]
Host
What does that mean? It means you can basically give away as much money as you need to.
- [61:35]
John Kiriakou
If I approach somebody and he says, I can give you this terrorist, I want 10 million, I'm like done.
- [61:44]
Host
What was the most you ever gave in 10 million?
- [61:46]
John Kiriakou
10 million.
- [61:46]
Host
You gave someone 10 million for what?
- [61:50]
John Kiriakou
Abu Zubaydah.
- [61:51]
Host
Who's abu Zubaydah?
- [61:53]
John Kiriakou
We believed that Abu zubaydah was the number three in al Qaeda. He wasn't the number three, but he was a very bad guy. I led the raids that captured abu Zubaydah in Pakistan. Faisal Abad, Pakistan, in March of 2002. And the State Department had a $10 million reward. We ended up giving the 10 million to the Pakistani intelligence service. It wasn't a person, a person, it was just really great analysis that led us to him. But there were others in the so called war on terror who got more than 10 million and got it like within 24 hours.
- [62:38]
Host
Individuals.
- [62:39]
John Kiriakou
Individuals.
- [62:41]
Host
How much?
- [62:42]
John Kiriakou
One got 25 million.
- [62:45]
Host
Just a person.
- [62:45]
John Kiriakou
Uh huh. And the thing is, you know, there's a lot of danger there. If you're a, if you're a, you know, a shepherd or a t boy and you make $40 a month and all of a sudden you have $25 million, something, something's up.
- [63:04]
Host
And what was the $25 million for?
- [63:07]
John Kiriakou
It was for a very high ranking foreign terrorist who was brought to justice. I can't say because it was never publicly disclosed. But what we would have to do in a situation like that is we would have to tell the source, you can't live here anymore. Pick a country and that's gonna be home from now on. And then we go to that country and say, hey, can you do us a solid? We've got this guy who, you know, he really came through and he's not gonna be a burden on your economy.
- [63:44]
Host
Cause he's got $25 million. Which country did he pick?
- [63:49]
John Kiriakou
I can't tell you that. He wanted to stay in the region. He wasn't willing to move to the United States, for example, because we're happy to take him. You're welcome to come to the United States. He's like, absolutely not.
- [64:02]
Host
You went to Dubai.
- [64:04]
John Kiriakou
I Would. Yeah.
- [64:05]
Host
With the tax code. Interesting. Hmm. I think I'm. Yeah. You can tell my bias from the questions that I ask about the things that fascinate me about espionage and spies is just, it's the, their understanding of human nature and what motivates us and the psychology of humans that you can learn from spies and the nature of human beings, I guess.
- [64:32]
John Kiriakou
Right.
- [64:32]
Host
And also I get. The other thing that really fascinates me is just I've had so many mind. Mind blowing moments where I've learned just how fragile the reality that I believe is. Like, I thought things were secure and I thought they were as they are, but.
- [64:46]
John Kiriakou
Right.
- [64:47]
Host
It just doesn't appear to be that way. There appears to be lots of secrets. And, you know, conspiracy theorists get a hard time. But actually, the more I've done this as a job, the more I go, hmm, conspiracy theorists write more than I expected them to be.
- [65:00]
John Kiriakou
See, and that's an important point. I, I hate conspiracy theories that run amok. But, you know, a former CIA director is the one who came up with the term conspiracy theory. And it was a way for the CIA to discredit people by making them sound like crazy people, when in fact there was such a thing called MKUltra. There was such a thing called Operation Grasshopper or MK Chikwit. The CIA did crazy, crazy stuff from roughly 1952 to 1975. For example, they experimented with a virus that they, that they released in San Francisco. They waited for an unusually foggy, like heavily foggy day. They released it into the atmosphere just to see if it would make people sick. And 11 people went to the emergency room with this rare upper respiratory infection. And then they were like, you know, high fives. Yeah, it works. And then they started experimenting with lsd. LSD was a big thing at the CIA in the early days. We were convinced, See, and this is where counterintelligence is important. The Chinese told us in like 1951 that the Russians were using LSD to try to engineer it to be used as a mind control drug. That wasn't true. That was disinformation. The truth was the Russians had no LSD program. The Chinese did. So they tried to throw us off the scent by blaming the Russians. We panicked. And by 1952 we started this program called MK Ultra, which began by using LSD experimentally. What the CIA did was they started by dosing their own employees without telling them. Several committed suicide. One jumped out of a hotel window with the hope that, yeah, we'll just see what happens. See what they say, see how it feels, you know, see if we can control them. See if we can plant memories that didn't actually happen. And then they decided, no, it's not a good idea to dose our own people. Let's just dose strangers out in public. So they went to San Francisco, they rented a safe house and they hired prostitutes to go out on the street, pick up John's, bring them back to the safe house. Johns, Johns, people who hire prostitutes. Men who hire prostitutes. Dose the Johns with LSD and just see what happens. But I mean, these are like serious crimes you're committing against people.
