Title: Inside the Mind of a CIA Whistleblower
Show: Jack Hopkins
Date: 2025-03-14
URL: https://youtu.be/zssCchYDO5A
Duration: 60:00

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[00:00] hello and welcome to the Jack Hopkins Show podcast I'm your host Jack Hopkins now before I introduce today's guest I want to ask you a favor don't worry it's it's not a huge favor one of my episodes has almost 60,000 views but I've got just 6,300 subscribers and what that means is a lot of people who are watching my podcast episodes aren't

[00:31] subscribed why does that matter in short the greater my subscriber numbers the more likely it is that I can get and feature even more guests on my podcast guest that you want to hear from that's good for you and it's good for me as well so if you haven't already please like And subscribe and I thank you in advance now let's get to today's guest for today's episode today's guest

[01:05] is John kiraku John is an American Author journalist and former CIA intelligence officer he was jailed for what the CIA called exposing the interrogation techniques of the Central Intelligence Agency much of the world however had a different view John kiraku was a whistleblower on the torture program the CIA had been running and that Gina haspel later testified to Congress had existed Gina haspel was the

[01:37] seventh director of the CIA now John was an intelligence analyst and operations officer for the cia's counterterrorism Center Senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a consultant for ABC News he was the first US government official to confirm in December of 2007 that water boarding was used to interrogate Al-Qaeda prisoners which he described as

[02:09] torture look you are in for a treat I I just finished this episode and I already can't wait to get him back on again so without further Ado let's Dive Right In to this episode with the fascinating and intriguing John kiraku all right John listen I I've got to tell you I've probably learned as much about world history from you as as anyone else uh you know in so

[02:41] many of the questions that you answer uh I've always just been blown away at your grasp of of world history and in instead of answering something within the context of say the you know the last 5 to 10 years you're able to go way back and I find that most of the time when you provide that add additional context oh okay well this this all looks different then within this right you right yeah

[03:12] good point hey may I tell you a a quick story on that very issue sure um I had just returned from the Middle East this was like 1996 and I was assigned to Mentor a brand new Junior analyst really really smart young woman she had just graduated from the University of Virginia and she was covering the United Arab Emirates and nothing ever happens in the UAE we're close friends with the UAE it was just someplace where she could learn you know the writing style and

[03:43] such well sure enough Iran uh invaded an island off the coast of Shara which is one of the the seven Emirates of the United Arab Emirates um it's actually two islands it's called greater tunb t NB and lesser tun so Iran had greater tun sha had lesser tun and the Iranians took it and this island is like you know a mile by two miles nobody lives on it or

[04:13] anything and I said to her just offhandedly we're just chatting and I said um the UAE government's never going to do anything to get that Island back they're just going to concede it to the Iranians and she said why why would they do that and I said because the island is owned by Shara and they don't give a [ __ ] about sha because it's a minor Emirate and I said look foreign policy is run by by Abu Dhabi and business policy is run by Dubai and

[04:46] in Dubai much of what they trade is with Iran so why upset the apple cart over a little tiny Island that only has a couple of goats on it right so the charin are just going to be [ __ ] out of luck she goes into the uh into the boss's office and she comes back out and she sits down and she says I just resigned and I'm like what why did you do that and she said I realized that no matter how much I like the job I'll never know

[05:16] as much about it as you do I said that is ridiculous I said I have a degree in Middle Eastern studies you'll pick it all up you're really smart and she said no I just realized this just isn't for me that's that's wild and so my question then is I'm guessing you were always kind of a history buff yeah always and a Middle East Buff when I was 15 um the Iranians uh raided the American Embassy and took our our people hostage and I was just fascinated glued to it yeah and

[05:51] you might remember that that led to the creation of Nightline right so Nightline on ABC was meant to give us the daily update on on the situation with the I didn't know that yeah and then you know when there were no updates to give it became a nighttime news program and then lasted for for decades wow how much did that benefit you as someone in the CIA I I can only imagine immensely yeah

[06:21] immensely is the word I but I was very fortunate though Jack in that I knew when I was 15 I wanted to do when I was nine I told my parents I wanted to be a spy when I grew up and when I was 15 I had decided that I wanted to be a spy in the Middle East when I grew up and so I looked for universities that had specific programs in Middle Eastern studies at the time there were only

