Title: John Kiriakou - Middle East on the Brink of a Major War After Houthi Move
Show: National Security Files
Date: 2026-07-27
URL: https://youtu.be/FR49AAOlitk
Duration: 57:00

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[00:00] Hi everybody. I'm John Kiriakou and welcome back to the briefing room. Before we jump into the news and today is a day packed with news. I want to say thank you again for liking, for subscribing, for commenting, for following and telling your family and friends about the podcast. We are growing by leaps and bounds and it's just because of you. So thank you very, very much for that. Well, let's jump in. There is a lot to go over. We've got a packed show today. First, Vice President J.D. Vance

[00:31] carried out a remarkable interview with Joe Rogan. Why did he suddenly admit that the Trump administration has mishandled the Epstein files? And what does that tell us about what is happening inside the White House? To tell you the truth, there are two equally plausible explanations for this and we're going to go over that. Then a major escalation in the Middle East over the last 24 hours that could send gas prices soaring before the midterm elections. And finally, we'll look ahead to the midterm elections and what the

[01:03] surprising success of democratic socialists in recent primaries could mean for the political map in 2026. And really the basic question is, is this even really a positive for the Democrats? And finally, I want to make one quick note and that is to recognize the death early this morning of former CIA director James Woolsey at the age of 86. I I knew James Woolsey. He was a controversial figure. And one of the reasons why I wanted to bring his death up is that he died of a

[01:34] stroke but after suffering for 4 years from Havana syndrome. So we'll talk about that for a minute. In this A block, let's start with J.D. Vance and Joe Rogan and the Epstein files. So we're going to dig into these Epstein files because of the Iran war. It's been a long time since the media could really focus on the Epstein files in any meaningful way. But this week there was a major development. The Vice President, J.D. Vance, went on the Joe Rogan podcast, and he openly admitted

[02:05] that the Trump administration mishandled the release of the files. We'll play that clip in just a second, but there's a lot that shocked me about that admission that I want to say first. In the intelligence field, you learn to pay very close attention when a government voluntarily changes its story, especially on matters related to national security and state secrets. That's what I want to dig into today. Let's start off by saying this. The vote in the House of Representatives

[02:35] to release the Epstein files was 419 to 1. In the Senate, it was 99 to nothing. And then the president signed it into law. And then as soon as he signed it into law, he said, "You know what? Tough luck. I'm not going to release anything. What are you going to do about it? What are you going to sue me?" And what can we do about it? The answer is nothing. And so, 3 million pages of documents were released. That leaves another 3 to 3 and 1/2 million pages

[03:07] that have not been released. And Marjorie Taylor Greene, if she's to be believed, said that the president told her to her face that he will never release the remaining documents, quote, "Because it'll hurt my friends." As a quick refresher, we are more than 7 months past that deadline when the White House was supposed to release the remaining 3 to 3 and 1/2 million pages of those Epstein files after Congress passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act sponsored by Republican Thomas

[03:39] Massie and Democrat Ro Khanna, requiring, by law, the force of law, requiring the Justice Department to release the Epstein files no later than December 19th of last year. The administration still has not produced many of the documents that supporters expected. But even more striking is the political fallout for Republicans who supported the Epstein files release. Republicans who supported transparency. Thomas Massie, the

[04:11] Republican of Kentucky, became one of the Trump administration's top political targets. The White House went after him so hard outside super PACs, mostly those affiliated with AIPAC, spent $35 million to kick him out of his $180,000 a year job in Congress. And Donald Trump personally flew to his district to his district to rally against him. Marjorie Taylor Greene was forced to

[04:41] resign from Congress after years of being one of Donald Trump's most loyal supporters. Indeed, her son, a high schooler, was receiving death threats. And when she went to the president to ask for help, some kind of protection, maybe Secret Service, he told her tough luck. You should have thought about that before you opened your mouth. Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina, she ran for the governorship of South Carolina and came in fifth. A sitting congresswoman came in fifth

[05:12] after losing Donald Trump's endorsement. And Representative Lauren Boebert was brought into the situation room for a meeting with senior White House officials, including FBI Director Kash Patel and then Attorney General Pam Bondi, to pressure her to remove her name from that discharge petition. She's still in Congress. I don't know if she made some sort of a deal with the White House. With that said, neither the Republicans nor the Democrats take her seriously. But each one of those Republicans,

[05:43] except for Boebert, are about to be out of a job or are already out of a job. Which makes it all the more surprising when J.D. Vance goes on to the Joe Rogan podcast and says this. Let's go to that clip. >> We mishandled the Epstein release. Guilty. We did mishandle, especially the communications of it. >> What do you think should have been done? >> I think that we should have just dropped everything at the very beginning and like obviously takes a little time to review the stuff, to find the stuff, to redact things where you have victims and