- [68:08]
Host
Just reading about it here, it says under Operation Midnight Climax. Interesting name, Operation Midnight Climax. The CIA paid sex workers to lure men to safe houses where agents drugged them and then watched them through one way mirrors and recorded their behavior.
- [68:25]
John Kiriakou
Exactly.
- [68:26]
Host
They tried to erase their personality.
- [68:30]
John Kiriakou
Nice, huh?
- [68:31]
Host
The goal was often to break and rebuild the human mind. In 1973, the CIA director ordered mass destruction of the MK Ultra files. What we know comes from accidentally surviving documents, meaning this is a sanitized version.
- [68:47]
John Kiriakou
That day he testified before the Church committee. The Church committee specifically told him, do not destroy any documents. He went back that afternoon to the CIA and said, destroy everything.
- [69:04]
Host
Why?
- [69:05]
John Kiriakou
Because it was damning. They were experimenting on American citizens. They were experimenting by spreading diseases in American cities. And so he was held in contempt of Congress. He was fined like $150 and about 15% of the documents were overlooked and survived. We'll never know exactly what happened under.
- [69:36]
Host
MKUltra as we sit here now. There's people on the streets of Iran that are protesting the leadership there. And the CIA are often associated with some of the coops going back to the 1950s and other countries toppling elected leaders to protect U.S. interests.
- [69:57]
John Kiriakou
Yes.
- [69:59]
Host
Do you think the CIA are involved in Iran at the moment?
- [70:02]
John Kiriakou
Probably. I think the Israelis are heavily involved in Iran at the moment. I'll tell you why. For a couple of reasons, more than a couple. Number one, in the so called 12 Day War that we saw last year, the Israelis were absolutely masterful in the way they went after the Iranian leadership. What they did was they focused on recruiting Afghan refugees. Iran was home to more than 2 million Afghan refugees. And as essentially illegal aliens, they could not avail themselves of medical care, the welfare system. They're starving. They only eat if they can beg for enough to buy food. And so the Israelis went to these people very discreetly and said, hey, we'll give you $200 a month if you tell us where the generals Live? In which apartments do the generals live? Where do the nuclear scientists live? The Israelis killed the top 12 generals across the entire Iranian military and killed almost every Iranian nuclear scientist. Because what they were able to do was to recruit these Afghans to not just tell them where they were living, where the generals and the scientists were living, but what their cell phone numbers were. And so the Israelis were able to geolocate the cell phones, and then that's where you fire the missile. They killed all of them. And then after the Iranians finally realized it's the cell phones, they ordered that no senior military officials and no scientists could carry cell phones. But it never dawned on them to tell the bodyguards not to carry cell phones. And so the Israelis started rocketing the bodyguards and just killed everybody else.
- [71:56]
Host
Have you ever killed anybody?
