Title: Who Really Controls U.S. Intelligence?
Show: Unfiltered With S.A.M.
Date: 2025-06-05
URL: https://youtu.be/YEnVwfMlgWQ
Duration: 43:00

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[00:01] [Music] What happens when someone inside the intelligence machine decides to tell the truth? When the cost of conscious is prison, but the reward is clarity for the rest of us. Today on Unfiltered with Sam, we're diving deep into the dark underbelly of uh US intelligence. from torture programs to the wars that were built on lies. We'll explore why

[00:31] whistleblowers are punished while war criminals walk free and who these institutions truly serve, the people or power itself. My guest today knows the answer from the inside and frankly he needs no introductions. John Kiriago is a CIA officer turned whistleblower. During uh his uh time at the agency, he held senior roles including executive assistant to the deputy director. After 911, John led counterterrorism

[01:03] operations in Pakistan and was responsible for the capture of Abu Zubeda, who at the time was believed to be one of the top three figures in al-Qaeda. In 2007, John became the first US official to publicly confirm the CIA's use of torture, blowing the whistle on the Bush administration's enhanced interrogation program. Though cleared of espionage, he was later prosecuted for uh allegedly disclosing classified information to journalists and served 30 months in prison. After

[01:34] leaving the agency, John also served as a senior investigator on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee under Senator John Kerry. You can follow his work on uh on his personal handles and on his own website. I'm going to include uh links to those in the description box below. So, John, welcome to Unfiltered the Sam. Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to have you to host you and uh I'm glad we're uh finally uh touching base. So, I'd like to start I'd

[02:05] like to start at the heart of it all. The moment when your name stopped being just another agency file and became a symbol of uh truthtelling in a system built on uh secrecy. So, uh, my question actually is that the cost you you you served slightly more than two years in prison for allegedly disclosing the identity of, um, of a covered CIA officer to a journalist in violation of the Intelligence

[02:36] Protections uh, act where you have consistently maintained that your prosecution was politically motivated to uh, for exposing the CIA's use of uh, uh, waterboarding. and other enhanced interrogation um techniques. In fact, you're the only CIA officer jailed in connection with the post 911 torture program. Correct. Not for participating in carrying out the torture, but for exposing it and still your record hasn't been clear, John. Meanwhile, the architects of torture live with impunity

[03:07] and a presidential pardon remains out of reach. What does it say about the US justice system, Joe, that the truth teller lives with a felony while the architects of torture live within impunity? Uh, thank you for that question. Um, that's one of the sad things that we have to live with in the justice system that we've given ourselves. I wish that I could say that I was alone uh in that description that you just gave, but I'm not alone. Between passage of the

[03:39] Espionage Act in 1917 and the election of Barack Obama as president in 2009, three Americans were charged with espionage for uh speaking with the media about waste, fraud, abuse, or illegality, whistleblowing. Just in the eight years that Barack Obama was president, eight of us were arrested and charged with espionage for blowing the whistle on wrongdoing in the intelligence community. And that has continued on under Donald Trump. So I

[04:11] think it says that that our government here is not really concerned about truth. It's not concerned about the rule of law, despite what it says in public despite what it says at the United Nations or at political conventions. It's more concerned about maintaining what Donald Trump has lately called the blob or the deep state as the status quo. You know, we we tell countries all all

[04:43] the time that we are governed by the rule of law here in the United States and that we want other countries to adop adopt the rule of law and adapt to its use every day. We don't do that. It's very hypocritical for us to tell countries to live the way we live and then and then just pretend that we live right. It's not it's it's not the way to run a society. But what does it say to those still inside, John? I mean, you've talked

[05:14] about how uh whistleblowers like Edward Snowden can't get a fair trial under the Espionage Act, especially in places like the Eastern District of Virginia. But beyond the legal trap, what does that do morally to people inside the system who who really do want to serve the system? Those who see wrongdoing but know the cost of conscience is annihilation, just like what they did with you. Yeah, the the message is loud and clear and the message is keep your mouth shut.

