Title: Potkaars podcast
Show: Potkaars podcast
Date: 2019-05-01
URL: https://youtu.be/QgJLnojqKY8
Duration: 41:00

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[00:02] it's April 29th 2009 teen and I'm with CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou well not history with them I'm in Holland here comes Jesus called both cars popped in Dutch with a meth with a candle it's just a regular podcast and that's John Kiriakou welcome to be with where are you currently I am in Washington DC one

[00:35] of the ugliest and most build cities in the world I talked to Barrett Brown the other day and he was complaining about Dallas also so what is the cool place to be then well it might be the cool place to be is Los Angeles it's the only place where I feel like I can relax I just love it there okay I haven't been there myself so why don't you move then would you move or no I would but I have five children and they're here so yeah I have to put my own wants and desires a second

[01:06] yeah I suppose I can relate I have two kids here and they say well whatever we want to do we cool with that we were not moving we live here okay all right so John what I want to do in this interview is get to know you what have you been doing for the past I don't know 10 20 years since you're known as a CIA whistleblower so how did that happen you disclose the fact that United States was torturing people waterboarding them in Guantanamo Bay now after we did that

[01:38] I want to move into yeah how you your view on the world if you will on operations like that on CIA and and then so for starts what did you do like into 10 20 years prior to their throat blowing whistle on CIA I do the CIA in January 1990 I spent the first seven years of my career there as an analyst working on Iraq I got bored and I'm a linguist I speak both Greek and Arabic

[02:10] and so I switched to counterterrorism operations in 1997 I served overseas and a lot of different places mostly in the Middle East working on counterterrorism mostly working against al-qaeda and then after the 9/11 attacks I became the chief of CIA counterterrorism operations in Pakistan it was in that position that I led a series of raids that resulted in the capture of Abu Zubaydah who we believed at the time to be the number

[02:41] three in al-qaeda return to headquarters in the middle of 2002 I was promoted on the strength of the Abu Zubaydah capture and I became the executive assistant to the CIA's deputy director and and participated I'm ashamed to tell you in the in the planning for the Iraq war which many of us opposed both inside the CIA and outside but the decision had

[03:12] already been made at the White House that's an issue for a different conversation of course I left the CIA in 2004 and I went into the private sector now when I got back from Pakistan and this is kind of the crux of the whole thing I was asked if I wanted to be trained in what a senior officer called the use of enhanced interrogation techniques I had never heard that term before this was in June May or June of 2002 and I asked him what it meant and

[03:46] he got very excited and he he said we're gonna start getting rough with these guys and I said well what does that mean rough and he described these ten techniques and I said that sounds like a torture program no no it's been approved by the president it's not torture and I said no I said that I said I have a I have a moral and ethical problem with that I don't want to be involved with that at all and so I wasn't and I went

[04:19] on to work on Iraq again so I left the CIA in 2004 and I actually waited for somebody to come forward and say something about the torture program and nobody said anything I was like who at the time was also a senior CIA officer when is when is somebody gonna say something I mean this is so clearly illegal certainly somebody is going to come out and and say we need to stop this and nobody did and so to make a

[04:50] long story short in December of 2007 I finally decided that I would say something I did not go through my teen of command remember I was no longer than CIA but more importantly it was my chain of command that created the torture program Congress because it was Congress that approved the torture program and that funded the torture program and so the only place to go was to them to the media to the press and I agreed to give an interview to ABC News here in Washington in which I said three things

[05:23] they said the CIA was torturing its prisoners they said torture was official US government policy it was not the result of a rogue officer as the president had said and I said that the torture program had been personally approved by the president so as you can imagine the FBI began investigating me the very next day and they investigated me for a full year from December of 2007 to December of 2008 and they decided in

[05:53] December of 2008 that I had not committed a crime and they closed the case three weeks later Barack Obama became president and I had no idea that he asked the Justice Department to secretly reopen the case against me Oh secretly - really I had no idea I was under surveillance I had no idea that my phones were being tapped I had no idea that the Justice Department was reading my emails and they did that for three

[06:24] more years and finally in January of 2012 I was arrested I was charged with five felonies including three counts of espionage all coming out of that ABC News interview all the time that you will be investigated that's what's the time that you wrote your book Oh No during the time I was being investigated not only did I write a New York Times bestselling book about my experience but I was hired

