Title: INSIDE LOOK: CIA Operations and What Intelligence Work Is Actually Like
Show: O'Keefe Media Group
Date: 2026-02-14
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXOks4MD-YI
Duration: 12:01

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[00:00] There are there are there's a Venn diagram. I keep saying this between what I do and what you do, but they're not the same. And I'll go first. &gt;&gt; They're parallel. Well, there's there's some overlap. I mean, we use aliases &gt;&gt; Sure. I use disguises. People comment that my disguises are completely ridiculous. But they work a lot of the time. Is that because people are just so full of themselves that they're they're they're not One of the things I just I I find out in Washington, D.C. Particularly D.C. And I was in Davos for the World Economic Forum.

[00:30] &gt;&gt; Mhm. They're they're stuck in their own little They're not really paying attention to me. Mhm. They're they're having a They're confessing to the ether. Uh-huh. Well, what is that? Why why do people do that? &gt;&gt; arrogance. People love to hear their own voices. People love to sound, not just to others, but to themselves, that they are the leading experts on an issue. They're insiders, and they want to show they want to prove just how intelligent, just how well-connected they are. And

[01:00] that's true for 90% of people? &gt;&gt; Yeah. Just about everyone. &gt;&gt; And in politics more? &gt;&gt; 100%. You have to be a sociopath or a narcissist to even want to enter elected politics. &gt;&gt; like people say, you know, like someone like, you know, an entrepreneur that that starts a company, maybe they're a little on the spectrum. There's something off. But I mean that as a compliment. &gt;&gt; Yes. You have to either or you have to be motivated by some extreme form of vengeance. Like there has to be something wrong about you to do to do

[01:30] this. &gt;&gt; That's right. Well, I've said many times on on podcast that the CIA and I got this from a CIA psychiatrist, the CIA actively seeks to hire people with sociopathic tendencies. Sociopathic. They They don't &gt;&gt; tendencies. want to hire sociopaths because sociopaths have no conscience, no ability to feel remorse, and they blow right through the polygraph because they don't feel regret. Wow. So, what's a sociopathic tendency? A sociopathic tendency is somebody who is perfectly happy to operate in legal, moral, or

[02:00] ethical gray areas because of the belief that we're the good guys. I'll give you an example. I was leaving Pakistan, my very last day in Pakistan, and I was so looking forward to meeting up with my fiance 24 hours later, and we were going to go on vacation to Santa Fe. Two hours before I left the embassy, I got a cable saying, "Don't come home. We want you to go to this other country instead, and we want you to meet up with the team there. You're going to break into a house, and you're going to plant some hidden

[02:30] cameras." And I said, "Okay." And I did. You didn't object to this, or you just Well, you followed your orders. You you you And I believed in the mission. We were the good guys. You were the You You have to believe you're the good guys to do this, which requires a little bit of sociopathic tendencies. &gt;&gt; That's right. And you can't really question your your orders in the military in any event, right? You have to be trained. &gt;&gt; And if headquarters said that this was a bad person, a a terrorist that we needed to collect intelligence on, I was all in. What's the difference between

[03:00] Hollywood's depiction, again, I'll go first here in in answering my own question. How Hollywood's depiction, like Jason Bourne and James Bond, but that's kind of, you know, ridiculous. But my my my perception of the big difference is the people people I get thousands of people, "Oh, I want to be an undercover for you." The hardest part for me is just the torture of traveling. I mean, it is not fun to be on an airplane across overseas and sleeping on the floor of a Portuguese

[03:30] airport on a Saturday and hotel rooms all alone. It's just hard work. That's the big difference for me between the glamour perception. But in your in your business, in your line of work, what was the difference between Hollywood's depiction and what you do? Hollywood's depiction, and I'll add by saying I was the script advisor on The Bourne Ultimatum. &gt;&gt; You were? &gt;&gt; In addition to a bunch of other CIA movies and and two CIA related TV shows. Um we we try to make sure that the scripts are are true to life as best we

[04:00] can. But the the big difference is what you see in a Bourne movie is somebody's entire career packed into one hour. &gt;&gt; operation. Two hours. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of hurry up and wait. Surveillance is is just soul-crushing. &gt;&gt; I see. You sit there for hours, sometimes days, just sitting there. &gt;&gt; And and and peeing, urinating in a in a cup or whatever. &gt;&gt; That actually happens. Oh, yeah. You're sitting in a car. Where do you go to the bathroom? &gt;&gt; Your fake mustache is starting to peel