[06:52] three there was brigam young and they did it just to teach their wouldbe missionaries Arabic there was ERS in New Jersey and I just didn't want to go to school in Newark and um and George Washington University which was literally one block from the white house that's where the action is yeah and so I went to GW I was one of only three students enrolled in the in the Middle Eastern studies program there but worth every single minute and I was able to

[07:22] specialize that became um that became something that the CIA was looking for in in the late 1980s and I got lucky so you showed up with what you needed I I was ready to go yeah yeah yeah you know I I've got to tell you there something that I've multiple times when watching you on other podcasts and I've heard you talk about this some but anytime you go a different

[07:56] direction than maybe what I'm thinking not in terms of predicting what you're going to say but in terms of like uh being on the same page as me and you go a different direction the thing I'm always aware of is that because I like you so much my ears I I'm I'm paying attention and I'm you know I don't go into that defensive mode is that something about

[08:27] yourself that you recognize early on that that you could get people to warm up to you quickly no frankly really no in fact it's funny that you bring this up because I was on the job I'm going to say like six weeks so this is February early February of 1990 and my boss I was I was an analyst most analysts are um strong introverts

[08:58] and I'm a strong extrovert but my boss said to me you would be a good operations officer and I said me why would I be a good operations officer and he said people like to be around you yeah and I just thought well okay that's kind of odd but all right well the longer that I was in analysis the more I realized that it it wasn't really as great a fit for me as I thought it was going to be cuz I

[09:28] considered myself myself kind of an intellectual you know I had bachelor's and master's degrees I had multiple foreign languages I was well traveled um I would go to all of the U the uh events around town that the think tanks were were sponsoring and he's like no you're kind of a fish out of water you should think about operations and it wasn't until you know 7 and a half years had

[09:59] passed and I got bored with analysis that I decided to give operations a try yeah and did you find almost immediately maybe when you compared yourself to your your colleagues or other people on that side of the CIA that wow I I'm good at this oh you know what one of my station Chiefs and this was in a big active major station

[10:30] um pulled me aside and he said um over the course of my 30-year career he said I had five recruitments and I remember every single one of them he said you've been here two years and you have five recruitments and I said yeah you know as crazy as it sounds I kind of have a knack for this yeah and he said whatever you're doing just keep doing it I I I would assume

[11:01] that gives you a a level of confidence going into an operation once you've kind of built that Foundation of trust of your ability to do that yeah it became a joke you know we we would have these um classified staff meetings in the um the embassy's uh it's called a bubble uh what it is it's a tempest um U secure room where you can speak freely there's a double wall music is pumped in

[11:32] between the walls and you know you you can't intercept anything there kind of like a skiff it's like a skiff but but a mini yeah that's a good way to say it it's a mini skiff so um my immediate boss uh had this had this thing that he did whenever somebody made a recruitment he would congratulate them in the staff meeting and then toss them a Snickers bar that was your award for for making a recruitment you got a Snickers bar and

[12:05] there was you know sometimes it takes you a month sometimes it takes you a year to recruit somebody and it just so happened that I recruited three people in one week and wow not that you know I did all the work that one week it took me a year a year and a quarter to get up to that point and it just so happened that they all came to a had that one week so he said uh you know uh like to congratulate kiraku for recruiting you

[12:38] know MK Grasshopper And he tosses me a Snickers bar and everybody you know congratulations like to uh congratulate kiraku for recruiting uh you know MK um orange and people are like okay uh and kiraku gets a third one for recruiting so and so and one of the other guys is like dude stop and I said I it it was just one of those weeks sure you're making us all

[13:11] look bad and we're not going to get promoted it's like I'm sorry that's wild you know I I've never heard you asked this question that I know of and that's not to say I've watched there may be some out there I haven't seen when you are working in the Middle East how relevant is your personal skin tone that's a good question um and no I haven't been asked that uh I

[13:44] found especially when I was younger and I didn't have this gray hair and it was much thicker than it is I fit in almost everywhere I went and my Arabic was so good at the time people would ask me are you Lebanese cuz you kind of speak with a yemeni accent but you're too tall to be Yemen um so the ability to fit in uh helped me immensely and I'll tell you one thing it was so funny I was invited to a uh rotary club meeting in Abu

[14:19] Dhabi and um the Ambassador was there the deputy chief of mission and the political officer all legit State Department people people so they're all sitting at the same table and I decide to sit with the Arabs right I don't want to sit with the guys that I that I work with all day long sure so I'm sitting with the Arabs and one of these Arabs says to me look at this look at this table over here and he points at The Ambassador the deputy Ambassador and the political officer he says