[06:54] by John Kerry to be the chief investigator on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee so here you have the chief investigator on the most prestigious and important committee on Capitol Hill I'm under secret investigation by the FBI for espionage what's Congress a president must have been aware of the program but what do you think in hindsight was Congress aware at that time also they were totally aware and they all pretended that they weren't they all pretended

[07:26] that their hands were clean that's something that our politicians do quite well here oh not just over there it's a common thing all right so well the guy investigating you in secret that's somebody who's known in Holland for the Russian collusion investigation mr. Muller right I think I think I think the people of Holland aren't aware of just about everybody that was involved in my case John Brennan and I I've known John

[07:58] for thirty years John Brennan the former CIA director was the one that asked the Justice Department to reopen the case against me and it was because John had a nick Sounion obsession with leaks with national security leaks so John asked the Justice Department to open the case robert muller was the chief of the FBI at the time he created something called the John Kiriakou task force which went on to spend 6 million dollars of the taxpayers money following me everywhere

[08:30] I went reading my mail listening to my phone calls and then when I was finally arrested it was an FBI agent by the name of Peter struck who actually physically put the handcuffs on me Peter Strock was the FBI agent implicated in the mother case for plotting against the president all these same people who were involved in the Muller investigation John Brennan Muller himself Peter Strunk Eric Holder

[09:03] these were all the same people that went after me this is what they do yeah well now that's what they do okay fair enough but but this particular focus on you that was new I suppose who went before you with that all that focus or were you at first I was not the first Tom Drake was the first okay okay Jeffrey sterling came after Tom Drake I was the third and it Snowden came after me it was a it was

[09:37] a line of line of us and remember we we have this law here in the United States called the Espionage Act the Espionage Act was written in 1917 to combat German saboteurs between 1917 and 2009 three Americans were arrested with espionage for speaking to the press but just under Barack Obama eight of us were arrested and charged with espionage for speaking

[10:07] to the press that's almost three times the number of all previous presidents combined and it was because of people like John Brennan and Robert Muller who were advising Barack Obama yeah so let's go into that a little bit more than so when when Obama was elected I remembered it vividly I was cheering it on so this is a good thing yeah I even took my children to witness the be inauguration there you go well the Washington Mall with all the guitarists and your heroes

[10:38] and stuff so were we wrong or did something change after that we were wrong and I'll tell you why there was a book that was published in 2013 called Double Down written by by Mark Halperin and John hilemon they're two eminent political reporters here in the United States Barack Obama agreed to sit for an interview for this book and he said two things that were shocking he said very plainly matter-of-factly he

[11:11] said I never said I was a liberal just like that I never said I was a liberal we believed that he was a liberal but he was a fake and the other thing that he said that was shocking he was talking about the drone program and he said I never had any idea that I would be so good at killing people that was Barack Obama we hated george w bush so much we wanted out of iraq so badly that we

[11:43] tricked ourselves into thinking that barack obama was going to be our savior and in many ways he was worse than george w bush okay if we extend that so we had the second bush that we had Obama what's your take on Trump Trump's even worse than Obama was I was just talking to one of my attorneys last night and my attorney told me that there are three times the number of national security leak investigations going on right now

[12:14] than in there in the worst year of the Obama administration so we thought Obama was bad because he eight people compared to you know three in the previous history of the United States there are 123 leak investigations taking place right now it's unprecedented in American history so is that the president's administration that's initiative Inglis or you think yes yes this president

[12:45] specifically and even more granularly it was Attorney General Jeff Sessions now sessions is gone and he's been replaced by William bar but those investigations are ongoing so it's administration it's Donald Trump pushing this issue okay okay so back to your story in 2012 you were convicted even though under the Bush administration they thought well no not too much went on so what what specifically where you're convicted

[13:15] for yeah so I was charged with five felonies including three counts of espionage I hadn't committed espionage clearly it was facing forty five years in prison and I decided to go to trial because I knew in my heart I had done nothing wrong what I had done was in the public service and so I decided to go to trial well I went before Judge Leonie brinkema she's the judge that is handling the Assange case she's the judge that is handling the Snowden case she's the

