Title: Trump Is Coming for the Man Who Put Me in Prison. | Ep. 8
Show: John Kiriakou
Date: 2026-08-06
URL: https://youtu.be/Acka-0VUri8
Duration: 54:00

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[00:00] Hi everybody, I'm John Kiriakou, and welcome back to the briefing room. >> [snorts] >> People often ask me what is the most dangerous tool or tools that the CIA has in its possession. And sometimes I tell people on podcasts about these devices that seem to come straight out of a James Bond movie. And then the comment section goes, "Oh, you're making this up. There's no way that you're telling the truth." Well, the truth is that much of it has already been made public.

[00:30] It's called Vault 7. Information about it was given to WikiLeaks, and it was allegedly leaked by a man by a man by the name of Joshua Schulte. Uh before I get into the tech, I want to tell you about Joshua Schulte. Josh Schulte was a CIA software engineer who was convicted on nine Espionage Act related counts for allegedly giving WikiLeaks an enormous collection of classified CIA documents that became known as Vault 7

[01:02] or the Vault 7 revelations. Schulte denied being the source, and prosecutors built a case based on circumstantial evidence. They said that Schulte had the technical ability to access the material, but that he was angry with his bosses bosses and co-workers, and that he was sophisticated enough, get this, to cover his tracks. Let me explain. They said, "We have no evidence that he did this,

[01:33] but the reason we have no evidence is that he is so smart that he covered up the evidence." At first, it was a hung jury. They just couldn't decide if he was guilty or not guilty. He was tried a second time. He made a terrible mistake of representing himself, and he was found guilty on all charges. Vault 7 was an extraordinary collection of documents detailing some of the CIA's

[02:03] most sophisticated hacking and surveillance capabilities. WikiLeaks began to publish the files in March of 2017. And the CIA absolutely lost its mind. The Wall Street Journal prepared a clip that does a very good job of explaining what Vault 7 was. Let's go to that clip. >> WikiLeaks released thousands of documents and files that it says expose hacking tools used by the Central Intelligence Agency. The leaks purportedly show that the CIA

[02:33] is capable of hacking smartphones, computer operating systems, automobiles, messenger applications, and even internet-connected televisions. The series of files, dubbed Vault 7, consists of 8,761 documents and files allegedly from the CIA's Center for Cyber Intelligence. Though many of the tools detailed in the documents are the kind of things you'd expect from an intelligence agency, they provide an unprecedented blueprint for how the CIA could hack individuals they're spying on. Here's how they could work. Say CIA

[03:04] operatives are investigating a suspect in France we'll call John. According to the leaks, CIA hackers operate out of the US consulate in Frankfurt, Germany using it as a base to cover Europe, the Middle East, [music] and Africa. From the confines of the consulate, the CIA can track John's activities around France. The CIA purportedly has a few techniques it can use to hack into versions of Apple's iOS, the mobile operating system used in iPhones. The WikiLeaks documents detail malware allegedly used as a hacking tool that appears to remain on an iPhone even

[03:34] after it has been rebooted, a technique known as persistence. To gain access to phones and other devices, the CIA would exploit zero-day bugs, previously unknown flaws in the operating system's code, that they would collect and store. If the CIA hacks John's phone, it can and the encryption of messenger apps like WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, and Confide that John uses and collect voice audio and messages before the applications encrypt John's texts. To track his movements, the agency can activate the camera and microphone on John's phone without him knowing and

[04:05] retrieve his geolocation. Even if his cell phone's powered off, the documents describe how the CIA can hack other internet-connected devices to monitor John's activity. Working with British intelligence, the CIA developed an attack that can place Samsung smart TVs in a fake off mode. So, while the TV appears turned off, in reality, it's functioning as a bug and recording his conversations in the living room. The CIA also apparently has the capability to target John's wireless internet router to connect to his infected computer or access files.