[14:50] CIA and I said yeah how can you tell he said the CIA guys always sit together and I said Muhammad that's exact actly why I'm sitting with you well interesting by the end of the year I had recruited Muhammad and he's like holy [ __ ] I would never have guessed it wow yeah yeah and and you know what's always fascinating to me about those types of things uh we always think of the CIA most people I would assume is based on a

[15:21] lot of Hollywood right right and and it's not right and I've got some questions for you about that that's one little thing that you would think those guys made that mistake you know what I mean right right right yeah BL me but um was that something that prior to him saying that that you'd kind of notice too that you know I guess you had because you said you know who wants to sit with the people you work with all

[15:52] day yeah and yeah but you know my station Chiefs from my very first station chief he said he said well he said something that I later added to when when I was training you know young officers um he said that when you go to an event you must come back with a fistful of business cards otherwise why go to the event right to have free you know or derves right seriously sure and and then later

[16:24] on in my career there there was an officer that I worked with we were in the same branch and she was just not cut out for this job she was really smart she had gotten a bachelor's degree at the University of Michigan and a master's degree from Yale but smarts doesn't always translate into being a good CIA officer right you have to be manipulative you have to be able to think quickly on the Fly sure so she was doing her operational meetings and

[16:54] then she would go back and they would they would ask her so what did you learn she's like he didn't really have anything to say well then you've got to terminate the contract right tell him look this isn't working out thanks for thanks for your time here's here's $1,000 you know going away present so I said to her one time my own personal rule is if you go to an operational meeting and you come back and you don't have at least two intelligence reports to write you have

[17:27] failed the the agent didn't fail it's not his fault that you didn't ask the right questions you have failed and then the station chief called me into her office and she said I know what your workload is but can you go with this officer to her next operational meeting and you do the meeting and you teach her how to elicit the information because she's failing and I said sure So we went to the meeting and um had a nice

[17:59] conversation about 2 hours and you know we order some room service and there's coffee and we're we're laughing and talking and it's more of just a friendly conversation than it is anything else and then at the end of the two hours the guy got up and we shook hands and he walked out and she goes you see what I mean he just doesn't say anything important and I said I got four intelligence reports out of that conversation and she said how and I said let's go over it so said he said this

[18:30] and then he said B and then he said c and then he said D he's talking about proliferation he's talking about a shipment of chemicals that's going to you know the port of Rotterdam he's talking she goes what do I know about chemicals I said he told us what the chemical was I don't know about chemicals either but maybe it's a cocaine precursor maybe it's a chemical weapons precursor what do I know right you put it in Ence report you let the analysts figure it

[19:01] out she's like I never thought of it that way so I wrote out in reports yeah yeah she was okay and is that something in your experience for the most part you've either got it or you don't or you don't yeah that's exactly right and you know one of the things that I learned relatively early on in my career was when people come into the CIA already having phds they almost always fail

[19:35] interesting because for example your PhD you've just finished writing a 300 page dissertation and you are the world's leading expert on this issue that's so narrow that literally nobody else in the world gives a [ __ ] about it but you think you're so smart because you have a PhD okay well the president doesn't give a [ __ ] about your opinion on such and such an issue the president wants the entire thing boiled

[20:06] down to half a page with three bullet points so if you can't adapt to the cia's writing style and tell the president only what he absolutely needs to know in order to form the most Cent policy then you're failing and you probably should go into journalism or Academia not intelligence yeah interesting I I knew a guy when I was a kid back in the 70s and I had the

[20:36] privilege of growing up around a there were a bunch of World War II vets still around you wow oh that's very cool you know yeah really um and interestingly enough there was part of me that had an awareness even at that age of how significant this opportunity was and and um there was a guy I I don't think he went School Beyond 8th grade right Old World War II vet and he could take a

[21:06] fairly complex subject and condense it down into two or three sentences that would give you the enough of the foundation of it that you understood it enough to want to pursue more knowledge not everyone can do that you know I had much smarter people educationally and IQ wise talk to me

[21:37] about the same thing you know I remember um during my analytic uh stint in that first seven and a half years something happened in Kuwait and I had to write I had to write something that used to be called a snowflake so the president's Daily Brief starts off with the most important breaking news of the day and that's a page and then Pages 2 three and four are each page has two issues and each