[13:47] judge that put Jeffrey sterling in prison she's a hanging judge so she denied my 70 requests to declassify 70 different documents necessary to defend myself as a result I had no defence my defense was classified and I couldn't I couldn't say classified information in in court that would have been actually ironically another espionage charge so my lawyers said I said well what do we do we've

[14:19] just we've just lost our defense and my lawyer said now we have to talk about taking a plea and so this is what our Justice Department does they'll charge you it's called charge stacking they'll heat multiple charges on you knowing that you haven't committed these crimes and then once you go bankrupt they offer to drop all the charges if you take a plea to a lesser charge that's where they win ninety eight point two percent of their cases according to Pro Publica you know I say often we used to laugh

[14:50] when Saddam Hussein would run for re-election and he would win 98 percent we would laugh and say what a joke the fix was in but the Justice Department wins 98 percent of its cases and we say they're geniuses everybody's a criminal well the fix is in the system is corrupt and so they told me to decide do 23 months in prison take a guilty plea to confirming the surname of a former CIA

[15:21] colleague even though the name was never made public do 23 months in prison or to trial and I said I'm gonna go to trial when I called my lawyers to tell them I said listen my wife and I were up all night long we talked about this all night long we decided we're gonna go to trial as soon as I can get in front of a jury they're gonna see how ridiculous this is and one of my lawyers drove over to the

[15:51] house he was very angry and he pointed at me and he said you know what your problem is your problem is you think this is about justice and it's not about justice it's about mitigating damage take the deal and he was right I said to him if I don't take the deal and I lose what am I looking at and he said you're looking at 18 to 24 years I knew it

[16:22] done anything wrong I knew that no no national-security defendant has ever won a case in front of Judge Leonie brinkema so what was I gonna do I have five children at home my ear said this can be a blip in your life or it can be the defining event of your life make it the blip and so I took the deal well maybe if you tell it like this accepting that that there is no rule of law that the

[16:53] justice system doesn't work the way you shoot that that's the hard part of accepting that even more so even after everything that I had gone through that previous year or even the previous you know five years I believed until that day in the rule of law I really believed naively in retrospect I believed that if you were innocent you would be found innocent I believed that you could find justice in the US justice system and I

[17:25] learned the hard way that this the system is fixed the stacked you cannot win a case okay all right well you you well you got out of prison in 2015 you won on a different level by winning a Sam Adams Award for integrity how was that that was good yeah um there's a group of retired intelligence officers from the CIA the NSA the Defense

[17:57] Department and the FBI and they're called Sam Adams associates every year they give out an award for integrity and intelligence and and just as soon as I got out of prison they gave me the the award for integrity and tout in intelligence and it's funny it's funny I I've won a lot of awards the the funny part of this is that this whole thing has made me famous here in the States and it's made me a champion of of civil

[18:28] rights and civil liberties and human rights and rule of law and this is not something that I ever thought it just happened and so I wrote a book when I was in prison and I won the the pen First Amendment award for this book it's one of the four they call it the big four the pen First Amendment the pen/faulkner the Pulitzer Prize and the Edgar Allan Poe so I the pen First Amendment award I won the Sam Adams integrity and intelligence award I won the blueprint for free

[18:59] speech award for courage and integrity in whistleblowing did that that's what that one was called there's a Republican a conservative Republican group here in Washington called the committee for the Republic and they gave me there it was it was the annual award for honesty and integrity in rule of law so you know if

[19:30] the if the White House and the Justice Department thought that they were going wreck me with this prosecution they made me a star here has been fired mercifully massively and now I have a silk box I have a venue where I have access to the media and I can talk about these issues like you and I are talking about them nothing they can do to stop me now this whole thing with you started because of that torture program that you

[20:00] were asked for and it you didn't want to do and then later blew the whistle on how did that proceed after that are we still torturing in Guantanamo Bay or other locations well that's that's really a great question so what happened didn't when I when I first blew the whistle as they denied it and denied it and denied it and then they said okay they finally admitted it the reason why they finally admitted it is because one of my biggest supporters was Senator John McCain McCain had been tortured in

[20:33] Vietnam tortured mercilessly and in fact permanently lost the use of his arms he couldn't lift his arms up more than 45 degree angle and so he came to my defense even after I went to prison he came to my defense and it was pressure from McCain based on the information that I had provided that resulted in passage of the McCain fine stein amendment amendment which permanently banned torture in the United States and McCain said when when McCain Feinstein was