- [71:58]
John Kiriakou
No, thank God. My children asked me that. And I told them very proudly that I have never taken any action that resulted in the death of another human being. There's one kind of half exception, and I think about this all the time. In 1993, I guess it was, I was sitting in the morning meeting. I told you earlier that every unit meets every day at 9 o', clock, and you just talk about what happened in the country that you cover overnight. It was in the morning meeting and the secretary came in and she said, john, General Powell is on the phone for you. Call him. Powell. I said, general Powell, how does he know who I am? And she said, I don't know. But he asked for you by name. My boss is like, well, go answer the phone. So I went to my desk and I said, good morning, General Powell. This is John Kiriakou. And he says, john, if the Iraqis were going to kill the president, who would actually be in charge of that operation? And I said, well, if you're talking about the attempt to kill President Bush, George H.W. bush, he had been visiting Kuwait. I said, kuwait operations are run from the Iraqi intelligence services, Basra station. But Basra station is headed by Sabre Abdulazizadori, the director of the Iraqi intelligence service. He says, where does he sit? I said, baghdad. Where exactly in Baghdad? I said, if you hold on a second, I'll look up the address. So I looked it up. I gave him the address. He says, thank you. And he hangs up the phone. I go back in the meeting. They were like, what did he want? I said, he wanted to know about Sabraduri and the attempt to kill President Bush. Okay. Eight hours later, we fired 47 cruise missiles into Iraqi intelligence service headquarters. But by then, it was the middle of the night in Baghdad and we killed the janitor. So the next day I said to my boss, I killed that janitor. And he said, I knew you were going to say that. You didn't kill the janitor. You had no idea what Powell was going to do with the information. I said, I know, but I still feel guilty about it. Other than that, thank God I never had to do it. I'm not sure how I would sleep at night.
- [74:24]
Host
Do the US still assassinate people by the CIA?
- [74:28]
John Kiriakou
Absolutely, yes. When Barack Obama was president, John Brennan in the first term was the deputy National Security Advisor for counterterrorism. And he started something called the Tuesday morning kill list meeting. So it would be Brennan, it would be the National Security Council attorney, somebody from the CIA General Counsel's office, and a representative of the director of the Counterterrorism Center. And every Tuesday morning, they would meet at the White House, come up with a list of people to kill that week. The teams would fan out around the world, kill their targets, and then go back and meet next Tuesday morning.
- [75:06]
Host
And are these world leaders or are they normal people?
- [75:09]
John Kiriakou
No, these are ground level terrorists.
- [75:12]
Host
Okay, so it could be someone that appears to be a normal civilian but is doing something that they don't like.
- [75:20]
John Kiriakou
The law is pretty clear on this. It's supposed to be somebody who poses a clear and present danger to the United States, to an American citizen, or to an American installation, which can be quite a vague. See, that's the thing. It sounds like it's clear. It's actually not at all clear. And when they get back from these missions, we just have to take their word for it.
- [75:49]
Host
Which spy force around the world did you think was the most impressive?
- [75:55]
John Kiriakou
Oh, the Israelis.
- [75:56]
Host
Really?
- [75:57]
John Kiriakou
Yeah. The Israelis have no rules. They'll kill anybody. What was it three years ago? This. This pager operation?
- [76:09]
Host
Oh, it was so fascinating.
- [76:11]
John Kiriakou
Good Lord, it was a work of genius.
- [76:13]
Host
It is genius. It is.
- [76:15]
John Kiriakou
It was totally illegal. Totally illegal, but it was genius the moving parts involved.
- [76:22]
Host
I didn't believe it was real. I had to, like, I was like, there's no way that this is real. This is the stuff of movies. It is for anyone that doesn't know what was the story.
- [76:31]
John Kiriakou
Ah, yeah. Okay. So the Israelis knew that Hezbollah, the terrorist group Hezbollah from Lebanon, was communicating using pagers. They didn't want to use cell phones because they didn't want the Israelis to intercept their phone calls. And they thought, oh, pagers, those are safe. So the Israelis bought a company in, like, Hungary, I think it was that Made pagers. And they got Hezbollah to order the pagers from this company. They were able to insert explosives in the pagers. And the pagers went to like Taiwan and from Taiwan to Thailand, and then from Thailand to. I forget where. Syria, I guess. And then from Syria to Lebanon. And so what the Israelis did was they were able to activate the explosives in all the pagers, simultaneously killing people. They killed everybody of any import in Hezbollah. They essentially decapitated Hezbollah. And then the ones they didn't kill in that operation, they bombed the apartment buildings where they lived. See, this is the thing too about the Israelis. If they want to kill, kill you. They won't like just do a close in hit. They'll blow up the entire city block where you live. They'll kill a thousand people just to get you. And they don't care. And then they say, what are you gonna do about it? You gonna go to the International Court of Justice?
- [78:08]
Host
Do they really do this?