[22:11] issue gets two paragraphs fact and um analysis okay so here's the breaking news on page one Pages two three and four that's six more short stories and then you know at the the very back of the book is um sort of the long longterm big picture things you're allowed to go two pages on those but then at the very very end is something called a page of snowflakes they they no longer do this George HW Bush absolutely loved the snowflakes because they were directly to

[22:44] the point of a story a story that wasn't important enough to put at the front of the briefing so there were hard and fast rules about snowflakes they had to be three separate thoughts um interrupted by ellipses Dot Dot and they could not be more than 36 words so you'd say uh Queen of England died today dot dot dot uh Prince Charles expected to take

[23:15] the throne by noon tomorrow dot dot dot there will be no change in British foreign policy toward the United States that's a snowflake okay so one of the leaders that I was covering in the Middle East had what is colloquially known as a nervous breakdown okay there there is no such medical condition as a nervous breakdown it's just a it's just a word that that we all use right so or a term so I went to him and I said hey I wrote

[23:47] a flake for the president because uh you know he he knows this leader very well they're on the phone all the time and here here it is it was like 30 words and you know King so and so had a nervous breakdown and I put parenthesis uh not parenthesis uh quotation marks around nervous breakdown because I knew he would object to the term because it's not a medical term and he's like yeah I don't I don't uh you have to coordinate with all the other analysts who who cover the same issues so that there's agreement where

[24:19] you know the entire intelligence Community agrees that this this is this situation so he's like yeah I can't uh I can't agree with this I'm going to have to make a couple of changes I said yeah make whatever changes you want you're the psychiatrist he was a psychiatrist with both a an MD and a PhD in Psychology so um he he sends it back to me it has 56 words and I said Larry we can't we can't send this the president has 56 words he said yeah but I need 56 words to explain the situation and I

[24:50] said we can't send it they will not send it to the president I mean you and I can write 5,000 words they're not going to send it to the president 36 words and so it actually had to go up through the chain of command and they just went back to my original thing with the quotation marks around fascinating fascinating it's interesting and I don't I'm think it's probably not at all for the same reasons but when I write my newsletters and it's it's nothing I was ever taught obviously

[25:23] no English teacher would ever teach you this I rarely use commas where I would have a comma I put dot dot dot ah because in my mind and I've had some feedback from from subscribers a comma doesn't necessarily do translate into doing what it's supposed to do which is kind of create that separation but but dot dot dot forces you to do it because the

[25:55] distance your eyes have to track a distance before they pick up again so it it almost forces the reader into a pause so um yeah that's just fascinating that that's how you had to ride those snowflakes well you know getting back to the issue of the phds they just could not adapt to that kind of writing style they could not adapt to not putting in their own thoughts about you know whatever happened to be happening around the

[26:26] world it's like nobody at the White House giv [ __ ] about your thoughts right just lay out the facts you can put your thoughts at the very end and I of all the phds I met who who came into the CIA with the PHD only one actually made it as a career the other ones just just ended up walking out I'm I'm sure you there's a good chance you would agree that you met more operatives

[26:56] without the educational background who were better psychologist than some of the phds oh my God you know it's funny when when you're going into operations you have to take a an enormous battery of psychological exams because they want to make sure that you have the right personality to do something like this um and they want to make sure that you um are able to operate sometimes under extreme pressure extreme pressure cuz not just while you're doing the job but you're doing the job while somebody else

[27:27] is trying to shoot you you know and it's it's no wonder everybody has PTSD but um but I was very um I was very taken when I got my psychological exams back um I tested right smack in the center of this bell curve in terms of personality type but I tested much smarter than the average um operations

[27:58] officer and I I kind of made a joke about it with the hiring officer and he said you know you make a joke but but seriously um these tests tell me you're going to be successful because you already know the issues we just needed to make sure that your personality could handle the pressure and and I could yeah and assuming you were a good student in high school all through you I was yeah to come

[28:29] pretty much come natural to you in terms of you didn't run into things or you're like oh my God I I can't do this I tell you what trig and chemistry yeah tripped me up but I didn't really care about trigonometry and chemistry I wanted to be a spy sure and my my intent was to be a spy and so that's really all I focused on or cared about yeah shift gears here for a minute it's perhaps one of the things you are most known for but I

[29:00] don't think I've ever heard anybody ask you this specific question was there a key moment where you knew you were going to become a whistleblower was there was was there yeah and I and I wish I could tell you it it's because you know on principle I stood up and I decided it was nothing like that um Brian Ross called me from ABC News in