[04:36] American CIA hackers can also allegedly leave false breadcrumbs to mask the operation's fingerprints and make it appear that it was carried out by another country. >> Yeah. Wow. Sean Roche, who was the CIA's deputy director for digital innovation, reportedly described this leak as a digital Pearl Harbor. Federal prosecutors in this case called it one of the most damaging acts of espionage in American history. And according to later reporting, CIA

[05:07] officials were so furious and so embarrassed by Vault 7 that the agency under Mike Pompeo discussed extraordinary options for dealing with Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, including plans to kidnap him or if that were to be unsuccessful, to kill him in broad daylight in the center of London. Vault 7 showed that the CIA had developed tools capable capable of exploiting vulnerabilities in some of the technology that millions of ordinary

[05:38] people use every day. I'm sitting 15 ft from a Samsung smart TV. Now, I don't discuss classified information in my living room, but a lot of people do. Or not even classified information so much as sensitive information. Well, the CIA, if it wants it, it can get it. One of the most famous revelations involved these smart TVs. According to the documents, the CIA and its partners developed a tool that could make a television appear to be turned off as

[06:08] you saw in the video while using its microphone to record conversations in the room. Schulte's legal troubles went well beyond Vault 7. Federal investigators also discovered child sexual abuse material while searching his devices, leading then to additional charges and additional convictions. Those crimes are horrifying. And nothing about the public importance of Vault 7 diminishes them. But neither do those crimes erase what Vault 7 revealed. Now,

[06:42] Josh Schulte was sentenced to 40 years in prison. He'll likely die in prison. And not just prison. He didn't go to what some people used to call Club Fed or a low-security prison. He's in a Supermax. When he entered prison, he was first sent to MDC Brooklyn, the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. It is known as one of the harshest and most difficult

[07:12] prisons anywhere in America. Because of the severity of this crime, because of the import of the crimes for which he was convicted, he's not moving down to a medium-security prison or a low-security prison. He's going to spend probably the rest of his life in a maximum. Now, there are other things that we learned from the Vault 7 revelations. One of the things that's important that

[07:43] you heard in that clip uh was the issue of breadcrumbs. What a breadcrumb is is a false hint that's left on a digital trail. A breadcrumb on a trail. In this case, what a breadcrumb is is just one line of code or maybe even one word of code that's left for someone to find in a hack. But the code is written in Russian

[08:13] or in Farsi or in Chinese. So, it doesn't look like the Americans or the Brits did this hack. It looks like the Russians, the Iranians, or the Chinese did the hack. Vault 7 is also known as the crown jewels of the CIA. Now, the CIA had no official official response to Josh Shulties' uh revelations other than this comment that this was a digital Pearl Harbor. It was

[08:44] if if you're a CIA leader. It was a digital Pearl Harbor. I for one am glad to know what the CIA can do against me as a private citizen. But at the same time, it exposes these highly classified secrets to hostile foreign powers. One of the things that wasn't in that clip was another revelation coming out of Vault 7 that the CIA can remotely take over by hacking the computer in your car.

[09:15] Now, why would they do that? Why would they hack into the computer that runs your car? I can tell you why. To take over the car to drive you off a bridge or into an abutment or into a tree so that it looks like it was just a terrible accident when they find your dead mangled body. Or it looks like a suicide. It doesn't look like you were assassinated by remote control from a

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[11:20] Another part of Joshua Schulte's case was the length of this sentence. Many observers thought that Schulte was going to get 20 years for this. I I this this was a serious crime if indeed he was guilty of it, but but 20 years is a long time. Two decades in prison? I mean, the traitor Jonathan Pollard got 30, and his information went directly to the KGB. Josh Schulte got 40. Why? Because this wasn't really just about Josh Schulte. This was about a chilling effect.

[11:53] This was a message to all CIA employees saying, "You're thinking of going public? Look what we did to Joshua Schulte. Do you want to die in an 8x10 foot cell 40 years from now? Because you will." It's not an accident that there haven't been similar leaks of technical data from the CIA. Everybody watched the Joshua Schulte trial.

[12:24] The Justice Department, it was revealed just recently, has just subpoenaed a journalist named Matthew Cole. Matthew Cole is a freelance reporter. He had been doing some work for the New York Times, and he had reported on a failed Navy SEAL Team Six mission that had taken place inside North Korea. The Justice Department wants to know who talked to him.