[06:14] so forth. We should have just done it as quickly as possible. >> But some of the stuff that was redacted, some of the names that were redacted weren't victims. >> So yeah, I I I I've looked into this and my understanding of this, having looked at a lot of this but not all of it, is that it is sometimes hard to draw a distinction between victim and co-conspirator. And like let me highlight this in a very sort of obvious way. Ro Khanna, who's been one of the most one of the loudest voices on the Epstein file, well, he became very loud on the

[06:46] Epstein files the minute Donald Trump became president, didn't seem to care about it during the Biden administration. He actually brought one of the Epstein victims, I think to the State of the Union last year or maybe it was the year before last. Well, like that victim, and I'm not accusing, I'm not saying she wasn't a victim, uh I don't know anything about her particular case, she was also listed as a co-conspirator in some of these documents, right? >> Maybe she was, maybe she wasn't. We should note that Ro Khanna is not the enemy here. And Donald Trump has already

[07:18] been president in a previous term. Why didn't he release the Epstein documents then? You can't blame this on Ro Khanna, just like you can't blame it on Thomas Massie. You got to blame it on Joe Biden and Donald Trump because the buck has to has to stop somewhere. So, Vance says that that quote, "We mishandled the Epstein files." There are several other other things that shocked to about this clip. Number one, he's the sitting Vice President of the United States. If he's talking as if the Epstein scandal is is over and that this

[07:49] is the hot wash that we're going back and we're looking at well, you know, this is the way it could have been done. This is an open case. There are still three to three and a half million pages under the FBI's control that have not been made public. Three to three and a half million pages that the president said will never be released because they would embarrass his friends. Well, there are still also many witnesses to be subpoenaed by Congress.

[08:20] Uh let's talk about Alan Dershowitz. Alan Dershowitz is 86 years old and admitted to getting a a massage from a 16-year-old girl and his defense was he kept his underwear on. But Republicans on the House Oversight Committee are not even close to calling witnesses to to testify, let alone subpoenaing witnesses. So, it's striking to hear the Vice President of the United States speak as if the only remaining issue in the to get this message out. Number two, the pivot to saying that Ro

[08:52] Khanna, of all people, didn't care about this under Biden. Sure, Democrats were not exactly champions of releasing these files under Biden, probably because it would have embarrassed friends of theirs. But it leaves this out. Republicans campaigned on releasing the files. This was a campaign issue that was used against Kamala Harris. We will release the files. Well, they're the ones who promised to release the files, which made it much more obvious that there was

[09:23] a scandal when they suddenly reversed course after giving out Epstein files binders to MAGA influencers. You remember that? Third, and perhaps most important, J.D. Vance is someone who very much still has a seat at the table for all things intelligence. Of course, he's not in charge of the FBI, but he is close enough to know the internal strategy at the FBI. He knows the political calculations. And if the White House wanted him delivering a different

[09:53] message, he wouldn't be going on the Joe Rogan show and saying, "Well, we made a mistake. This is the way it should have been. Blah, blah, blah." There's no way that J.D. Vance of all people is going rogue here. My assumption is that this was approved. Let's talk about that for a second. Maybe it was intended to cool off frustration among the MAGA base. That that's certainly possible. Maybe it was an effort to create some distance between Vance and the rollout heading into 2028. Maybe it was both. Look at it

[10:24] this way. J.D. Vance is the Republican Party's leading candidate for president in 2028. I personally think he's not going to be the nominee. He's very young. He can run for president every 4 years for the next 40 years if he wants. I think the nominee's going to be Marco Rubio. But right now, today, J.D. Vance is the front-runner. And I think that he has been given permission to stake out a slightly different position

[10:55] on this issue while not pointing the finger at Donald Trump. He's saying, "Yeah, we made mistakes. Yeah, if it was up to me, I would have done it differently, but you know, I'm just the vice president." Now, let's look at what to me was the even more remarkable exchange. Check out this clip. >> Well, most people think he was Mossad. >> Yeah, Mossad or CIA or some other deep state, whether in America, Israel, or another country. >> Or or both. Um

[11:26] You know, look, was he he clearly had connections to the upper the highest levels of American intelligence. He clearly had connections to the highest levels of Israeli intelligence. And yes, I've asked, were there like were there documents connecting Jeffrey Epstein directly to our intelligence agencies or anybody else's? And the answer is no, but if that should existed, it wouldn't exist in 2026. >> A couple of uh months ago, I went on the Piers Morgan show to talk about this

[11:56] specific issue and I said in in no equivocal terms that Jeffrey Epstein was a Mossad access agent. All the evidence points to it. It makes perfect sense. It's as though you opened up the intelligence textbook and looked up access agent, Jeffrey Epstein's picture would be there. Um that led to multiple death threats. One from Rabbi Simcha Scholar of New York City. I'm calling you out, you