[05:45] If you are a witness to waste, fraud, abuse, illegality, or threats to the public health or public safety, in public, they'll say you have to report it. You have to go through the chain of command. You have to go to the inspector general. You have to go to the congressional oversight committees. In reality, the only thing you can do is keep your mouth shut because otherwise your life will be upended. Let me give you as one example Thomas Drake from NSA, the National Security

[06:17] Agency. Thomas Drake saw crystal clear evidence that NSA was spying on American citizens in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. It is against the law for NSA to spy on Americans. It is a violation of NSA's charter to spy on Americans. So Tom Drake did exactly as he was supposed to do. He went to his supervisor. He went to the uh to the inspector general. He went to the general counsel. He went to the Pentagon inspector general. And then

[06:49] he went to the congressional oversight committee. Everybody that he reported this to was cleared for the information. Yet he was charged with seven counts of espionage and two counts of theft of government property. The property being the information that he walked out of the building with in his head. Now that case fell apart and the charges were dropped, but not until he was fired. He lost his security clearance. He lost his

[07:20] pension. He lost his wife and children. lost his house and ended up working the next 8 years at an Apple store here in the Washington area. So sad. So sad. And terrible. I I mean I happen to I've mentioned Edward Snowden. I mean do do you do you have a way are you in touch with him? What's happening with him? Yes. Is he eventually in a good state? You know, he told me in January of 2020

[07:52] that the thing that he worried about the most was he had a fear of becoming irrelevant. And I'm I'm sorry to say I think he's gotten to that point where he's irrelevant. He blew the whistle 12 years ago. Yeah. He told us 12 years ago that the American government was spying on American citizens and that they were they had infiltrated every aspect of our lives and nothing has changed. Congress

[08:23] hasn't acted on his information. I'm glad we have the information, but we're we're no more secure now than we were 12 years ago when he first told us about it. So I I worry that as in the case of Snowden, who at least was able to escape with his freedom, Yeah. anybody else who is in a position to blow the whistle looks at cases like Snowden and Tom Drake and John Kuryaku and just says it's not worth it. And I'll add one

[08:54] other thing, too. After the Snowden revelations, the CIA implemented two new programs in CIA headquarters. First of all, they loaded new software through the entire CIA computer system where the computer can detect if a user may be thinking about blowing the whistle and it will report you to CIA security before you've even said a word. Number one. Number two, there is

[09:28] now a reward system at the CIA. If you report on your co-workers, oh wow, oh, I think I think John is going to be a whistleblower. And then they take my badge, they escort me out of the building, and they fire me and you get an award. Very very difficult culture that we have in the American intelligence uh community. And now it's a culture of like uh you know Stalinist Soviet Union. Yeah. Where you

[09:58] have to genuinely worry that the people that you work with are going to rat you out or maybe make something up if they see you as a professional threat. I mean u it used to be a time when uh uh people would uh want to contribute and and be hired by the CIA and felt really really proud of it and patriotic about it. Now it's a completely different narrative. I I assume it really is. I It's I wonder why people in general though are complacent to all

[10:31] these all the revelations that have come out about them being spied on. Why are the people in mass complacent though? Why? I think for a couple of reasons. I think that number one, they just automatically assume that the government is is spying on us anyway. And you know that old rhetorical question from Joseph Gerbles in the 1930s, if you're doing nothing wrong, then why do you care? That's what that's what they keep saying. Yeah. And and I think

[11:01] that I think that beginning with the George W. Bush administration, successive White Houses have so frightened the American people that we are one bad decision away from another massive terrorist attack. that most Americans have been willing to give up their civil rights and civil liberties in exchange for this elusive thing that the government calls security. And for me, and I know that I'm in the minority uh on this issue, I

[11:33] would rather risk another terrorist attack than give up my rights. I understand where you're coming from. Let's let's get now into another aspect of US intelligence. Um, the US invaded Iraq based on what turned out to be a lie that Saddam had weapons of Oh, yeah. mass destruction. That lie came straight from the CIA, John, and the intelligence community. But Iraq wasn't the first. Words have repeatedly been justified with

[12:04] manipulated intelligence. So why does the system keep producing intel that leads to war at the cost of continuously destabilizing entire regions like mine? Is it to serve the military industrial complex that politicians rely on or to serve priorities and interests of allies like Israel? Because US intelligence agencies are supposed to serve the American people, aren't they? That is a very important question and

[12:35] the answer is yes. I'm I'm joking, of course. But so looking at it from the beginning, from the Iraq war, it's it's a little bit more complicated than your question makes it seem in that I remember knockdown dragout fights between CIA analysts and Department of Energy analysts about whether the Iraqis had weapons of mass destruction. inside the CIA. The final analytic