[12:54] Who told him about this top secret mission? Most people are talking about this in terms of attacks on press freedom. I'm talking about it because Matthew Cole put me in prison. So, here are the facts of the case. The Department of Justice has investigators who are seeking Matthew Cole's testimony about 2 years worth of information uh about his contacts, and about conversations that he had with those contacts, as the DOJ investigators

[13:27] try to identify Cole's sources for the article about this very sensitive, as I said, top secret operation in North Korea. Matthew Cole's lawyer said in a statement, "Mr. Cole has dedicated his professional life to bringing official misconduct to light and informing the public about the workings of its government." Unquote. "His client," he added, "will not be intimidated from continuing that important work. He will defend press freedom and the First

[13:58] Amendment from this administration's brazen attacks on journalists and he will honor his commitment to his sources." Unquote. That's bull I'll get to that in a minute. As a refresher on his North Korea reporting that got him in trouble, Matthew Cole reported on this top secret mission in which US US special forces, specifically SEAL Team Six, the most sensitive of all the SEAL Teams, was to plant an electronic listening

[14:29] device inside Kim Jong-un's office amid high-level nuclear talks with President Trump. It went horribly wrong. The mission was so secretive that SEAL Team Six had to complete the mission in complete radio blackout. But when they had just gotten ashore, flashlights from a North Korean fishing boat pointed in their direction. They thought they were caught by North Korean military.

[15:01] They immediately shot up a boat full of fishermen. They swam over to the ship. They punctured their lungs, the lungs of the fishermen, so that they could drown their bodies and sink them to the bottom of the of the ocean to hopefully avoid getting caught. This was an immense embarrassment for the US military. And it seemed like I like it had been leaked by sources with an axe to grind against SEAL Team 6 over frustration that they were attempting incredibly

[15:32] stupid operations and only getting publicity for the successful ones. Somebody ratted them out and they ratted them out to Matthew Cole. Let me tell you about Matthew Cole. I used to work with Matthew Cole at ABC News. We both worked for Brian Ross in the investigative team. I was the counterterrorism commentator along with uh Dick Clarke, the former counterterrorism czar at the White House. Matthew was a junior

[16:04] investigative reporter gathering content for Brian Ross to use in his reports. Uh we weren't close. We were cordial to one another on those rare occasions when we would see each other. In 2008 in July Matthew Cole called me. And he said that he was writing a book on something called the Abu Omar rendition. Abu Omar was uh a Muslim

[16:35] cleric in Milan, Italy. Kind of a firebrand. And the CIA had gone to the Italians and said, "We really don't like this guy Abu Omar. We want you to help us kidnap him." And the Italians said, "What are you out of your minds? This guy hasn't committed any crime. Just cuz you don't like his sermons doesn't mean that he should be kidnapped." So the CIA just kidnapped him anyway on their own. And they when they kidnapped him, they

[17:06] sent him to Egypt. He's Egyptian. They sent him to Egypt specifically to be tortured. And the Egyptians tortured him for something like 9 months. And then they came back to the CIA and they said, "Look, this guy doesn't know anything. He's just a preacher. He doesn't like the United States, but he's not like Al-Qaeda. He's not a terrorist. He's just a preacher." And they let him go. And he returned to Italy and he told the story of his kidnapping and rendition to Italy. The Italians were furious. And so

[17:36] they they issued arrest warrants for all of the CIA people involved in the operation. Everybody was under cover, but every single one of them made a mistake with their cover. You're under cover, some made up name, and then you use the hotel phone to call your wife in your true name. Or you're under cover and you go souvenir shopping and you use your actual credit card in your real name. They were able to identify every one of these guys. Almost all of them escaped. A couple of them had like serious

[18:07] multiple felony arrest warrants issued against them. This was an operation that caused immense embarrassment to the CIA. So, Cole was writing this book about it. And he emails me and he says, "I have this list of 12 names. Do you know any of these guys who I could interview for my Abu Omar book?" And I looked at the names. I said, "I don't know who any of these people are. I can't help you." He sent me a second email with a list of another 12 names. And he said, "Can you

[18:38] introduce me to any of these people?" And I said, "Look, kidnapping wasn't my thing at the CIA. You obviously know this issue far better than I do. The only thing I know about Abu Omar is what I've read in the Washington Post. I don't know any of these people." And then he sent me a third email. And he said, "What about the guy that you mentioned on page 160-something of your first book? I think his name is John." And I said, "Oh, you're talking about John Doe.

[19:10] I don't know whatever happened to him. probably retired and living in Virginia somewhere. I forgot about it. Three and a half years later, I was arrested by the FBI and charged with five felonies including three counts of espionage. Espionage sometimes carries with it the death penalty. I was looking at 45 years in prison. Why? Because Matthew Cole was never writing a book about Abu Omar.