[12:27] bastard, who said to me that there's a place in the ovens for me and for Jew haters like me. Shame on you protecting a pedophile and a child trafficker just because he happens to be Jewish. Let's talk about Epstein as a Mossad agent. Of course, he was a Mossad agent. He probably also was working for the CIA and the FBI and MI5 and MI6 and the Germans. And we know, thanks to the 3 million pages of the Epstein files that have

[12:58] already been released that he actively sought a meeting with Vladimir Putin. The Russians said, "No, thank you." So, of course, he was a Mossad agent. Let's call a spade a spade. The Mossad spies on us every single day all across America. Just 3 weeks ago, the Defense Intelligence Agency, DIA, sent around an all-hands email telling all DIA employees to be especially careful right now because the Israelis have stepped up their espionage

[13:30] activities against the United States and the US intelligence community. But this comment by J.D. Vance stopped me in my tracks. Not because J.D. Vance raised the possibility that Epstein had intelligence connections. People have been saying that for years. He acknowledges there's no documentary evidence tying Epstein to the CIA, to the Mossad, or other intelligence services. Then, almost in the same breath, and I don't know if you caught it, he says that if such documents ever

[14:00] existed, they probably wouldn't exist today. Did you notice that in that response to to Joe Rogan? He essentially accused the CIA of obstruction of justice, of destroying documents. That's a felony. And he just said it matter-of-factly. I don't know if we've ever had someone in the White House openly speculate about whether intelligence is so flawed publicly on a podcast. It's true that

[14:32] the CIA has destroyed documents in the past. Just Google MK Ultra. It'll make your hair stand up if you don't know anything about it. No one knows this better than I do. But it puts us in a tough position of trying to figure out who's not being honest about the files cuz somebody's clearly lying. Is it the CIA or is it J.D. Vance or J.D. Vance talking to us? This also sheds a little bit of light on one question. Why did J.D. Vance get the green light from the White House to do

[15:03] this podcast? Probably because in the documents there's no evidence linking Epstein to foreign intelligence. There's a lot of inference, but no documentary evidence. And that's one of the few things Democrats would be willing to work with Republicans on to keep private. Don't forget, this is not a partisan issue. The Republicans are in the Epstein files up to their necks just as much as the Democrats are. They're both corrupt.

[15:33] They're two sides of the same coin. But many people are raising the question, is this just J.D. Vance trying to throw a bone to the MAGA base to help his own presidential chances in 2028? I'll do my best to do justice to both arguments. Maybe it did take a lot of arm-twisting for J.D. Vance to say this publicly against the will of the White House. But one very big hole in his claim that he's an Epstein truth-teller, if J.D. Vance

[16:04] genuinely believes that there are unanswered questions about whether Jeffrey Epstein had ties to a foreign intelligence service, specifically Mossad, he's in one of the very few positions in government where he can actually ask those questions and demand answers. He had access to the Director of National Intelligence. He has the CIA Director on speed dial. He can ask the FBI Director anytime he wants. He can request briefings at the highest levels of classification. He can push investigators to determine

[16:36] whether credible evidence exists. But instead, he just decided to speculate on the Joe Rogan podcast. From an intelligence standpoint, I always pay attention to the difference between evidence and messaging. Right now, J.D. Vance is offering messaging. He's not presenting any new evidence. The evidence is probably there. They're just not allowing us to see it. And that's an important distinction. A couple of questions that I'm often asked about this issue, do presidents

[17:08] and vice presidents actually read intelligence documents like the Epstein files? That answer is no. Um one of the things that I learned early on at the CIA is the president just doesn't have the time to read everything that you or I would want him to read. That's why the president's daily brief is never, ever, ever more than 16 pages long, ever. And I remember writing an article once, one of the first articles that I wrote for the president's daily brief, and having my boss sit me down, look me in the eye, and say, "The president doesn't

[17:39] give a about your opinions. The president wants to read this entire story in one paragraph. Make it fit into one paragraph. There aren't enough hours in the day for a president or vice president to go through something like the Epstein files. Another question is, do I think this is enough for J.D. Vance to win the 2028 Republican presidential nomination, or will it take a lot more to please the MAGA base? I think the MAGA base is very upset about a lot more than the Epstein files.

[18:10] I think the MAGA base is upset about this war of choice that we're fighting in Iran right now, with no exit strategy at all, and gas at four and a half dollars a gallon. Look, I spent my career in the CIA. I know exactly how easy it is to find someone when you have their name and just a little bit of patience. And here's what should scare you. These days, you don't need to be a spy to do it. Your name, your home address, your phone number, details about your family, it's all sitting

[18:40] right there online, compiled by data brokers and sold to anyone with a credit card. I've made my share of enemies over the years, God knows. And since going public with the torture program, I've got a lot more strangers who know who I am. So, safety and security are not abstract to me. They are daily concerns. All that personal data floating around out out there on the internet has real-world consequences. And honestly, most people have no idea how exposed they are. That's why I I use DeleteMe.