- [78:09]
John Kiriakou
Yeah.
- [78:12]
Host
Did you ever interact with them?
- [78:13]
John Kiriakou
Yes.
- [78:14]
Host
And how did you find them to be miserable.
- [78:18]
John Kiriakou
My very first briefing that I ever gave as a junior analyst was to the Israelis. My boss said, okay, he says, you're going to give your first classified liaison briefing. So it's going to be the Israelis and there are a couple things you should know. I said, okay. He said, we don't allow the Israelis into the building ever. I said, why not? He said, because they spy on us. Not only do they spy on us, they would always bring gifts. Like, oh, we brought this wonderful gift for you. And every time somebody tries to bring something in, you have to X ray it. And it's got like listening devices and it's packed with two years worth of batteries. We're like, you guys, you have to stop doing this. Every time you come here, you try to bug our conference rooms. It's bad form. You have to stop doing it. And then like, oh, okay, okay, we knew you would find it. We're just kidding. Come on. So we have to meet them miles away from headquarters in a place that we rent. So he said nothing over the secret level. No top secret information, just up to secret. I'm like, okay. So I go with like a dozen analysts. And because I'm the junior most analyst, I've only been on the job at this point, I'm going to say six weeks or so. I went last. So the first analyst says, I'm the chief analyst and this is my briefing. And then the next guy says, I'm the political analyst and I'm the econ analyst. And I'm the military analyst, and I'm the oil analyst and the tech analyst. And it comes to me. So I said. Because I was overturning at the time, I was not undercover. I said, my name is John Kiriakou, and I'm going to brief you on Saddam Hussein's psychological state of mind. Well, there were two Israelis there. One was from Mossad and one was from Shin Bet. Shin Bet is the FBI of Israel, and Mossad is the CIA of Israel. So the Shin Bet guy, he has his glasses down like this, and he goes like this. He says, spell your name. So I spell it. K I, R. Spell it. And he goes, you are Jewish. I said, don't you dare. I am not recruitable. Don't you dare even try it. I was furious. We went out of the briefing, I was going to explode. Everybody started laughing at me. They're like, they do that to any. Every one of us. Every one of us.
- [80:52]
Host
They try and recruit you.
- [80:53]
John Kiriakou
Yeah.
- [80:55]
Host
To turn against the United States.
- [80:56]
John Kiriakou
Yeah. On my very first day at the CIA, we got a briefing from the CIA's director of security. And he said that all of us have to have in the very front of our minds the concept of counterintelligence. For example, he said, there's a steakhouse right down the road on Route 123. It's the nearest restaurant to the CIA. He goes, don't ever eat there. Why? Because the KGB thinks we all eat there. So all the customers are KGB officers waiting for CIA people to walk in and start talking about work. Don't ever eat there. I've never eaten there to this day.
- [81:38]
Host
Because they're potential Russian spies.
- [81:42]
John Kiriakou
So he said, our Israeli friends have two officers in their embassy, one from Mossad, one from Shin Bet. The FBI has identified 187 undeclared Israeli intelligence officers spread all across the United States, mostly at defense contractors, trying to steal our secrets. Now we give the Israelis 95% of our defense secrets. You want the F35? Done? Here's the F35. You want this advanced missile? Here you go. It's on us. So they steal the remaining 5%.
- [82:24]
Host
Do you think Jeffrey Epstein was a spy?
- [82:28]
John Kiriakou
I believe very strongly he was a spy, yes.
- [82:30]
Host
And who do you think he was working for?
- [82:32]
John Kiriakou
The Israelis? I'm confident it was the Israelis.
- [82:36]
Host
Why?
- [82:37]
John Kiriakou
Jeffrey Epstein is kind of the stereotypical example that they give you in training for what's called an access agent. This is a different kind of recruit. So, for example, if you're a foreign intelligence service and you want information, like close in information from a former president, from the CEO of the biggest company in the world, from a member of the British royal family. You're not going to recruit these guys. You're not going to recruit Bill Clinton or Bill Gates or Prince Andrew. So you do the next best thing. You recruit somebody who has regular access to them. And that person that you recruit is going to need to make these people feel comfortable and appreciated. And so you give him plenty of money. So he has this house on an island, or he has the whole island. And maybe you bring in young girls, you get them in compromising positions, just in case you need to use what's called compromat, compromising pictures. We know now that Jeffrey Epstein's house on the island had video cameras, hidden video cameras in literally every room, including the bathrooms. Why? Why would he care what was going on unless it was to use that information against people? As I said, only the Israelis and the Russians use extortion as a motivator.