[19:41] In fact, the cover of the book which he had sent me as a PDF, he just made it up on the internet. Matthew Cole was secretly working for the Guantanamo defense attorneys. And so he passed John Doe's name to the Guantanamo defense attorneys and they wrote a classified motion asking the judge to allow them to depose John Doe. The judge recognized this as a leak.

[20:13] And so the judge turned the name over to the FBI. The FBI went to the Guantanamo defense attorneys and said, "Where'd you get this name?" And they said, "We got it from Human Rights Watch." And then they went to Human Rights Watch and said, "Where'd you get this name?" And Human Rights Watch said, "We got it from our investigator John so-and-so. I don't remember his name anymore." And then they went to John so-and-so. "Where'd you get this name?" "I got it from Matthew Cole." And then they went to Matthew Cole. "Where'd you get this name?" He says,

[20:44] "John Kiriakou gave it to me. John Kiriakou was my source." And then they arrested me and changed the course of the rest of my life. I went to prison for 23 months because Matthew Cole ratted me out to the FBI and then to the grand jury. Now Matthew Cole is a champion of press freedom. He refuses to out his sources for this SEAL Team Six uh

[21:14] book that he wrote or article or whatever it was. But it wasn't just me that Matthew Cole did this to. After he left ABC News, he was he was asked to leave ABC News because of my case. He couldn't be trusted as a journalist. He had lied. And he ended up at The Intercept. Well, Reality Winner was a translator at NSA. And she believed that

[21:47] the Russian government was helping the Trump 2016 campaign committee to win the 2016 election. And so she sent a one-page classified analysis about Russia and Russian involvement in the 2016 election to The Intercept. Matthew Cole received it. Now, on The Intercept's webpage, they always say, "Hey, if you have classified information, here's our encryption key.

[22:19] Send it to us. You know, we'll we'll break the story." So, Reality Winner sent this one-page analysis to The Intercept. It went to Matthew Cole. And what did Matthew Cole do with it? He scanned it. He emailed it to NSA and said, "Is this a real NSA document?" But this is a guy who's supposed to be a seasoned national security investigative journalist. He's so stupid

[22:50] that he didn't know that in the intelligence community to guard against leaks, whenever you print a document, your employee ID number is embedded in the dot of an I or in a period at the end of the sentence. So, all NSA had to do was blow up the the document, look at the dot of the I, and it says, you know, Reality Winner and has her number. She was arrested 4

[23:20] hours after Matthew Cole published the story. She did 5 years and 3 months in prison because of Matthew Cole. And guess what? The story's not over. There was also a courageous FBI agent by the name of Terry Albury. I'm proud to say that Reality and Terry are friends of mine now. Terry Albury had filed a case against the FBI for racial discrimination. The FBI is

[23:51] notoriously racist. He was a special agent in the FBI's Minneapolis office. Passed over for promotion despite being even more competitive than than many of the white FBI officers who had been promoted ahead of him. And so a study was done, an internal study, about racism at the FBI. He took a picture with his phone of the screen

[24:22] where he had the the document up on the screen. And then he sent an encrypted version of it to The Intercept. It was received by Matthew Cole. And Matthew Cole outed him to the FBI. And Terry Albury was arrested and charged with espionage and convicted and sent to prison. I actually tweeted at The Intercept when this happened. And I said, "Hey

[24:54] Intercept, serious question. You guys aren't really that stupid, are you? You aren't really that bad at journalism, are you? You're really just a front for the FBI, right? Matthew Cole left The Intercept and has been a freelance journalist ever since. I don't know how the man feeds himself. But now, all of a sudden, he's a champion

[25:25] for freedom of the press. I'm going to follow this case very closely, and I'll update you as soon as there's a development. Let me tell you what's happening while the legacy media sleeps. This could be the biggest story of the decade, and you won't hear a word about it from the traditional talking heads. I spent years inside the US government. If that experience taught me one thing, it's this: Pay attention to what governments do, not what they say. So, watch what China is doing. They shut

[25:57] down paper gold trading at four of their largest banks. Same move, same day. They keep physical gold wide open, build a new settlement system through Hong Kong, and expanded their vault capacity tenfold. The official explanation is that they're protecting retail traders from volatility. I've read a lot of official explanations in my life. This one doesn't hold up. China's trade surplus, about 1.2 trillion dollars a year. Their

[26:27] gold imports, about 940 tons a year. Divide one by the other, and you get what gold would have to be worth if China ever pays its bills in gold instead of dollars. $38,000 an ounce. That's just simple math. And what is our government doing while China prepares? It's printing trillions in interest on debt that they'll never repay. Every dollar they print out of thin air makes the dollars you saved your whole life worth less.