[13:07] line was probably not. The Iraqis probably did not. The energy department said yes, they did. That what they have is dual use. And even if they say that they don't have weapons of mass destruction, they have the ability to create weapons of mass destruction. And I remember one of the explanations being, we all agree there's no nuclear program. Everybody agrees biological weapons. Nobody has any idea because all you need to create a biological weapon is a kitchen. It

[13:39] really is that easy. Just a k just a kitchen. Chemical weapons. That's where the fight was. And that's and that's where analysts disagreed based on the age of the information. Now, keep in mind that almost all of the intelligence that was coming into the CIA was a lie. And it was meant to be a lie because because of one man named Ahmed Chelabi. Ahmed Chelaby was an Iraqi Kurd, a Shia Muslim, which is unusual

[14:11] for Kurds, but he had his family had moved to Jordan when he was a young boy. He went to school in London, got a PhD, and then founded a bank in uh Jordan called Petra Bank. He ended up stealing the life savings of every Iraqi in Jordan who had money in that bank and he escaped to London, allegedly in the trunk of his secretary's car across the border into Syria. Um the CIA had a long and ugly

[14:42] history with Ahmed Chelaby. He was a liar. He was a thief. He was a con man. And so the CIA issued something called a burn notice against him. It was a a cable to every CIA officer in the world saying, "You are forbidden from speaking with Ahmed Chelby. He has stolen millions of dollars of our money. He tells us lies every time we speak to him. Nobody is allowed to have any contact with him." That infuriated Vice President Cheney. And so so Cheney ordered the Pentagon to

[15:15] create a new under secretary of intelligence and the under secretary of intelligence his sole role his sole responsibility was to liaz with Ahmed Chel. So, at the CIA, I remember getting cables and saying, "Oh my god, did you see this cable? It says that the Iraqis have weapons of mass destruction. It has the coordinates of where the weapons are are located. It says who's in charge of of the weapons and who has command and

[15:45] control over the weapons. I've never seen intelligence that was so crystal clear like this. What's the source? And it says in the source line, a reliable source. Well, who's the reliable source? It turned out it was Ahmed Shelby. And so we were getting this fake phony intelligence that just supported war, a decision to go to war and nothing else. Um, I will say

[16:18] that it was the CIA's torture program that also led to war with Iraq. Our analysts knew that there was no connection whatsoever between al-Qaeda and the Iraqi government. I mean, anybody who knew anything about the Middle East or about history knew that Osama bin Laden hated Saddam Hussein as much as he hated the United States. There was nothing Muslim about

[16:48] Saddam Hussein. Nothing. He didn't know the prayers, nothing. Yet, we allowed this lie to take root inside the CIA that there was some sort of cooperation between al-Qaeda and uh the Iraqis in the form of a highle meeting between al-Qaeda and the Iraqi intelligence service station chief in Prague. We knew that that meeting never took place, but under torture, one of the al-Qaeda prisoners told us, "Oh,

[17:19] yes, yes, it's a connection between al-Qaeda and Iraq." and we use that as one of the excuses to go to war knowing that it was false. To answer the final part of your question, and I hate to sound cynical, I apologize, but the truth is after 9/11, we entered into a full-time wartime economy. Millions of people got rich because of 911. Millions of people got

[17:49] rich because of the $2 trillion that we have spent on national defense. And now it is it is too late to turn that around. If we were to stop spending that kind of money in the military-industrial complex, the economy would crash. And as you as you alluded u to in the uh in the question, we're also talking about the Israeli economy here, right?

[18:22] This isn't just the American economy, but we prop up the Israeli economy at the same time. I can't think of anything more wrong than the way the US government has has conducted itself on military policy, counterterrorism policy, security, and policy toward Israel and by extension Palestine since 9/11. We've been wrong at every turn. Building on that, John, you've spoken

[18:53] powerfully about the revolving door also so between intelligence agencies and private contractors. So from where I sit in a region shaped by these policies, it often feels like war isn't just a byproduct of profit but the plan der deliverable. Oh yes. You've also warned about the growing influence of Israeli linked appointments inside US national security roles. So let me ask you this. Has US intelligence been structurally captured by corporations and powerful foreign allies to the point that even

[19:24] its core doctrine is no longer fully its own? I I think the answer to that is yes. Um I remember as early as the mid 1990s there were senior CIA officers. You know what? I'll give you one one example. So 1994 uh there was a a senior CIA officer what's called a division chief. So he's in charge of all European operations,