- [84:23]
Host
So would they have made Jeffrey Epstein rich in order to give him that access? How could they have done that?
- [84:30]
John Kiriakou
Oh, that's easy. I mean, you do. I mean, governments are the only ones, really, that can launder money unfettered. And you can also do it through real estate, through fine art, and through horses. Those are the three easiest ways to launder money today. Fine art, real estate, and racehorses.
- [84:52]
Host
But presumably he would have spoken out at some point. No. He would have said something or no.
- [84:58]
John Kiriakou
But it would explain why he got a sweetheart deal in 2006. I mean, this is a guy that's been convicted of child sex crimes, and he gets six months of house arrest with an ankle bracelet. We have mandatory minimums in this country. That's a five year mandatory minimum, first offense.
- [85:16]
Host
He definitely had some interesting power, didn't he?
- [85:19]
John Kiriakou
Mm. And Alex Acosta, who was the prosecuting attorney at the time and then later became Secretary of Labor under Trump. Trump won. Alex Acosta said that he was ordered by the Attorney General to give Epstein the sweetheart deal. Well, who's the only person that can order the Attorney General to do something? It's the President. So was it because Epstein was working on Clinton? Most of the people down there were Democrats. I mean, what was the reason?
- [85:58]
Host
Maybe he was working for the US Government.
- [86:00]
John Kiriakou
It's possible that he could have been doubled against the Israelis or others? Sure. Sure, that's possible.
- [86:08]
Host
If you had to bet, what would you say? If you had to bet everything you have on either him being a spy or not a spy yeah. What would you bet on?
- [86:19]
John Kiriakou
He was a spy? I feel very confident in that assessment. I debated Alan Dershowitz about this on the Piers Morgan show one time. It was Scott Horton and me who said that he was an Israeli spy. And it was Alan Dershowitz and General Danny Ayallon, the former head of Mossad. Ayalan was kind of into it in terms of having a fun time. He was just having a fun time with the conversation. He wasn't going to admit to anything. Dershowitz was Epstein's attorney. So I said that I believed Epstein was an Israeli spy. And Dershowitz interrupts me like attorneys do, and he says, that is outrageous. If he had been a spy, he would have told me because I was his attorney, and I could have gone to the White House and I could have gotten him a better sentence. And I said, wait a minute. You could have gone to the White House to say, go easy on Jeffrey Epstein because he's an Israeli spy collecting information from American politicians. If I were the president, I would have hung him from a tree. And then Piers Morgan said, general I. Allen, was he a spy? And he goes, who knows?
- [87:39]
Host
He knows.
- [87:41]
John Kiriakou
It's like, come on, man.
- [87:43]
Host
Who do you think is the real adversary of the West? Because we often talk about it being Russia or I think it's China. Why? What is it that we don't realize about China and their agenda?
- [87:55]
John Kiriakou
Oh, wow. So much. The Chinese are so good at what they do and the Chinese are so patient. You know, in the United States, we don't have long term timelines for anything. When we want something, we want it now.
- [88:11]
Host
Is that in part because we have this four year election cycle?
- [88:13]
John Kiriakou
Yes, I believe that it is. The Chinese will plan for something big 25 years down the road because they.
- [88:20]
Host
Will still be in power then.
- [88:21]
John Kiriakou
Yeah. And so they're really good at stealing technology. There are more Chinese PhD students in the hard sciences here in the United States than you can shake a stick at. They're everywhere. They're at every major university and they're really, really smart. And then oftentimes they'll say, oh, you know, I've had such a great experience here, I'd like to stay in the United States. Yeah, I bet you would. I bet you would. So you can spy for China. Do you think that's happening every single day?
- [88:56]
Host
You think that Chinese students are in America spying on behalf of China?
- [89:01]
John Kiriakou
Yes. Yes.
- [89:03]
Host
How could you be so sure?