[27:00] Nobody voted for that tax, but everybody pays it, especially the savers and retirees who did everything right. I've seen how this works from the inside. The people in charge will not send you a warning letter. That's why I want to tell you about my friends at American Alternative Assets. They help everyday Americans protect their retirement with physical gold and silver. And they're one of the most trusted precious metals companies in the country. A+ rated with the Better Business Bureau. Over 50,000 Americans

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[28:05] Don't wait for the official explanation. By then it's already happened. There was a situation in Idaho earlier this week where a man walked into a fast-food restaurant and just began opening fire on people. What I'm going to say is probably going to be a little controversial. And if you want to hate on me in the comments, go ahead and hate on me. But our Constitution gives us the right to bear arms.

[28:36] I've always considered myself to be a progressive, a leftist. But I feel very, very strongly about my right to carry a gun. I lost my right to carry a gun because I have a felony conviction. I'm appealing that to the Department of Justice right now. But the reason why this massacre wasn't far, far worse is because an honest citizen was carrying a gun. I mean, wouldn't it be wonderful if

[29:07] there were no guns for anybody? You know, and we could be like, I don't know, Sweden or whatever. But we're not like Sweden. That's not the reality. The reality is we have lots and lots and lots of guns in this country. And what protects us from the criminals, cuz the cops can't always do it, is honest citizens with their own weapons. I think that this is going to be part of of the broader debate. Because this happens

[29:39] more frequently than most Americans realize. Now, when Donald Trump was inaugurated the second time, he ordered the Justice Department to begin reinstating the gun rights of felons who have no violence in their cases, no drugs in their cases, and no connection to organized crime. That's me. In April of 2025, the Justice Department issued a statement saying the president had given this order, that they were

[30:10] going to build a website, and you could go to the website and click on the link and fill out the form, and ATF would do an investigation, and you'd get your gun rights back. They have not updated that since the day that they posted that message. And so, I decided because in the words of a formerly uh well, in the words of an attorney that I once went against, I'm a litigious prick. And so, I'm going to file a suit against

[30:41] the Department of Justice to get my gun rights back. Now, a presidential pardon would give me my gun rights back. And so, I've applied for a presidential pardon. I have both broad and deep support for a presidential pardon, but I can't count on a pardon. The CIA doesn't want me to be pardoned institutionally. I can't count on it. And so, I'm going to go for my gun rights back. And that's another thing that I'm going to keep you updated on.

[31:12] I want to do something a little bit fun, too. We're going to be ranking politicians on how good of a case officer I think they would be. How good of a CIA operations officer they would be using what's called the S-tier rating system. I am told by my younger producer that S means you would be one of the best case officers in the whole CIA. And it goes all the way down to F, which means you would probably be

[31:43] horrendous, you would probably sell state secrets to a foreign government for money, or you're sleeping with your source. So, uh, so let's take a look, actually. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Uh, yeah. You know what? I'm going to be a nice guy, and I'm going to give her a C because there's probably a certain kind of person who would be attracted into her as a case officer and would probably volunteer information to her.

[32:16] The next one is Hakeem Jeffries. I'm going to give Hakeem Jeffries a D because Hakeem Jeffries is a know-it-all narcissist who cares only about his organization, right? His party. He doesn't really care about the the greater good. I just don't trust the guy. Next, we have Ro Khanna. I like Ro Khanna very much.

[32:48] I'm going to give Ro Khanna an A. And I'll tell you why. I think Ro Khanna is one of these very few selfless people. Ro Khanna cares about the greater good. I think that he would I think that he has cut the kind of personality where people want to be around him. And and I think that that would make him a successful case officer. Next, we have I think that's Thomas Thomas Massie. Yes, I'm going to I'm going to say Thomas Massie is my S.

[33:20] I know Thomas Massie. Um we're very friendly with each other. We have a great friend in common, and so we all go to baseball games together. I was very disappointed that he lost his congressional race, but he's going on to bigger things. Um Thomas Massie is most definitely the kind of person that people want to be close to. He attracts that kind of attention, positive attention. I think he'd be a successful case officer.