[21:06] finally passed that the American people would not have known that their government was torturing prisoners had I not said something and so in the end even though I went to prison for two years for 23 months it was worth it because it really did and torture in this country did it it did yeah so about I do not know all of American journalists and stuff so I have no idea who Kevin Barrett is but he claimed not so long ago that current CIA director

[21:37] Gina Haspel got into that role because she approved of torture as a as a as a means yes yes that's true I worked for Gina in the CIA's Counterterrorism Center I've known Gina for many many years Tina's a monster Gina I believe is a sociopath when when we were working in the counterterrorism center together just after I turned down the torture training Gina flew out to one of this prisons just for the purpose of watching

[22:10] a torture session she wanted to participate in it just because she enjoyed it so when Gina was first nominated the Washington Post called me and asked me if I would write an op-ed saying why she was the wrong person for the job and I wrote 1,200 words they gave me front-page coverage and the day that it ran it was a Sunday I got a call from Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky he's the kind of a libertarian Republican and

[22:45] he asked me to come to his office to strategize to see how we could defeat Gina hospitals nomination I said done so I drove up to Capitol Hill and we met all day coming to a strategy where we could convince Republicans his Republicans have the majority of the US Senate we could convince Republicans that Gina was the wrong person for this job and I went on television and I said look I think it's wonderful that the

[23:15] president wants to nominate a woman to be the CIA director it's it's far past time that a woman should be the CIA director not this woman that I could name 70 women that would be outstanding CIA directors this one is a war criminal this one has committed crimes against humanity this is the wrong message to send to the CIA workforce what is the message of naming Gina Haspel the

[23:46] message is you can commit war crimes you can commit crimes against humanity you can carry out a torture program you could murder people in cold blood and not only will you not be prosecuted you'll be promoted and indeed you could become the director of the CIA so who elder who put her into office then who is that the President or yes Donald Trump put her into office but the Democrats are just as responsible

[24:18] because at the very last minute five prominent important Democrats including my own Senator John Warren forgive me a Mark Warner who is the highest ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee switched sides and voted YES on Jena houseboat all right all right that's that's that's not so hopeful let's let's let's try we end with the candle again yeah with misses of hope you have to come up with one didn't mail it coming fifteen minutes if

[24:49] we come back in time - after world world - back in the day there was no CIA and President Truman in started a thing and to my knowledge you know just add or correct me or whatever but there was a separate entity that doesn't report to the president's office correct no no directly to the president's office see this was this was the controversy back then in 1947 during this world war there was no intelligence service and so

[25:21] President Roosevelt created something called the Office of Strategic Services but it was operational not analytic so they would take Greek Americans like me who spoke Greek they would put them behind Nazi lines - to provide operational support and arms to the Greeks or the Italians or the Russians or whomever when the war ended the Office of Strategic Services was disbanded it went away in 1947 President Truman decided to create the CIA under

[25:51] something called in the National Security Act of 1947 now the only reason that he was successful in doing that is he convened he convinced J Edgar Hoover the longtime director of the FBI that the CIA would be a very small entity and it would report to the FBI it would be a division of the FBI that was a lie he said that only to keep Hoover away so Hoover stayed it stayed out of the way

[26:21] so the National Security Act of 1947 created the CIA and it was after passage that Hoover realized that the CIA was an independent entity that reported directly to the president well that was great for a few years but then the CIA started doing things like it stole the Italian election of 1948 right it financed the Christian Democrats the Christian Democrats beat

[26:54] the communists who were ascendant in Italy that was the first first election that the CIA stole they overthrew the Mossadegh government in Iran in 1953 they overthrew the government of the Dominican Republic in 1953 they overthrew the government of Guatemala in 1954 well by then Truman's not president anymore and he realizes I've made a terrible mistake I've created a monster and there's no oversight well when John Kennedy was finally

[27:26] elected president in 1960 he told a paramour that the CIA was a terrible mistake and that he intended his words he intended to break it into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the wind and then he was murdered three weeks later and so President Johnson who became president upon Lincoln's unblinking a punt carryover cuts it for him Lincoln memorabilia Johnson was a supporter of