[19:12] DeleteMe is a subscription service that removes your personal information from hundreds of data brokers online. You sign up, you tell them exactly what information you want taken down, and their experts handle it from there. They send you regular personalized privacy reports showing what they found, where they found it, and what they removed. And it's not a one-time thing. DeleteMe is always working in the background, constantly monitoring and removing the information you don't want out there. In plain terms, they do the

[20:47] I said that this is the only official John Kiriakou podcast. That's not true. Somehow I forgot about a very important thing that I'm doing, and that's called John Kiriakou's Dead Drop. That's a podcast that appears on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. I am immensely grateful, crazy grateful for the 3 million downloads that we've had. But that one, John Kiriakou's Dead Drop, it's a storytelling podcast. I wasn't thinking about storytelling. I was

[21:18] thinking about news. This, John Kiriakou's Briefing Room, is the only news show that we do, and we do this twice a week. We're going to add a third one with Q&A's. We'll talk about that in a few minutes. But thank you for that email and for allowing me the the opportunity to clarify. I now wanted to talk about Yemen again, one of the most overlooked countries in the world, one of the most important countries in the Middle East

[21:49] vis-a-vis national security. And I also believe this is one of the most underreported stories of the week. So let's move on to Yemen, which could be the match that ignites at least a regional war across the Middle East. Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthis announced on Monday that they were imposing a naval blockade against Saudi Arabia. A move that could launch the price of gas way past where it is right now.

[22:20] Let's take a look at this clip from Good Morning America. >> This morning, new fears the war with Iran could be expanding with the Iran-backed Houthis from Yemen now threatening to block Saudi oil from transiting another key waterway. This one connecting the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean. With traffic in the Strait of Hormuz already slowing to a crawl, cutting off the Red Sea could cause oil prices to spike even further and gas

[22:50] prices now more than $4 a gallon as well. >> I'm proud to say I called this a week ago. Uh Listen, one of the goals with this show is to predict the news before anybody else reports it. That was a a big example. I'm I'm one of the few people inside or outside government that really follows Yemen closely. Um check this out. I think this is just nuts. This is what the Houthis are actually broadcasting

[23:20] to Saudi ships on open channels. Listen to this. >> This is calling you on channel 16. According to the decision of Yemeni armed forces in the date of July 202026, we warn all ships belonging to Saudi enemy to proceed via the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. In case of non-compliance of Yemeni armed forces decision, all ships will be in our target. Over. >> This requires a little bit of

[23:51] explanation. Let's go back to 1990, August the 2nd. Iraqi troops invade and occupy Kuwait. The Kuwaiti ruling family flees to uh Taif, Saudi Arabia. It just so happened that Yemen and Cuba were non-permanent members of the United Nations Security Council that year. And so Secretary of State James Baker went to the Yemenis and the Cubans, more the

[24:21] Yemenis, and said, "Listen, we are at a historic crossroads. You have to do the right thing and you have to vote yes on the United Nations Security Council's um uh resolution to use force to kick the Iraqis out of Kuwait. The whole world is on our side. You need to be on the right side, too." And the Yemenis voted no. The Yemenis decided to throw their lot in with Saddam Hussein.

[24:52] There were 2 million Yemeni workers in Saudi Arabia at that time. every last one of them was expelled from Saudi Arabia and the world has never been the same. I flew into Yemen on my very first trip to the country in June of 1991. I flew to Sana, the capital, from Jeddah along the Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia. For 20 minutes before the plane landed, you could see

[25:22] people living in cardboard boxes or in makeshift lean-tos, no roofs, tents, 2 million people thrown out of Saudi Arabia on the same day. These are people that can't afford shoes, that can't afford food for their children and water. To make matters worse, as recently as the late 1970s, Yemen was a net food exporter. And they decided to

[25:53] stop growing food so they could replace all the food with something called qat, q a t. Qat is like coca, but not as potent. They chew it all day long and it's a stimulant. It's like drinking a pot of coffee. Well, now you see people sitting in these little They look like tree houses with old rifles guarding their qat. Their children don't have food, but there's plenty of qat to chew. Well, then all these 2 million workers were

[26:24] expelled from Saudi Arabia. There's no food, there's no water, there are no jobs, there's no housing. I've been to Yemen five times over the years and every single time I go, it's worse than the previous time. For decades, the country was led by a president named Ali Abdullah Saleh. Saleh was close to Saudi Arabia. He was also close to the United States. But then he split with us on this Saddam

[26:57] Hussein vote. Immediately a Yemeni civil war started and it wasn't just, you know, the good guys versus the bad guys. It was a multi-part civil war and you have Al-Qaeda fighting as part of that civil war. Osama bin Laden's family originated in Yemen in the eastern part of Yemen in an area called the Hadramaut. Hadramaut comes from two Arabic words. Hadar, which means visitation vegetation, maut means dead.