[33:51] Next, we have Matt Gaetz. You might remember Matt Gaetz is a former congressman from Florida. Um he was briefly named as Attorney General of the United States, but then dropped out when Republican senators uh said that they they wouldn't support him. But Matt Gaetz is another one of those people that that people like to be around. He's very personable. I've come to know him quite well. And I'm going to put him uh next to Ro Khanna as an A. I think he

[34:23] would be he would be a good case officer. Listen. Next, we have Max Miller. Max Miller, of course, is a Republican Congressman from Ohio. Max Miller has been credibly accused of beating his wife, scalding her with hot water, and breaking the collarbone of their 2-year-old daughter. That is not the kind of person you want

[34:53] at the CIA. There's an internal rule at the CIA that if you have been credibly accused of spousal abuse or domestic abuse, you may not carry a gun. And if you're overseas and you're not allowed to carry a gun, you're no good to the CIA. He gets an F. I don't even know if we have F on our chart. He's an F. Most definitely. Next, we have Mike Johnson. Mike Johnson is the Speaker of the House.

[35:25] People who know Mike Johnson say he's a lovely person as a human being. He's a terrible politician and arguably the weakest Speaker of the House in American history. The criticisms of Mike Johnson come mostly from Republican members of the House. And they say that his biggest negative is that he promises everything to everybody and then delivers on nothing. I'm going to I'm going to put him

[35:55] at a D. He might be able to push some paper, but he would be a terrible case officer. Next, we have Jim Jordan. Jim Jordan is a powerful Congressman from the state of Ohio. He's the chairman of the I think it's the Judiciary Committee or the Homeland Security Committee in the House. Something like one of the very big committees. Um I sort of have a love-hate thing going with Jim Jordan.

[36:27] He talks a tough game. But um but he doesn't really get a whole lot of things done. And one of the big problems that I have with Jim Jordan is before he was in Congress, he was the wrestling coach at Ohio State University. And wrestlers repeatedly went to him and said, "Coach, we're being sexually abused by the team doctor." And he did nothing to help them. Nothing. And so I think that as a case officer,

[36:59] he probably couldn't be trusted to live within the confines of the rules. I'm going to put him D. Ay, ay, ay. Next we've got Gavin Newsom. Listen, as a human being, I loathe Gavin Newsom. I actually crossed paths with him recently at the uh White House Correspondents uh dinner. The the party. >> [gasps] >> And um I elected to not shake his hand.

[37:30] One of the reasons why I so loathe Gavin Newsom is that when he was the mayor of San Francisco and he was running for Lieutenant Governor of California, his best friend was running his campaign. And there was an incident where Newsom was supposed to appear at a debate and he said, "I just can't do it. I'm swamped, too much going on. Can you represent me at the debate?" His best friend said, "Of course." He goes to represent Newsom at the debate. Newsom

[38:01] wasn't busy. Newsom was sleeping with his best friend's wife. And they got caught. And Newsom apologized to the people of California. Not to his best friend for banging his wife and just upending a lifelong friendship. The wife resigned. She She was working for Newsom, too. They got divorced. But, I don't know. The guy just has scumbag written all over him. I'm going

[38:32] to give him a D. >> [gasps] >> Marjorie Taylor Greene >> [sighs] >> Marjorie Taylor Greene I disagree with Marjorie Taylor Greene on 99% of the issues. I think she's not a serious person. I think that she has pulled down the level of debate on Capitol Hill when she was on Capitol Hill. She's resigned effective uh January of this year. But, the thing that bothers me the most

[39:02] about Marjorie Taylor Greene is I think she's just not very bright. I hate to say that. I think she's not very bright. And because of that, I don't think she could follow all the issues that a case officer needs to follow. And I'm going to put her in the D. Next, we have Jon Ossoff. Jon Ossoff is one of the senators from Georgia. Until about 6 months ago, I didn't

[39:32] really know a lot about Jon Ossoff. I've come to know a lot about Jon Ossoff, and I really like this guy. First of all, as an aside, his grandfather, on his mother's side, was Australian. And he was one of those heroes who parachuted onto the island of Crete in the middle of the night to drive the Nazis out of Crete and thus out of

[40:02] Greece, one of the heroes of the liberation of Greece during World War II. I've also come to know Jon Ossoff as one of these rare people on Capitol Hill who is as honest as the day is long. You don't have to like all of his politics or his policies, but this guy belongs with Thomas Massie as an S. Honest. Exactly the kind of person you would want as a CIA CIA case officer. Marco Rubio.