[28:01] the CIA and the CIA ran wild through the years of the Vietnam War until 1975 so they've been unchecked from 1947 to 1975 in 1975 things tipped we had lost the Vietnam War and news news had been released that the CIA had been actively assassinating foreign heads of state right just going in and shooting people

[28:32] blowing up presidents and prime ministers and overthrowing governments and Congress finally stepped in there were two committees one called the church committee and the other was called the pike committee in the house the church was in the Senate was in the house and they held the first ever open hearings on CIA assassinations and they decided that the CIA was out of control it had to be reined in and they created the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the house permanent

[29:03] Select Committee on Intelligence to oversee the CIA that worked great until 9/11 and then when 9/11 happened a decision was made both at the White House and on Capitol Hill that we needed to just let the CIA go and do whatever it needs to do they gave the CIA literally an unlimited budget and they said kill everybody that you need to kill and now we find ourselves in the

[29:35] situation where we find ourself oh well that was a time where this interview started where where United States went to war in Iraq right so if you could let me tell you about Iraq for one second we we have I know ten minutes but I'll make us quick the Iraqis were no threat to us the Iraqis had no weapons of mass destruction we knew they had no weapons of mass destruction and even if they had them they had no delivery systems so the

[30:06] Iraqis were no threat to us when I returned from Pakistan and I got this promotion to become the executive assistant to the deputy director I I went on my first day and I said okay I said to the deputy director I said so what are we doing and he said you know what I can't tell you until you sign some secrecy agreements you have to go upstairs to the seventh floor and sign these secrecy agreements so I did I went upstairs I six different agreements and I said so what are we doing and the man

[30:39] said okay here's the deal he said next year in February we're going to invade Iran we're gonna overthrow Saddam Hussein we're gonna open the world's largest Air Force Base in southern Iraq and we're going to move all of our air forces out of the Arabian Peninsula into Iraq to deprive some of the modern of the ability to say that we were polluting the land of the Two Holy Mosques I was shocked into

[31:11] silence and all I could think to say was but we haven't caught bin Laden yet and he's like this he said listen the decisions been made the battle lines have been drawn he said the pro-war factions are the office of the vice president the office of the Secretary of Defense and the National Security Council the anti-war factions and this is going to sound crazy the anti-war factions were the CIA the Joint

[31:43] Chiefs of Staff and the State Department and I said if the CIA and the Joint Chiefs are anti-war why are we doing it they're doing this and he said as we work for the president and the president told us to do it okay and that was it we went to war for no good reason if you fast forward to today where United States is putting ever ever ever more pressure on Venezuela who is doing that then is that the president's office or is the CIA oh no

[32:14] it's it's the president's office and I can't even tell you who inside the president's office first of all this president doesn't even he couldn't locate Venezuela on a map it's not it's not him he's too stupid to do it it's john bolton the national security advisor who is one of the most dangerous men in America and it's Elliott Abrams a convicted criminal from the George HW Bush administration and again from the

[32:44] George W Bush administration Elliott Abrams was the one who was responsible for the iran-contra affair it was Elliott Abrams who spent 12 years working for Republican presidents overthrowing Latin American governments this is what he does and now he is the senior director at the National Security Council for Latin America so it's John Bolton and Elliott Abrams they hate Venezuela they hate nicolas maduro and all they

[33:16] want is to install a right-wing strongman in venezuela who will do what we tell him to do yeah well is it mere hate like emotion or is it the oil reserves of money what about you know a year ago I would have said it was it was just hate it was ideology I'm more cynical than that now and and I finally allowed myself to believe that these that these wars these conflicts are always about money their

[33:47] ways about oil were there about fair earth metals or they're about access to water whatever the reason you know a friend of mine said in 1991 I went into Kuwait with the Marines on Liberation Day and we reopen the American Embassy there we pushed Iraqi troops out and I said to this colleague of mine I said I am so proud and so excited to be a part of this historic day we're liberating this country for the Kuwaiti people and he

[34:18] said to me [ __ ] instead if they had gravel instead of oil do you think we would be here today and he was right it's always about the oil it's is about the metals or about gold or water or something it's always about money all right we still have this obligation to end this thing on a positive note that we have like like five or six minutes left there's two things I there's still things I want to talk about with you in