[04:30] off. And yeah, you're tired of the guy that you're sitting with. That's a good point. &gt;&gt; I once sat on, you know, the the lid of a toilet for 9 hours listening to a conversation in an adjoining room as a guy was being polygraphed. Listening, how so? Through &gt;&gt; Just to see if he was going to lie to the polygrapher. No. No, I I just just through the crack in the door. Just to see if he was if he was going to lie to the polygrapher and the security officer that was in there with him. &gt;&gt; And you can't move on the toilet. You

[05:00] can't shimmy. I I thought I was going to faint after a while. I've been I've been there. Not not that that extreme, but but the the the I mean this is a weird anecdote, but urinating in in a hidden room and and in the trunk of a car. Urinate a woman in a cup because we couldn't leave the car. &gt;&gt; Yeah. And the right people are not going to complain about it's just part of the job. It's the mission, right? &gt;&gt; I I was being investigated for a security clearance once and the FBI agent that was investigating me said, uh, "Have you ever been um arrested?"

[05:30] And instinctively I said, "In the United States?" And she says, "What's that supposed to mean?" And I said, "Oh, no. No, no, no, no. I've never been arrested." Thinking, "Oh, Yeah. &gt;&gt; I can't talk about those other times." Yeah, so you've been in foreign you've been in in uh jails and prisons overseas. You've You've been through a lot of stuff. &gt;&gt; I've been through a lot. &gt;&gt; you can't talk about everything you've been through, right? But it's rare that you you see, I don't know how many of you there are out there, but you you you talk a lot. You're you're an outspoken person. Is

[06:00] &gt;&gt; Yeah. And that what what what How did it come about to be that way? You know, if you had Googled me before December the 11th, 2007, you would have found one entry, and it was I sold one house and bought another house, and it was in the Washington Post, you know, little public information thing. When I went public over the CIA's torture program, it exploded. And after the Obama administration prosecuted me, I decided that my mission in life was to

[06:30] tell the truth and to be as vocal as I possibly could be about government wrongdoing. Even my my ex said, "Man, if if they thought that arresting you was going to silence you, they didn't know you at all." Mhm. And I've embraced it. That was over your whistleblowing on the on the torture. &gt;&gt; Yes. So so so take us back to that that moment, and this is important question because I ask everybody who blows whistles, what really what made you do that? You

[07:00] were indignant, righteous indignation. Take us back to that moment. &gt;&gt; wish I could tell you that, you know, I took a position and I stood up and I told them. That wasn't it at all. Mhm. Um I didn't intend to blow the whistle, but I got a call from Brian Ross at ABC News in early December 2007. &gt;&gt; 2007. Yep. Um saying that he had a source who said that I had tortured Abu Zubaydah. This

[07:30] was a man that we thought was the number three in Al-Qaeda that I had led a raid in Pakistan and captured. I said that was absolutely untrue. I said I was the only person who was kind to Abu Zubaydah. I've never laid a hand on him or on any other prisoner. I said, your source is either grossly mistaken or he's a liar. And Brian said, I didn't know this was an old reporter's trick because I'd never spoken to a a reporter before. He said, well, you're welcome to come on the show and defend yourself. Well, a couple of days later President

[08:00] Bush gave a press conference in which he looked directly into the camera and he said, we do not torture. And I said to my wife, who was also a senior CIA officer, I said, he's a bald-faced liar. Looking the American people in the in the eye and he's just lying to us. And then 2 days later, it was a Friday, Bush was walking out of the South Portico of the White House to the helicopter to fly to Camp David and a reporter shouted a question about torture. And he stopped and he turned

[08:30] and he said, well, if there is torture, it's because of a rogue CIA officer. And I told my wife, Brian Ross has sources at the White House. And they're going to try to pin this on me. I said, I'm going to go public. So, I I called Brian Ross and I said, I'll give you your interview. Wow. And I decided just to tell the truth and let the cards fall. We had a group of folks at the agency who were trained in what had been reported in the press be called enhanced techniques. These enhanced techniques included everything from what

[09:00] was called an attention shake where you grab the person by the lapels and shake them all the way up to the other end, which was waterboarding. And that was one of the techniques. Waterboarding was one of the techniques. And was it used on Zubaydah? &gt;&gt; It was. This is James O'Keefe. You know me for exposing the truth and holding the corrupt elite responsible and accountable. However, today I want to tell you about protecting your own freedom, your finances. Right now, the warning signs are everywhere. Gold just shattered another record, soaring above

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