[40:34] This is probably the toughest one. And it's tough because Marco Rubio is really really smart. But he's really really wrong on so many of these issues. If Marco Rubio were in the CIA when I was in the CIA, he would be one of these guys jumping up and down to invade Iraq, invade Iraq, invade Iraq. Well, we said at the time that that was nuts. But the decision has been made and we

[41:04] invaded Iraq anyway. I fear that he would be one of those guys that would focus more on policy than on intelligence. I'm going to give him a C. And I'm giving him a C that high of a grade only because he's so bright. But I think he would be far better, you know, in politics, let's say, than in intelligence. I don't know, should I put him lower than AOC? Maybe I should Maybe I should bump AOC up to a up to a

[41:36] B. I'm going to bump AOC up to a B cuz I think I think she's better than Rubio and Rubio deserves a C. Nancy Pelosi. Ay, ay, ay, ay, ay. I think Nancy Pelosi is one of the more dangerous figures in modern politics. I don't like her. I don't trust her. I think she is emblematic of exactly what's wrong with our political system right now. I'm not even going to talk about her.

[42:07] I'm just going to give her a D. Katie Porter is not even worthy of discussion. We're putting her in a D. I I will discuss her for a minute. Katie Porter was a congressman a congresswoman from California. I I never saw anybody that that was so publicly, obviously, blatantly trying to be president than Katie Porter. Yeah, she was in Congress, but she wanted to be a senator. No, she wants to be a governor.

[42:38] No, she wants to be the mayor of Los Angeles. No, she wants to be president of the United States. It's like, "Lady, pick a job and stick with it." But, the reason why I put her as a D is that she had a reputation as being one of the meanest members of Congress. She ended up having to drop out of the race for governor of California because she was so cruel to her staff. She would swear at them, berate them, throw things at them, call them names, humiliate them. And this

[43:11] kept leaking out, and this wasn't just, you know, Joe Blow calling the Washington Post. This was a parade of current and former staff members sit saying that she was she was Satan. And so, I think politically she's done. Oh, George Santos. Look, George Santos should never have been in Congress in the first place. George Santos is Oh, God, he's a convicted felon. He's a

[43:43] a well-known liar. Uh you know, not just a liar. He's what psychiatrists call a fabulist. Where he'll just make up a story and not only a story, he'll make up like deep details of a story and present these intimate, intricate details as, you know, as a major part of his life and literally none of it ever happened. None of it.

[44:13] And then when called on the carpet, he just doubles down with another story. And none of this stuff ever happened. He's got to be an F. We don't have the F there, so we got to put him as a D. I have come to know Tucker Carlson very, very well. I consider Tucker to be a friend. Tucker has said about me, just like I say about Tucker, that we disagree on a whole lot of issues.

[44:43] Tucker's very conservative. I'm not. I mean, I guess I am on some things, but um but Tucker is one of the most honest and decent people I've ever known. Like I say, you can disagree with his politics, but he is one of the most honest and decent people I've ever known. Um a CIA case officer? I don't know. CIA

[45:16] director? Is an S. I would put him right up there at the very top. I think Tucker Carlson would be a fantastic CIA director. Yeah, give him an S. And next we have Vice President J.D. Vance. I actually have a lot of respect for J.D. Vance because of where he came from. I understand his path to conservatism. I disagree with it in a lot of ways, but I get it. I read his

[45:48] book, um uh Hillbilly Elegy. I didn't see the movie, but the book was captivating. Uh he's from southwestern Ohio, Appalachia, grew up poor, his mom was a was a drug addict. He was raised by his grandmother for whom he had deep love and respect. Um you know, I think I'm going to put him as an A because I think that

[46:19] just judging by the quality of his character I believe that he could be trusted as a CIA case officer. Yeah. And last we have Senator Mark Warner, the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, former governor of Virginia. Uh Mark Warner I'm told does not like me

[46:50] at all and doesn't think I should be pardoned. I'm going to put that aside. I've never met the man. We've never exchanged a harsh word. But I'm told he doesn't like me, and that's fine. With that said, he's very very smart. He's a terrific manager. He's an accomplished leader, not just in government, but in private industry. And I think I'm going to have to put him

[47:21] up there at the top. I'm going to say S. I think he would actually be quite an excellent CIA director. And uh and he's honest. And we know that because he's he's been in public life for decades and he's honest. So, anyway, I think that's a pretty fair representation of where I stand on these people. Yeah. Good. And we're going to do more

[47:51] of this. I think that's kind of fun. Couple of other little things that I wanted to mention, uh folks. Um there's a clip of me that's gone viral that I think deserves a little bit of explanation. Um JB, if we could, let's cut to that clip real quick. >> You know, we're [music] going to we're going to send you someplace that you're not going to like. >> And he's like, "I'm not afraid [music] of Guantanamo." I said, "Guantanamo?" I never said I was going to send you to Guantanamo.