[27:28] It says it's called dead vegetation because it's so dry, literally nothing can live there. Animals don't even live there. Well, that's where Al-Qaeda was based in Yemen in this no man's land that nobody else could go to. They began attacking the central government. In South Yemen, the former communists began attacking the central government and the Shia Muslims in northwestern Yemen began attacking the the central government.

[27:59] Ali Ali Abdullah Saleh fled to Saudi Arabia and took refuge there. The Saudis reluctantly gave it to him, but somebody was able to sneak into the palace uh that he was living in and they planted a bomb and it quite literally blew his head off. So, Ali Abdullah Saleh no longer exists. The last time I went to Yemen was in 2011 and I had gone there from Djibouti, which as I mentioned in the last episode is just about 9 miles across the water.

[28:29] Something called the Bab el-Mandeb where the Horn of Africa almost meets the uh the southwestern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, right there. And when I got into a cab in Sana'a, I said to the to the driver, "So, how are things going?" And he said, "Oh, things are rough right now." He said the the uh the Houthis are attacking the capital city. And I said, "Yeah, I've read about that. It's terrible." And he said, "They're using drones against us." And I

[29:00] said, "The Houthis don't have drones." And then I thought to myself, "But we do." In 2011, we were already involved in a war in Yemen in 2011, and nobody knew about it. Thank you, Barack Obama. Another American secret war. So, now here we are all these years later. The Houthis have overthrown the um the Yemeni government. They have taken

[29:30] control of the Yemeni government, even if they don't control the whole of Yemen. Uh they control the most important parts of Yemen. So, what are they threatening here specifically? They're specifically threatening to blow up ships coming in and out of Saudi Arabia, which really is Jeddah. Most of those ships are oil tankers. But a good number of them are cargo ships that are that are have come through the Suez Canal and are going to

[30:00] transit the Bab al-Mandab. If the Yemenis do this, it's going to force ships to go instead of going through the Suez Canal and the Bab al-Mandab to go all the way around Africa, which adds 30 days to the trip and billions of gallons of fuel. So, we're talking about the entire planet going into a recession and having to fight what's going to be

[30:31] out of control inflation because this little group of bandits has closed the Bab al-Mandab. This is going to be a very serious thing. So, how did the Saudis respond? >> Well, they essentially can't. I mean, there's a Saudi navy for what that's worth, but the Saudi military has been fighting the Houthis for more than a decade, and they lost. The Houthis won. Another thing that I learned when I was living in Saudi Arabia is that

[31:05] even though the Saudis, you know, economically, geographically, physically dominate the Yemenis, and especially the Houthis, the Houthis are fierce fighters, and they're not afraid of it anybody, but the Saudis are afraid of them. And so, this is going to be a serious problem for the Saudis. Let's talk for a second though about the Israeli factor. You might remember 6, 8, 10 months ago, whatever it whatever it is, the Israeli government

[31:36] recognized an area of Somalia called Somaliland as an independent country. It's not an independent country, even though many of us, including me, wish that it was. It's not an independent country. The Israelis are the only country in the world that recognize Somaliland as independent. That's great for Somaliland. There's an Israeli embassy now in Somaliland. So, what do the Israelis get out of it? They get an airbase. They get an airbase that's about 100 miles from the Houthis.

[32:08] And so, if Israeli shipping is threatened in the Bab el Mandeb, they are going to unleash F-35s and attempt to blow the Houthis back to the Stone Age. That's been tried in the past. It doesn't work. I think what we're going to end up seeing here is crimes against humanity. We're going to see the port of Hodeidah bombed repeatedly. And the last time the Israelis did this, they bombed schools, they bombed And the Saudis, they're just

[32:38] as guilty. Schools, hospitals, children, private homes, it makes no difference. They just bombed everything. I think we're going to see more of that. I want to add one other thing, two other things. Number one, if the Saudis are attacked, the Bahrainis are going to jump in because the Bahrainis and the Saudis are joined at the hip. And if the Bahrainis jump in, the Emirates probably will jump in. Now, the Emirates appear to have negotiated their own private one-to-one deal with Iran. We'll give you $3

[33:09] million in cash if you stop bombing us. And the Iranians stopped. But the Saudis and the Emirates, even though they were on different sides of the of the fight in Yemen, um if the Saudis were endangered, I think the Emirates would jump in on the side of the Saudis. And then we have a full-fledged regional war. You have Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Jordan,

[33:40] and Israel against Iran and Yemen. Qatar's going to try to remain neutral. Oman's going to try to remain neutral, but this is going to be a full-fledged regional war. I want to add one other thing. Um back in 2010, I was working I was working on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and a local think tank asked me if I would um participate in a debate on Yemen. I said, "Sure, why not?" And so, you know, I I generally never

[34:11] prepare for these things. I figure if if I don't know these issues by now, I'm never going to know them. I'm supposed to be an expert, so I just have to rely on my own knowledge and my own background. I go to this event on Capitol Hill having no idea that my debate is against Senator Susan Collins. So, she's there with a whole army of aides, and she's got her notes, and she's reading her note cards, and I'm just sitting there on the stage, you know, like looking at my watch and looking at the crowd and waving at people. And it comes time to to debate.