[29:32] early December 2007 and he said that he had a source who said that I had tortured Abu zubeda I said that was absolutely untrue I was the only person who was kind to abuaba I said I've never laid a hand on Abu Zeda or on any prisoner ever and he said well you're welcome to come on the show and defend yourself I said yeah I'll think think about it but then that week two things happened

[30:02] President Bush gave this is George W bush gave a press conference in which he looked right in the camera and he said we do not torture like that and I happen to be sitting with my wife who is also a senior Cia officer and I said he is a bald-faced liar he is looking the American people in the eye and he's just lying to us and then that Friday he was walking from the south Portico of the White House to the helicopter to fly

[30:33] to Camp David and a reporter shouted a question about torture and he stopped and he turned and he said well if there is torture it's because of a rogue CIA officer and I said to my wife Brian Ross's source is at the White House and they're going to try to pin this torture program on me I was opposed to it from 2007 I mean I'm sorry from 2002 this was 2007 but I had kept my mouth shut thinking somebody is going to come out

[31:03] and say something right but nobody did and it was that moment when Bush stopped and said Rogue CIA officer that I decided I'm going public and I I I decided in the days between my call to Brian Ross and The Day of the interview that no matter what he asked me I was going to tell the truth and it goes without saying you were fully aware of potential consequences I

[31:34] assume you know I I actually wasn't and in my own defense I'll tell you why I wasn't it is a felony in the United States it's actually in the US code it is a felony to classify a criminal act right you can't classify a program if the program is violation of US law torture was clearly illegal we have laws going back to

[32:04] 1946 saying that exactly those those methods that we were using were outlawed right and I thought going public is not revealing classified information because it's illegal to classify a torture program um the FBI investigated me for a full year from December of 2007 to December of 2008 and then wrote a letter to my attorney um saying that they were declining to to prosecute me because it was illegal to classify a

[32:35] crime um but then a month later when Barack Obama became president John Brennan convinced Eric Holder to secretly reopen the case against me and then they had me wow it was ugly when did you have any colleagues who were surprise supporters and backers when this all went down were there any

[33:06] people who you would have never guessed in a million years that they'll they'll put their reputation on the line to to back me yeah there was one in particular he was a retired deputy director of the CIA I had worked for him at the very start of my career and I tell you he was a mean so but he and I went to the Middle East once together I went as his you know hat holder um he was I'm not exaggerating

[33:38] when I tell you he was eight grades above me that's how senior he was so I went as his hat holder and his his um uh notet Taker and uh we went to a country that I had covered very closely and he was impressed with the depth of knowledge that I had in this country and its politics so he liked me even though he was a mean son of a gun he liked me I

[34:10] mean we could hear him in his office like screaming swearing at people I heard him fire a guy one time just screaming like a crazy person and then he announced he was going to take two months off as a sabatical well you can't you can't do that but this is what they were telling everybody two months off as a sabatical and then I heard through the grape vine that he was actually taken two months off to donate a kidney to his sister his sister was dying wow so I emailed him from my private account to his private account I said what a

[34:40] wonderful thing you know he'll quickly you're a role model God bless you for what you're doing for your sister well that that just aced it for the rest of my career so when I blew the whistle he emailed me he had just retired and he emailed me the next day and he said you have chosen a difficult path but I'm glad somebody did I only wish I had had the guts to do it myself and I saved that email as a kind

[35:11] of souvenir that I wasn't crazy I wasn't a traitor I had done the right thing yeah yeah and I guess goes without saying that you had people who you might have thought would be supportive who ran the other one oh listen I had relatives who ran away from me yeah relatives you really you really get to understand who your friends are truly

[35:42] who they truly are when something like this happens how have you stayed not just then but but even now how have you stayed connected to your own North Star so to speak with this Duality existing I'm going to answer that question by um by telling you an anecdote that I give at colleges and universities when I speak there I always

[36:13] use this example because I've always thought it was so powerful so I say let's say you are a CIA operations officer and you have recruited a Bonafide terrorist Al-Qaeda has Bala Isis bad guy yeah and you meet with him once a month at a hotel in the Middle East and this guy has given you actionable intelligence that you have used to save the lives of Americans so you fly out to meet with