- [89:04]
John Kiriakou
I'm 1000% sure.
- [89:07]
Host
How could you be so sure?
- [89:08]
John Kiriakou
Because we frequently arrest them. And then trade them for Americans who are in Chinese prisons. Hmm. Yeah.
- [89:17]
Host
And they're masquerading as students.
- [89:21]
John Kiriakou
Mm. PhD candidates. Always in the hard sciences. Always.
- [89:27]
Host
So China are the long term adversary. And what is it that China want, what is it they're doing and what is the outcome?
- [89:34]
John Kiriakou
I think they want a couple of things. I think that on a more immediate basis, they want reunification with Taiwan. It's going to happen someday. Even the Taiwanese will tell you, yes, we're a part of China, but we're kind of not a part of China. We're not really independent, but we are kind of independent. Even American policy is that Taiwan is a part of China and eventually someday they'll be reunited.
- [89:59]
Host
Do you think with everything that's going on at the moment with Trump in Venezuela and Greenland, this is going to create cover for.
- [90:06]
John Kiriakou
Oh, I was hoping you would ask me a question like. I think that's a very important issue that the media really aren't talking about. So let's put it in the context of what happened last week in Venezuela, because they're all moving parts of the same policy. So we sent a Delta Force squad into Venezuela a week ago and we snatched President Maduro, and he faces international narcotics trafficking charges in New York. Okay, Some people are for that, some people are against it. Whether you're for it or against it, it's happened. There's nothing we can do about it now. But that operation may have inadvertently given the green light to something that both the Russians and the Chinese have long sought. The United States really is the only true superpower in the world. The Chinese have a lot more people. They have lots of nuclear missiles, but they have one aircraft carrier. We have 12, soon to be 14. We have way more long distance bombers. We have way more fighters. The Russians are bogged down in a war in Ukraine. They're winning the war, but they're bogged down nonetheless. So did this reinstitution of the Monroe Doctrine saying that, you know, from 1814 that the Western Hemisphere is the territory of the United States, it's up to us to protect it from foreign powers? Well, in 1814, that meant the British Navy. We don't really need a Monroe Doctrine. And it's not up to us whether the Argentines want to have good relations with China. For example, we invoked the Monroe Doctrine in this operation to snatch Maduro. So does that mean then that if we have a sphere of influence, that is the Western Hemisphere, that the Chinese have a sphere of influence that includes Taiwan, that the Russians have a Sphere of influence that includes Ukraine, because that's kind of what it seems. It looks like we've given the green light to both of those countries and that we're conceding the fact that. That it's a unipolar world right now in favor of a multipolar world. Now, personally, I think a multipolar world is safer.
- [92:31]
Host
What's a multipolar world?
- [92:32]
John Kiriakou
Multipolar world is where there's not just one superpower, there are three or more. So in terms of policy, this simple act of just sending a team in to grab Maduro has turned international diplomacy on its head. What do we do if the Chinese invade Taiwan? Do we really want to send American soldiers to, you know, to fight and die for Taiwan?
- [93:01]
Host
What do you think would happen if China tomorrow said, you know what? We're going to take Taiwan?
- [93:05]
John Kiriakou
You know what? Honest to God, I think nothing would happen. I think we would rush to protect Australia, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand. We'd rush to protect them.
- [93:19]
Host
Why?
- [93:20]
John Kiriakou
Because they're major non NATO allies. They're good friends, close friends. But in terms of going to Taiwan to fight Chinese soldiers, I can't imagine it.
- [93:30]
Host
Trump told the New York Times that whether China moves on Taiwan is ultimately up to Chinese President Xi Jinping, not the usa, adding that he's told Xi he would be very unhappy if China changed the status quo. He claimed he doesn't think Xi will act while he's president.
- [93:48]
John Kiriakou
See, and that is actually what the long term policy is. The long term policy is sure someday to be determined later. You guys can unify.
- [93:59]
Host
Just don't do it while I'm here.
- [94:00]
John Kiriakou
Yeah, don't do it today.
- [94:03]
Host
Maybe when Trump goes, God forbid. So going back to this point, you said they want Taiwan. What else do you think China want?
- [94:12]
John Kiriakou
Well.