[34:43] And I essentially said in the debate what I just told you. That the Yemenis are consistently underestimated. That they are scrappy and tough and mean and fierce fighters, and they are not afraid of anybody. And even though Saudi Arabia is bigger and richer and more powerful, that the Yemenis were going to win. And I said, the US long said that it had no national interests in Yemen. Indeed, it has national interests. It's counterterrorism, counter piracy,

[35:15] and open trade through the Bab al-Mandab. Well, Senator uh Collins disagreed with me. Okay, that's fine. At the end, I got up, I shook her hand, and I went home. The next day, John Kerry, who was my boss, walks into my office and says, "Did you debate Senator Collins last night?" And I said, "I did. And if I may say so, I kicked her ass." He didn't think that was funny. And he just said to me, "Don't ever do that again."

[35:46] And then he walked out. Well, you know what? I didn't work for John Kerry too much after that, so I did whatever the heck I pleased. What if the way money works is about to change? Not someday. Not hypothetically. I mean right now. China and the United States are both making moves that suggest we could be heading towards something that the world hasn't seen in more than 50 years. A return to gold-backed money or something very close to it. China is shutting down paper gold trading at four of its

[36:16] biggest banks, all on the same day. And they're building a new system that settles in physical gold instead. On our side, the government is sitting on more than 8,000 tons of gold that's still valued at $42 an ounce. That's on the books. Legislation to fix that is already in Congress. If both superpowers start anchoring their currencies to gold, what happens to the price? And more importantly, what happens to every dollar in your retirement that

[36:47] isn't backed by anything at all? That's the question a free report from American Alternative Assets answers. It's called The Day Money Changes Forever. And if you have an IRA or a 401k, you need to read it right now. Get your free copy at johnlovesgold.com. That's johnlovesgold.com or you can call toll free at 1-888-GOLD-053. Politico reported this week that the

[37:19] Republicans have their issue to use against Democrats in the midterms. The issue is this, Republicans are going to call the Democrats communists. Like it's 1950. Communists. I read my hometown newspaper every day, the Newcastle News. I don't know why, but I do. And there was an article in this paper about this uh Mexican restaurant that's up near where my mom and dad used to live. I love this place, El Canelo.

[37:51] Terrific food, great staff. They're all Mexican immigrants and they are magnificent and they've done well and they've opened like four or five restaurants around the whole area now. So, somebody wrote in the paper that they left a tip and the waiter told them, "Oh, the tips all go to the owner." That's not cool. And then in the comment section, somebody wrote, "That's socialism." I never comment because most people are

[38:21] idiots. I felt compelled to comment, and I said, "Actually, that's capitalism. Socialism would be if the workers owned the restaurant." The Republicans are banking on the notion that Americans don't have any idea what the difference is between socialism and communism. I'll tell you another quick story. When I was still married, um I spent a Thanksgiving at the home of my ex-wife's cousins. Lovely people. They would

[38:53] always have a big bash, and on this particular occasion, they uh invited a neighbor over, an older woman in her in her mid-80s. She just sat on the couch the entire day and watched Fox News. So, I sat down on the couch. And she turns to me and she says, in her old lady voice, "It seems to me that we're turning into a socialistic country." And I couldn't help myself. And I said, "I agree. I think we should

[39:24] do away with socialism right now, and we should start with this Social Security. After all, what is Social Security but welfare for old people who were either too lazy or too stupid to save for their own retirements." And she looked at me like I was nuts, and she said, "That's not at all what I'm talking about." And I said, "But Social Security is socialism. And so is Medicare, and so is public education, and so is the Interstate

[39:56] Highway System. That's all socialism, where Americans' money is pooled for the greater good." She didn't say a word the rest of the day. Well, Republicans are counting on people being stupid and conflating and confusing socialism with communism. Like does anybody really believe that the Democratic Party wants the country to be like North Korea? Or like Cuba?

[40:27] Of course not. And that's why this thing is not going to stick. But with that said, the Republicans are not going to do as poorly in these midterm elections as people think they are. The million-dollar question for these midterms coming up is will Democrat will Democrats win enough seats in the House and the Senate to take control of those bodies so that Donald Trump will either have to change his behavior or will be unable to get legislation passed.