[19:56] European liaison operations, cooperation with our European partners, etc. And he retired after 30 32 years at the CIA. He didn't know what to do with himself in retirement because he was only in his early 50s. So he still had 30 years ahead of him that he could do something. And so he created a small company that was located about three kilometers, four kilometers from the CIA's headquarters. And really he he set it up as a place where his friends when they retired

[20:27] could also come and they would play tavi and they would drink coffee and tell stories and have a fun time and then maybe they would get a government contract. He's now a billionaire because just as this company got to the point where it knew what it was doing in federal contracting, 9/11 came and everybody in the company already had a security clearance because they had all come from the CIA and they had all been in the

[20:58] senior intelligence service. So he paid his friends with shares of the company. The company was sold for something like 10 billion dollars to IBM and now it's one of the largest government contractors in the world. What company? Everybody got rich. What's the name of it? I'm sorry. What's the name of it? It's called Abraasis. A Braxus Corporation. Most of us haven't heard of it. No. No. And you you probably wouldn't even if you lived here in the Washington area because it

[21:29] operated very quietly. It was a clandestine uh company. Everybody had security clearances. Everybody had experience in the CIA or in the Pentagon or NSA and they just got lucky. Well, that's actually kind of typical of the way things have happened since 9/11. And then you mentioned, yeah, I'm going to call it the Israeli infiltration of the of the American government. And I I'll address that from a different angle. On my very

[22:00] first day at the CIA, and I'm talking 35 and a half years ago, my very first day, all of the new hires had a briefing by the CIA's direct director of security. And he came in, he said, "Welcome to the CIA. There is an issue called counter inelligence. That's very important. You have to pay attention to this." And it was little things. don't eat at restaurants near the CIA because the Russians assume that's where we eat and so the places are full of

[22:32] KGB, things like that. But he gave he gave a talk on activist counterintelligence threats. He said that in the Israeli embassy in Washington, there were two what are called declared officers. There's one Mossad officer and one Shinbet officer. And when I say declared, I mean that the Israeli government has said these are officers from Mossad and Shinbet. So you know who they are and they're here to work with

[23:03] you. He said there are 187 undeclared Israeli intelligence officers. 187 spread all across the United States, stealing secrets from American military contractors. Now, that's just Israel. Think about the Russians, the Chinese, the French, the

[23:33] Cubans, you name it. We have more spies here in Washington than any other city on the planet. And it's something that is just overwhelming. Now, with the Israelis, one of the things that has always bothered CIA officers, especially CIA leaders, is that we give the Israelis everything. We give them everything they want, but they always think that we're holding out on them. And so, they try to steal it. Steal it and then just compare what they were able to steal with what we gave them. No

[24:04] trust. No, it's an ugly relationship. I think it's more no trust from their part to you. I I I don't think that the Americans are actually spy actively spying on the Israelis as they are. No, I can tell you definitively that we are not. No. No. No. The Israelis sure spy on us. Yeah. And it's supposed to be the strongest partnership in the world. We just like in a marriage, you know, there should be trust. Well, when there's no

[24:35] trust from the one side, but the other side is disillusioned that there is. And it's actually also feeding the other side. And you're supporting their economy, not just providing them with arms, but financially also supporting to to the tune of billions of dollars every year. You know, the Israelis the Israelis give their citizens or Israeli refugees things that American citizens and American refugees could only dream about. Free apartments, free furniture, subsidized jobs. We would love to have

[25:06] things like that, but we use American taxpayer money so that Israelis can have things like that. Yeah, it's outrageous. Let's go to another pressing question. Um that's in the region here where I live close by where anyway it's it it has to do with Iran. In your view, is the US public ever truly at risk of of waking up to a war with Iran? Or is the military posturing under Trump more about performative leverage aimed at managing allies like Israel who demand perpetual

[25:38] confrontation? Oh, I'm I'm glad you used the word demand. In my experience at the CIA and at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee after the CIA, literally every Israeli prime minister, literally everyone has asked the United States to bomb Iran. Everyone. Benjamin Netanyahu does not come to the United States without first asking whoever happens to be president to bomb Iran every time. Um, and thank God that we have said no every time. Now, Donald Trump,