- [94:14]
Host
Do they want to see the US Fall?
- [94:16]
John Kiriakou
Yes, sure.
- [94:18]
Host
And are they actively doing things to encourage that?
- [94:22]
John Kiriakou
Yes, but not the things that you would expect. Instead of running around the world, overthrowing governments, invading countries, which is what we do, they go to countries and say, hey, you need a new highway system. We'll pay for it. You need a new airport. No problem. You need a new hospital, electrical grid. We have plenty of money from our gigantic trade surplus. We'll pay for it. We just want to have really good friendly relations with you. And that's what they do. The Chinese essentially own Africa right now.
- [95:00]
Host
What are you most concerned about in the world at the moment? What does actually keep you up at night?
- [95:05]
John Kiriakou
What frightens me the most is that the US government over the last. Well, really over the last 50 years or 55 years, has so inflated its military budget that what we spend on the Pentagon is now more than the next eight largest countries combined. Right? Donald Trump right now spends a trillion dollars a year on the Pentagon budget. He's asking for next year to be a trillion and a half. We can't afford it. Our interest on the national debt is now the third largest expenditure in government between the Pentagon and. And Social Security and then the interest on the debt.
- [96:00]
Host
And why does this bother you?
- [96:01]
John Kiriakou
Because we're going bankrupt. And all the while, the Chinese are letting us spend ourselves into oblivion. The Chinese don't spend that kind of money. How come I can't have a bullet train that goes 400 miles an hour? How come I can't get to Chicago in three hours by train? You know, how come the airports in my country look like shit? And you go to Chinese airports and they're pristine with, like, the most amazing services and the best restaurants? How come Chinese roads don't have potholes? And in my town, it's like driving across Bosnia. It's because they decided not to spend their money on weapons. They spend it on infrastructure.
- [96:47]
Host
Do you think that's likely, that the US could go bankrupt effectively?
- [96:51]
John Kiriakou
I do. Yeah. I do. We can't keep up this pace. It's not possible. We're gonna have to. We're gonna have to raise taxes and cut the budget.
- [97:04]
Host
What's the most important thing that we didn't talk about that we should have talked about? John?
- [97:09]
John Kiriakou
Ooh, that's a good question. One of the most important things in my life, to tell you the truth, is the issue of ethics. I love this country more than anything else in the world, and I want it to do the right thing. We're a country of laws and we have to obey our laws, which is why I blew the whistle on the torture program.
- [97:31]
Host
Who's not obeying the laws?
- [97:32]
John Kiriakou
Our government.
- [97:33]
Host
In what way?
- [97:36]
John Kiriakou
We've gotten to the point, and it started around the year 2000 or 2001. We got to the point where if we want to do something, we just do it.
- [97:48]
Host
Like what?
- [97:49]
John Kiriakou
In 1946, we passed something called the Federal Torture act, which banned torture. Okay? Also in 1946, we executed Japanese soldiers who waterboarded American prisoners of war. That was a death penalty offense to waterboard someone. All right? In 1968, on January 11, 1968, the Washington Post ran a front page photograph of an American soldier waterboarding a North Vietnamese prisoner. When the picture ran, the secretary of defense Robert McNamara ordered an immediate investigation. That soldier was arrested, he was charged with torture and he was sentenced to 20 years of hard labor at Leavenworth. And then in 2002, it's legal. We can do it. We can do it because we're the good guys. The law never changed. We changed. And my point was always, either we're going to be the good guys or we're not. Either we're going to be what Ronald Reagan called a shining city on a hill or we're not. When I was stationed in Bahrain, I was the human rights officer. So I had to write the human rights report every year that we sent to Congress. Well, imagine if John goes in to see the Minister of Interior and I say, you, Highness, you cannot pick up a 15 year old kid for marching in a peaceful pro democracy demonstration and then murder him, beat him to death in the police station and call his parents to come and pick up the body. You can't do that. I have to report that to Congress. And you're going to lose your rights to buy American military hardware. But then the CIA station chief goes in an hour later and says, don't pay any attention to the human rights guy. I'll give you $10 million if you set up a secret prison here. We're going to send you some prisoners, you torture them, and then you give us a write up of everything they say during torture. Who's he going to listen to? Is he going to listen to me?