[40:58] Will be unable to get his judicial nominations through the Senate. And could war powers resolutions and congressional subpoena start flying? Don't hold your breath. So, I want to show you a chart from the Washington Post that was published uh this past week. The Post talked to I think it was six different political experts. These are people who follow congressional and Senate races way down in the in the weeds. These are big names like you see Nate Silver right there. His prediction

[41:29] is 11 Democrats um uh an 11-seat Democratic pickup in the House and I'm sorry, it was the New York Times, not the Washington Post. 11 Democrats in the House and that the Democrats will win three seats in the Senate making it even. If you go to some of JB, can you go down to some of those others? These are even closer. We're talking about seven Democratic House seats and the Republicans maintain the majority or five Democratic House seats and the Democrats either draw even or win a

[42:03] majority of one. Why is it still so close if Donald Trump's approval ratings are in the mid-30% range, which is a historic low. It's worse than Jimmy Carter was in 1980. Um, or yeah, I guess now it's 30 39.7. It's still just historically low. Um, why are the Republicans still so close? Oh, that's an easy one. The Republicans are so close because the Democrats have fallen on their faces since 1992

[42:37] on redistricting. And the reason they did that is because a decision was made, and it was made specifically by Hillary Clinton, who recommended it to her husband when he was first elected president, for the Democrats to spend money only in states that they could win the presidential race in. Okay? So, they didn't spend any more money in the Dakotas, or in Kansas, or Nebraska, or Idaho, or Montana, or any of these red

[43:08] states. Why not? There are Democrats in those states. And so, because the Democrats weren't spending any money there, and Republicans were, the Republicans were able to elect supermajorities in the state legislatures. That is majorities of 2/3 or more. If you've got a majority of 2/3, even if you have a Democratic governor, you can override that governor's veto. And so, what the state legislatures then did is they redrew

[43:40] the congressional district boundaries to elect more and more and more Republicans. James Carville, um, who famously coined the phrase, "It's the economy, stupid," and was Bill Clinton's co-campaign manager in 1992, um, was apoplectic about this. He disagreed so vehemently with Hillary Clinton, he ended up and not going back to the campaign.

[44:11] And he still rues the day that Hillary won that that argument because it has set the Democratic Party back by decades. It's going to take decades and billions and billions of dollars of spending at every single level of politics for the Democrats to recover from this kind of thing. And so even if the if the Democrats have a banner year even if Americans don't believe that the

[44:41] Democratic Party is just a front for communism, which is so laughably preposterous. I can't believe they're even moving forward with it. The Republicans are probably going to be okay or as close to okay as possible. Another element for the midterms right now is the recent success of Democratic Socialists of America aligned candidates, mostly in deep blue states. Uh and the and the Republican Party is going all in on this threat of

[45:12] communism, right? We've got a clip from Mike Johnson. Let's take a look at this clip. I think you're going to get a kick out of it. >> It is a dangerous thing. This is not a joke. We're in a fight right now to save the republic. And every American needs to take this seriously. You need to wake up. This upcoming midterm election is not the midterm elections of years ago. This is going to decide the direction of the country. Are we going to maintain our status as a constitutional republic on our 250th anniversary? Are we going to make a new choice and go down some road towards a communist utopia? That's the choice. >> Mike Johnson's an idiot.

[45:44] Mike Johnson is either a liar or he's a I'll let you decide. Uh nobody's communist here. There nobody's seeking a communist utopia. What they're seeking is a a broader and deeper social safety net. And we're talking about four people. Four. Out of 435. That's less than 1%. It's actually 9/10 of 1%. So, Mike Johnson's either an

[46:14] idiot or he's a liar. Frankly, me personally, I think he's both. So, this strategy of accusing Democrats of being communists, um it is really highlighting the role of money in our elections. I think it also highlights the fact that the Republicans this year don't have an issue to run on. Um they're relying on gerrymandering to cover them. And uh they can't they can't

[46:45] tout the fact that that MAGA uh and the MAGA movement and their MAGA president has kept them out of wars of choice. He hasn't. We jumped into a war of choice with both feet. And so, as I said a minute ago, we already have a partially socialist system. That's what Social Security is. That's what the highway system is. That's what the Tennessee Valley Authority is that gave electricity to everybody in the south. That's what public education is. That's what Medicare and Medicaid are. You don't like it? You're the speaker of

[47:16] the house. Take it away if you think it's communism. Why do you keep funding it if you think it's communism? Ay ay ay ay ay. Have you ever wondered what it feels like to shoot with the same kind of precision tech used by US special forces? Well, good news. After years of research and development, MCG Tactical just dropped something incredible. It's called the Stinger Combat Sight. This is not your average

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[48:50] mcgtac.com/johnsting. The only catch, supply is tight, and these are already flying off the shelves. So, if you want a site built for the best, now's your shot. Grab yours before they have to shut down orders. That is mcgtac.com/johnsting. I wanted to raise one other issue. And that is the death early this morning of former CIA director James Woolsey.