[36:46] him and at the start of the meeting he says to you you know what I've given you everything that you've wanted and today you're going to do something for me you're going to go out and you're going to get me a prostitute or I'm not talking to you ever again so I ask give me a show of hands how many of you will get him the prostitute and usually about 80% put their hands up and I say yeah you would give them the prostitute it's unseemly it's dirty it's gross but this

[37:17] is the job that we've chosen so you're going to go out you get him the prostitute what if he asks you for a child prostitute what do you you do and people will kind of look around discreetly and then like 10% will gingerly put their hand up and I say absolutely not not under any circumstances but see here's the rub there's no rule remember

[37:48] your job overseas is to break the law right your job is to get somebody to to commit treason or espionage for you headquarters isn't going to care if you go out looking for a child prostitute but listen some things really are black and white right or wrong and getting a man a child prostitute is just wrong so you have to go into this job with your own moral compass you have to go in with your own

[38:20] set of personal ethics because they're not going to teach it to you there are no ethics classes at the CIA yeah I and to to rephrase a little bit what you said about this your job is to break the law I part of that could be construed by some people in the CIA as my job is to be as unethical and immoral as is required to and you will bump up against lots of officers who've taken that position yes yeah yeah

[38:54] so without your own s solid set of values and your your own North Star so to use that um you can go off the path really quick I'm assuming oh yeah yeah most definitely you really can and you know over the years too you read in the papers about oh so and so a CIA officer was uh arrested and charged with rape or charged with embezzlement or charged with this or charged with that because

[39:26] they really believe believe that they're the good guys under any circumstances and they can get away with anything they want to get away with they don't have that that moral compass they're just in it for themselves they're in it for their own gratification whether it's sex or money or fancy watches or you know whatever and and they get caught which leads to a question I this is a question I've really been wanting to ask is there a gray area between sociopathy

[40:00] and a good CIA oh most definitely most definitely I've said this uh many times uh in podcast but I think it Bears repeating the CIA actively seeks to hire people who have sociopathic tendencies not sociopaths because sociopaths have no conscience and they're impossible to control and they just blow right through the polygraph exam you don't want people who have no conscience somebody with a sociopathic tendency does have a conscience does

[40:33] react in the polygraph but because we're supposed to be the good guys is willing to work in legal moral and ethical gray areas right interesting I I will will relate a personal story when I first showed up at the naval special Warfare Center for Buds and I I I I was not a seal I did I was had a spinal injury and was Med dropped early on so I I I W make that clear I was not a seal but I showed up at Buds and we're running in

[41:04] formation one day and one of my class leaders uh went on to work I think on a joint terrorism task force for the Obama Administration Jeffrey Edgars was his name and um you know so you you you've got a couple of guys usually are uh Academy guys who are your you know the the class officer and we're running in formation one day and I I don't know who initiated the

[41:37] Cadence but the Cadence was throw the candy in the courtyard watch the children gather around Lock and Load your MP5 blow those little down now let me tell you what went on in my head at that point I've always been pretty self-aware and I realized this group we're not like other people mhm

[42:10] most other people um it not that I thought oh yeah shooting kids that that's cool it wasn't that but it was that I was I sang the Cadence and that none of us looked at each other like that was strange and I thought you know I came into this knowing what what the job is and and so

[42:42] have uh both consciously and unconsciously accepted that that role that Duty and so I I as I went on through life and and pursued the psychology path uh I was very aware that I was not a sociopath of course but I'm I'm very clear that I I do have sociopathic tendencies or I would have probably never have wanted to go there in the first place yeah how how many people

[43:14] show up there knowing that about themselves almost none really I think that they don't even really consider it in fact I I tell this one story story but I but I only realized its Import in retrospect so when I was being interviewed for the for the job this is this is 1989 I'm being interviewed for the job and um there are like four other men and one woman and we're given this scenario

[43:46] let's say that you're serving overseas and um you get a cable from headquarters and they want um they want some figures on the Indonesian economy okay so go out and collect it so you start targeting the Indonesian second secretary for economic Affairs at the embassy and you take them to lunch you hit it off you take them to dinner you

[44:16] have a great time you introduce your wives your wives get along you start going to day trips together maybe you go for a weekend together but after all this development you come to the conclusion that he's just not recruitable but headquarters needs that document so what do you do so one guy raises his hand and he says well headquarters wants the documents so you have to double down and you have to you have to just keep doing what you're doing until finally he's willing to turn over the document and then this woman