- [100:05]
Host
Did that happen?
- [100:06]
John Kiriakou
Yes. He's not going to listen to me. If all of a sudden torture is legal just because we say it is, and then Congress is like, oh, we don't know anything because it's a secret program so we can't talk about it.
- [100:22]
Host
Do we still torture people?
- [100:24]
John Kiriakou
No. I am very proud to say that when the McCain Feinstein anti torture amendment was passed into law In December of 2014, John McCain got up on the floor of the Senate and said it was because of me, because of my revelations. He said if I had not told the American people that the CIA was torturing prisoners in their name, we would never have known. That's why I say it was worth it.
- [100:59]
Host
Do you think you should be pardoned by President Trump?
- [101:01]
John Kiriakou
I do.
- [101:02]
Host
Have you written to him?
- [101:05]
John Kiriakou
I, I've, I have to be careful with my language here. I applied. My name is in the system. I have very, very high level supporters who have approached him personally and I'm hopeful that it happens.
- [101:34]
Host
John, we have a closing tradition where the last guest leaves a question for the next, not knowing who they're going to be leaving at first. And the question left for you is, what's something you stopped doing that improved your life? More than anything, you started.
- [101:49]
John Kiriakou
Feeling sorry for myself. I'll be honest with you, I have struggled with depression my entire life. And after my second divorce, I went through this period where I was just. I couldn't pull myself out of bed in the morning because I felt so sorry for myself.
- [102:14]
Host
Because of the divorce or because of your life or because the whole thing.
- [102:18]
John Kiriakou
I believed I was just a loser. I was in my 50s, unemployable convicted felon, barely able to make ends meet, worried about where my rent was coming from one month to the next. And then I thought, fuck you. What's wrong with you? You don't have to answer to anybody. And I told myself, no more feeling sorry for myself. I was going to go make a career on my own. And so I knew I would never work for government again. I knew I would never work in corporate America again. After I left the CIA, I was the head of the competitive intelligence practice at Deloitte and Touche, spying on Ernst and Young and pwc and IBM. And it was great fun. I'll never work in the corporate world again. So I decided I'm going to do what I'm good at. And I'm a terrific writer and I'm told that I'm a gifted storyteller. So I'm going to write books. I have two syndicated newspaper columns that run in 212 small town papers around the country. I'm on TV all the time. I have three podcasts deprogram every day on both YouTube and Rumble. Thanks for letting me plug them by the way.
- [103:38]
Host
Go ahead.
- [103:39]
John Kiriakou
Deep focus on YouTube and on Apple podcasts. John Kiriakou's dead drop, which is just story after story after story. And now I make a perfectly great living. I'm in a long term relationship with a woman I'm crazy about and life is good.
- [103:55]
Host
And it all started with that decision to stop feeling sorry for yourself.
- [103:57]
John Kiriakou
Yes. If people around me keep saying, you've done nothing wrong, you're a hero for what you did. And deep down, I would do it again. Then why am I feeling sorry for myself? I'm right, they're wrong, they're criminals. So I'm just gonna go on with my life. And that snapped me out of it. So don't feel sorry for yourself. Do something about it. Act.
- [104:28]
Host
John, you are someone that is very good at storytelling. You are. You've written many books. I'm gonna link all the books below.
- [104:33]
John Kiriakou
Oh, thank you.
- [104:34]
Host
So many incredible books. I've got some of them here with me on the floor. I could go through all of them, but we need another couple of days. John, thank you.
- [104:43]
John Kiriakou
Thank you.
- [104:43]
Host
Thank you so much for your incredible storytelling, your wisdom, but also just giving us a window into a world that most of us know nothing about, because there's so many lessons that I think are pertinent to all of our lives riddled amongst there. And I think, you know, I hope you do get pardoned.
- [104:58]
John Kiriakou
Thank you. I hope so. I've got my fingers crossed.
- [105:01]
Host
And when you do, hopefully we can come back again and have another conversation.
- [105:04]
John Kiriakou
I look forward to that.
- [105:04]
Host
It's been such a pleasure.
- [105:06]
John Kiriakou
Pleasure's mine. Thanks for the invitation.
- [105:11]
Host
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