[49:22] I knew James Woolsey. Um I liked him fine. He was only director of Central Intelligence for 23 months, and that was at the very start of Bill Clinton's first term. Jim Woolsey had been a a neoliberal hawk, lifelong Democrat, until he wasn't. Uh anyway, lifelong Democrat, he had served as the secretary of the Navy under Jimmy Carter. And then he had several um, State Department positions and positions in

[49:53] the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, which no longer exists, during the Reagan and the George H. W. Bush administrations. He was a guy that was respected by both parties. And so, when Bill Clinton named him CIA director, everybody thought, "Well, this is this is great. Jim Woolsey's going to be the, um, the adult in the room." But then a year or so after becoming the director of Central Intelligence, um, the FBI arrested a traitor inside the

[50:25] CIA. That was Aldrich Rick Ames. Ames was a drunk who had been, get this, the director of counterintelligence in the Soviet Operations Division. He had access to literally every recruited CIA asset in the Soviet Union and Russia. And, surprise, they all started dying. Executed one by one by one.

[50:58] And it was clear that there was a spy inside the CIA. The spy was revealed to be Rick Ames. Jim Woolsey refused to fire, demote, or even reassign anybody. Now, mind you, Rick Ames had been a drunk for decades. As part of his plea deal, which spared him the death penalty, he just died earlier this year in Supermax prison in Florence,

[51:29] Colorado. But as part of his plea deal, he had to cooperate with the FBI's investigation. And he couldn't remember most of the information that was necessary because the alcohol had rotted his brain after so many years. But he kept getting promoted grade after grade, after grade at the CIA. And Jim Woolsey wouldn't punish anybody. And so, Bill Clinton told him, "Resign or be fired."

[51:59] And he resigned. And in a fit of pique, he switched parties, became a Republican, and endorsed Bob Dole in the 1996 election. It was good for a chuckle at the CIA. Bob Dole never had a prayer of winning that election. Uh Woolsey went on to vast wealth. He became the chairman of the board of Booz Allen Hamilton, the largest contractor within the intelligence community, made millions and millions of dollars. Well, today his obituary says that officially

[52:30] he died of a stroke. But he had been suffering for 4 years from something called Havana syndrome. Havana syndrome is named Havana syndrome because it first was detected outside the American Embassy in Havana, Cuba. It appeared to be the result of some sort of radio waves beamed at people that caused them not just dizziness and nausea, but traumatic brain injuries that have been documented through the use of MRIs. Um the CIA did a

[53:01] an investigation >> [clears throat] >> and determined that no, this wasn't a directed energy weapon. This was the result of crickets, literally. Because crickets chirp at this certain frequency, and it's going in people's brains, and it's making them crazy. Well, that was nonsense, of course. There are other senior former CIA officers, Mark Polymeropoulos for one. I I've known Mark Polymeropoulos for 35 years. He was the sear- this the the CIA

[53:33] station chief in Moscow. We were analysts together as young kids. He is a serious, brilliant former CIA officer. And he suffers from Havana syndrome, and he has the MRI to prove it showing brain damage. Bill Binney, renowned whistleblower from NSA, the number four ranking officer in NSA and a great hero of transparency. He has documented brain damage from

[54:05] Havana syndrome. Somebody is using these weapons against people, important people, people with access to very high-level, important, secret, highly classified information. We don't know who it is. The Russians, the Chinese, the Americans, the Israelis? Who knows? But Jim Woolsey's family was brave enough and bold enough to say in his obituary today that he was a victim of

[54:36] Havana syndrome. There's a lot going on around the world, and one of the things that we didn't have the time to talk about today was news reporting that the United States and Saudi Arabia have agreed on a nuclear power deal. The Saudis have been seeking nuclear power since the 1980s. When I first arrived at the CIA in 1990, this was already old news. The Saudis have always wanted to be able to enrich uranium,

[55:07] they say, to uh develop nuclear power plants. Why? It's the sunniest country in the world, and there's not a whole lot of solar there. It's windy in the desert, and there's not a whole lot of wind power there. They have um bodies large bodies of water on two sides, and there's not a lot of tidal power there. Why nuclear? Well, the conventional wisdom is already has always been that the Saudis want to develop a nuclear weapon.

[55:38] And there have been senior former CIA officers over the years who claim that the Saudis already have a nuclear weapon, that they purchased it from the Pakistanis. This is a story that's breaking very slowly and most mainstream outlets aren't really looking at it. We're going to talk about that. I think uh next week we'll probably talk more about politics and you can bet your paycheck that there are going to be new and important develop developments in the war with

[56:09] Iran. We'll get to that as well. Ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank you again for liking, commenting, sharing, and subscribing to this podcast. Um the the response has been absolutely overwhelming. As we're filming this, we're up to 144,000 subscribers. We've done that in the last 10 days. I'm speechless, but I am deeply grateful. Please keep it up.

[56:39] We can only do this with your help and so thank you for allowing us the privilege of doing it. I also would like to point you to my other official podcast on Apple Podcast and Spotify. It's called John Kiriakou's Dead Drop and you can also find me on Substack and X and Cameo and LinkedIn and pretty much everywhere else. So we'll leave it there and we'll see you next time. All the best.