[44:47] raises her hand and she says well maybe you can get the wives more engaged and maybe you can get the document through the wife and I'm looking around as they're answering answering their their answer and I'm like I put my hand up and I said you break into the embassy and you steal it and he says that's exactly what you do you break into the embassy and you steal it well that's a sociopathic tendency a normal person wouldn't Advocate breaking into a foreign government's Embassy and stealing documents but we're the good

[45:19] guys and this is for the greater good and you know USA USA but that's what a sociopathic tenden is I didn't know that was a sociopathic tendency it just seemed like a logical answer to me would would you agree that with good people who have sociopathic tendencies we'd be in trouble yes because then all you're left with is a criminal organization right you know that that's a mob family you're you're describing

[45:50] not an intelligence service sure change topic here again I know you've got a timeline today what are to the extent that you can and I realize there are some things you just can't talk about but to the extent that you can what are I'm this a two-part question first what is a surveillance method that for its Simplicity was surprisingly

[46:21] effective that's a great question um I was always partial to foot surveillance um you know when you're working in a big City a capital city usually traffic is terrible anywhere in the world traffic is terrible so it's better to do it on foot unless you're willing to drive way out into the Boondocks to do your to do your meeting so one thing that was easy and very effective was a technique that the CIA

[46:52] calls stair stepping so if if you're looking at a map and a a stair step is you go straight one block make a right go one block then make a left one block then a right one block left one block right one block and so it looks like a like a staircase right but every time you go AC cross the street you look both ways to cross the street but you're really looking for surveillance gotcha and so they don't

[47:24] know where you're going and you're making all these turns but you're acting very normally and you're just looking to cross the street and then you cross the street and then you make a left and then you make a right and then you make a left and make a right spotting surveillance couldn't be any easier than that that's fascinating and and again so simple yeah very simple doesn't cost anything part two of that then is what's something that you were taught or picked up regarding

[47:54] surveillance that was surprisingly ineffective Ive in in real time that was surprisingly ineffective yeah dead drops really yeah I was bad at dead drops for a while it was the only thing in training that I struggled with um I mean it sounds easy you just you know you put the message you know underneath the foot Bridge or you put it

[48:24] under a rock or whatever I had a colleague who put one inside a condom because who's going to touch a condom you know sure but um they're far more complicated than just that so what you do for a dead drop is first of all you have to identify a place that's suitable for a dead drop but if you're in a sophisticated country like the United States or Russia or China or Cuba or Israel or even you know France or you

[48:54] know places like that that have really sophisticated intelligence Services just being able to identify a place for a viable Dead Drop is very very difficult number one number two let's say you have a place for a viable Dead Drop you've got to do several things first you do a two or thre hour or in the case of Russia or China an 8 Hour surveillance detection route to make sure you're not being followed you go to the Dead Drop you

[49:24] make the drop then you do a surveillance detection route either back to your house or to your office so you do 2 three 58 hours to the drop and two hours back that's a full day that's a full work day yeah just to you know drop a document or something number two then you have to do a surveillance detection route to a predetermined site to make a chalk

[49:55] Mark so that you tip the agent to know that there's something waiting for him at the Dead Drop so just to leave a single document or a piece of microfilm or you know a a microphone or a photograph or whatever it is you're dropping at the drop site you're talking about a 16-hour workday oh yeah yeah yeah well that's not practical yeah what's interesting about

[50:25] that is the A simple piece of chalk being part of a fairly well I'll tell you what in in training this really got me this is the only time I was criticized in training okay so we're training in Northern Virginia and I have a dead drop site that's little bit farther out in the Boondocks um I found a rock um I I I had a a fake rock that you can put a key in you know people put them in front of their houses and it it was the

[50:56] same color the same shape as real rocks in the parking lot of an office building way out in the Virginia suburbs so perfect so you know I'll put the message in there just throw it in with the other rocks and um and tell the agent you know this is where it is so then I I do the surveillance detection route to lay down the rock I'm not being followed and then I go to start my

[51:29] surveillance detection route to the place where I'm going to leave the chalk Mark so I had chosen a an underground parking garage in Tyson's Corner Virginia well in the week or so what I was supposed to do is just take a chalk and just make a mark on on the door leading from one level to the stairwell right right in the week between when I picked the site and when I actually went