[48:22] >> I'm going to send you to Jerusalem. >> Okay, well, listen. >> [sighs] >> When I was the chief of counterterrorism operations in Pakistan in 2002, um I caught a guy who was particularly dangerous. This is not your run-of-the-mill Al-Qaeda fighter,

[48:54] you know, making jihad against the Americans. This guy was near the top. Particularly dangerous. And in my interrogation of him, and remember, I was always a hands-off guy. I treated people with respect because it was my experience that if you engage them in a conversation and you treat them with respect, nine times out of 10, they're going to cooperate. This guy was a true believer.

[49:26] And he had obviously read and absorbed the Al-Qaeda training manual. He tried everything that the training manual told him to do. He pretended to faint, and he would fall off the chair, and then he would open one eye to see if I was looking at him, and I'd say, "Get the back on the chair." He pretended to have severe abdominal pain. I'm like, "Look, I read the training manual. I know you're faking it." And then he we stop. But he just would not cooperate and and he was harsh about it. He was like, I

[49:56] you, I your mother, I your sister, I your president. It's like, all right, all right. And I said, listen, I'm the nicest guy you're going to meet here. My colleagues are not nice. So we could do this the easy way or we can do it the hard way. Totally up to you. And I said, and if you don't cooperate with me now, we're going to send you somewhere terrible. And he said, I'm not afraid of Guantanamo.

[50:27] I said, I'm not going to send you to Guantanamo. I'm going to send you to Jerusalem. Now, we don't send people to Jerusalem. We never did. I said it to scare him. And it scared him. And he talked. So nothing ever happened to him. We ended up sending him back to his own country to face the justice system there. Which probably made him wish he had been in Guantanamo. But uh

[50:57] no, we don't send people to Jerusalem. I just felt like that clip deserved a little bit of context. And I want to say one last thing. Many of you have asked me about my watch, which is very funny to me. I love this watch. I bought this watch 26 and a half years ago. And it actually has a little bit of story. This is an Omega Seamaster 120. It's a nice watch. Let's see if you can Yeah, there it is. Omega Seamaster 120.

[51:31] It was Christmas 1999. I was married to my first wife and our marriage was not going well at all. And so there is no such thing as marriage counseling in Greece. We We tried the It just didn't exist. We tried going to this priest and he was just like he yelling at her, "Just do what he says. He's the husband." And that just wasn't going to get us anywhere. So, it was Christmas and I decided to go hog wild and I bought her this gorgeous

[52:03] heavy $2,000 gold necklace. I bought her this six-book set that she really wanted. I bought her a beautiful dress to wear at parties. And she bought me a white button-down shirt. That was it. And I was offended and disappointed. Well, the day after Christmas, December 26th, 1999, I had to fly to a European country

[52:34] to recruit an asset. I had been developing this guy. It was just the situation was very sensitive. We decided to fly to another country and that way we could sit in public and have a good conversation and formalize our relationship. So, I'm in the Athens airport in the duty-free and I saw this watch. And I thought to myself, "I need a watch." I was wearing, you know, a $35 Timex Indiglo watch, if you remember those from the '90s. And um I thought, "You know what?

[53:07] I'm the only one working. It's my money. Merry Christmas to me." And I bought myself this watch. And I love it. And I've been wearing it ever since. It's been 26 and a half years. Omega makes a fantastic watch and it's considered a luxury brand, but it's not like a lose your mind luxury brand like, you know, Patek Philippe or Baume & Mercier or something like that. Love my Omega. Thanks for asking. Folks, we really, really appreciate you

[53:38] watching uh the the show. Thank you for subscribing. Thank you for your questions. Please keep them coming. We're going to do lots more and we wish you all the best. I'm John Kiriakou and this is Briefing Room.