[34:50] the remaining minutes that you gave me so one is what's going on with Julian Assange and the other one is how does Holland NATO EU fit into this thing so let's start with asan she was taken out of t I could or an embassy sitting in a jail it and UK now what's your take on that I regularly touch with Julian and I wish I had good news to tell you that none of this is good I think that eventually he'll be extradited to the

[35:21] United States and eventually he'll face espionage charges here which is unprecedented in American history Julian's job really the job of Julian's defense attorneys is to prove that Julian is a journalist which he is he's a publisher and frankly I Bray I blame much of Julian's problems on the American media the big media the New York Times The Washington Post CNN I blamed them because they've turned on him and if this administration or any

[35:53] other administration can go after a legitimate journalist and prosecute him under the Espionage Act for doing his job as a journalist then every journalist is in danger that's the end of our constitutional rights to freedom of the press and to freedom of speech and so they're going to have to come together and support Julian they're not there yet so I'm not optimistic about Julian's near and medium-term situation so he's in this

[36:27] this awful prison in London right now awaiting extradition he could actually delay extradition by appealing to the European Court of Human Rights for as long as five years but eventually he's going to find his way here to the United States and he's gonna have a difficult time so that I worry about very very much yes wait the embassy yeah would you like to close on that sure okay I'll let you have to explain what's going on that not too many people know about that

[36:58] so the US government is expelled all Venezuelan diplomats we have we've severed diplomatic relations with with Venezuela which is a terrible stupid short-sighted mistake and we have arbitrarily recognized this nobody named Juan Guido as the president of Venezuela who is one wydo wydo wydo is a former

[37:28] graduate student from George Washington University right down the street he's a nothing he's a nobody even Venezuelans didn't have any idea who he was until until Elliott Abrams decide that this guy is going to be the president of Venezuela he's never even been elected to anything nationwide in Venezuela he got himself elected to the popular assembly but just in a very small district he's not a national figure in Venezuela by any stretch of the imagination on top of that even if

[38:01] the rest of the world had recognized him the benefit Constitution says that in the event of an overthrow of the government three elections have to be held within 30 days days have come and gone and there haven't been any elections and wydo hasn't been elected president but but the United States is forcing him on the people of Venezuela on the Organization of American States on the European Union and and so the

[38:32] battle lines have been drawn so what we've done here in Washington is about four dozen of us have at the invitation of the Venezuelan government the legitimate Venezuelan government Maduro government right the Maduro government that's what you mean you don't have to like Nicolas Maduro I don't but the man is the democratically elected president of Venezuela so to respect that respect the Constitution respect the rule of law

[39:03] so at the at the invitation of the Maduro government we've taken over of the Venezuelan embassy in Washington and we sleep in it every night dozens of us we sleep in it to protect it from the Secret Service the Secret Service has surrounded it and they're threatening to to breach the embassy to enter the embassy and take it over and turn it over to supporters of wydo but so long as we're inside they have to prepare for a fight and we're not giving it up so

[39:35] that will be a fight against United States citizens in inside there yeah it'll be Americans fighting Americans inside the Venezuelan embassy well that sounds only fair after Asajj be arrested inside the Ecuadorian Embassy no much for diplom a community for anybody what the what the the Dutch can do and the European Union and such you know I traveled to Europe a lot I've addressed the European Parliament three times since 2015 on

[40:07] exactly these issues and I even met with Angela Merkel's national security adviser last time I was in Berlin there's actually a lot that Europeans can do and that is that you have to you have to push your elected officials especially your representatives to the European Parliament to to conduct and to carry out an independent foreign policy don't fall under the spell of the United States this is a mistake this this war mongering foreign policy that we demand

[40:37] of our allies it's just a mistake both in the short term and in the long term if anything we should be we should be promoting the cause of peace we should be promoting the sanctity of borders we should be promoting economic integration we should be promoting human rights and civil liberties rather than picking fights with other countries around the world and that's what we've been doing for years we just pick fights and so frankly what we need here is European leadership because conceded leadership

[41:10] you're not going to get any leadership on these issues from the United States well not you have any ambitions or run for office or not you know what okay so I'll see what we can do on this end of the ocean Jonas thank you so much for talking to us Mike [Music]

[41:46] you