[52:00] there to make the mark they had painted the doors okay no big deal the door was the door was yellow when I went now it's blue okay I don't care but they used glossy paint oh and the chalk couldn't make a Mark and I was just going like this and the chalk is just falling apart and it's just not adhering to the door and so the agent never knew that I that I left the the drop and they were like listen you fail not only did you fail but

[52:31] surveillance saw you going like this on the door like a crazy person you would probably had this been in a hostile environment you probably would have been arrested and expelled so that was such a valuable lesson for me I still remember it today and I'm talking this was this was 30 years ago yeah and those are the things I I guess you know there are probably multiple things encountered in your career that they can't possibly cover in your training because there was just so

[53:03] many variables that could happen and that's where they rely on you to figure it out yes yes yeah I I know you've got to go soon so I've got one last question for you sure to to the best of your knowledge and based on your experience what do you think the the current state of our intelligence agencies is in relationship to our

[53:34] adversaries and are we at any increased danger or are things maybe even better and we just don't know where are we well keeping in mind that I left 20 years ago um I think there are areas where we're better than everybody else and I think there are other areas where we're lagging um on technology we're cutting edge and we know that thanks to the Vault 7 uh Revelations I mean there is stuff that just blew my mind in the in the vault 7 Revelations I had no idea

[54:06] the CIA was involved in and they're quite Advanced working with NSA and DARPA and gchq and the Canadians the Australians the new zealanders they've developed they've developed technologies that we can't even fathom where they're weak is in their understanding of foreign cultures and foreign languages especially Chinese I would be absolutely

[54:36] shocked if the CIA had more than a half a dozen case officers who spoke passable Chinese really MH just like just like on on September 11th 2001 there were only like 16 of us in the entire CIA who spoke Arabic I mean that's inexcusable and and how does that happen John how it can't I I can't think that it's due to a lack of foresight is there

[55:08] something the awareness is there but it just doesn't happen or yeah yes the awareness is there and it doesn't happen think of it this way um you are a CIA manager and you've got these guys doing operations working for you um and you're told Hey listen this hot shot case officer who's doing all these recruitments and uh getting Awards you're going to have to put him in language school for 12 months and then he's going to go

[55:38] overseas and you're not going to see him for three more years well what manager wants to give up as good people so they could go sit in a classroom for 12 months and so they say ah we're going to make an exception you're going to go overseas without the language well that might maybe work for you it probably won't but it could but then the agency loses because it doesn't have enough people speaking these languages right after September 11th um they made a real effort to bring in new people who spoke

[56:10] and I still remember the languages they wanted they didn't want to train people they wanted you to come into the agency with Arabic farsy Dari pashu uru Cindi Punjabi USC tajik Korean Chinese and Russian if you could speak any of those languages you went to the very front of the line but you know here we are still um with uh you know with with a shortage

[56:41] of of hard language speakers and and what do you do and I'm guessing Chinese is maybe one of the tougher ones to learn absolutely absolutely they don't want people who learned Spanish French and German in high school that doesn't help anybody and if you want to if you want to focus on you know counternarcotics or something then go work for the DEA with your Spanish nobody cares right they want those tough languages

[57:11] yeah finally have the kind of changes that you had hoped would be implemented as a result of your coming forward as a whistleblower H have they happened on a level that you had hoped they would um yes and no um yes in that there is no torture program anymore I'm I'm proud to say that I had an integral role in that I'm proud of it uh John McCain said so on the floor of the Senate and when uh

[57:44] Gina haspel uh appeared before the Senate intelligence Committee in her nomination hearing she admitted finally that the torture program was a mistake so yes in that respect right on the other hand as recently as three weeks ago um a batch of new hires was given a a slideshow uh with my picture on one of the slides and it said underneath The Insider

[58:14] threat so CIA computers now um are using AI to predict if and when an employee might be thinking about becoming a whistleblower so they can nip that in the bud and there is a reward system for CIA employees to rat out their co-workers if they think a cooworker might be thinking about blowing the whistle on waste fraud abuse or illegality so one step forward and two back yeah the implication there just

[58:46] your your picture and inside threat to me if I were new trainee there I would take that partially as a a reinforcement of this is you don't do this ever yeah and and that that's that's a conflicting message I would think that's right yeah that is exact joh listen I maybe someday you you will be willing to come back and do this again because I

[59:17] I've got so many things I would like to talk to you about and my pleasure my pleasure that would be fantastic listen thank you so much I know you've got to go than for invitation we'll do this again sometime looking forward to it thank you sir take care