[26:10] of course, is a wild card. We don't know what he's going to do. I don't think he knows what he's going to do when he wakes up in the morning. It changes every day. But I think the the simple answer to your question is no. I don't think that there's a danger of a US war with Iran. I think there is a very great danger of an Israeli war with Iran. And this would be a war of choice because the Israelis see Iran as an existential threat. Um it's not. Iran has no nuclear uh weapons and

[26:42] even if they had a nuclear weapon, they have no delivery system to launch a nuclear uh weapon against the Israelis. The Israelis certainly have many many nuclear weapons. But uh but this would be a war of choice and the choice would come from Israel. Now, call me crazy, but I've been thinking about this a lot. In the in the 1970s, we used to have this phrase, only Nixon could go to China, right? Richard Nixon, when he was president, before he was president, was

[27:14] the most anti-China, anti-communist elected official in America. And he ended up going to China and making peace with the Chinese and opening diplomatic relations with the Chinese. And he changed American foreign policy. And I'm wondering if we're in a position now where only Trump could go to Iran. The reason I say that is I have friends who work in the White House. I have friends who are in daily contact with Donald Trump and they say that

[27:44] Trump is obsessed with winning the Nobel Peace Prize. He hates that Barack Obama got a Nobel Peace Prize. He didn't deserve one, but they gave him one. And Trump wants one, too. and he knows that the only way he can do that is to make peace. Now, he tried it with North Korea and it fell through. But I think he's trying it now with Iran. And every day, literally every day, when we get news from the US Iran talks, we hear about some crazy position

[28:17] that Trump has imposed on the delegation. The Iranians can can um can purify their uranium to 35%. Then 67%. But it can't go over 67. Okay, they can do it. But then it has to be stored in the Emirates. No, it won't be stored in the Emirates. Everybody can do it. And then it'll be stored in Oman. And then Oman says, "We don't want this enriched uranium." And then the Emiratis say, "We'll take it." And the Iranians say, "Well, we never agreed to any of this. It's we're not going to send it to." So it changes every single day.

[28:48] It's like craziness, but they're still talking. What I've been doing is going to the Iranian press releases at the end of each round of talks, not the American ones. I just ignore the American ones because they don't make any sense. They they change every day. The Iranian ones are very well thought out. And I think we get a real a real view indication of what is happening in those talks. Yes. And the

[29:20] fact that the two two sides are still meeting despite the fact that the US changes policy almost every single day tells me that that an agreement is possible. Let's hope for the good of all of us here. And that's right. Let's hope. And it is going to make the Israelis crazy. Mad. Mad. Crazy mad. Oh my god. Mhm. We've had enough wars in this region. Uh, John, I can tell you that. Seriously. Right. Too much. How many more people can you possibly kill?

[29:51] 1 million just in Iraq. And it's generations upon generations of us who are raised under this. That's right. Even if we're not in the direct conflict zone, we're always with this fear in the back of our mind because if something happens at this time, it's going to be nuclear. Everyone's going to go. That's right. And Cyprus is quite literally the first place that everybody seeks to run. Always which you know in in the event of a of a serious conflict could crash the criate economy. And and don't forget we've only got like half of it. I mean there's so much that we can say. Exactly. So since you mentioned Cypress,

[30:24] let's let's touch on Cypress because it's always a soft spot for me. Um I'm just going to give a brief historical context also for some of the viewers who might not uh know or have been following the show. uh the past few months is that Cyprus in 1974 was torn apart. Uh there was a Turkish invasion in the summer of 1974 and the classified documents now show that the US had fornowledge and tacidly approved of the invasion. Um, as a former CIA insider, I wanted to ask

[30:55] you this directly because there's a dis the classified transcription of a recording between the US president at the time and Henry Kissinger where the uh secretary of state had acknowledged to the president of Turkeykey's of of knowledge of Turkeykey's plan to invade and occupy 33% of the island and the declassified recordings. Uh, you hear him say, Kissinger say we can live with that, Mr. President. But when US ambassador to Greece Henry Taskca at the time he opposed the coup from the Greek

[31:26] uh Honta but he also very strongly tried to stop the Turkish invasion. Washington ignored Ambassador Taska and he later resigned as a matter of conscience. Decades later in a 1999 speech in Athens, President Clinton admitted that the US backed the Huna uh that set it all in mo that set everything else then in motion with Cypress being the victim. He actually said that the United States allowed its interests in prosecuting the cold war to prevail over its interests

[31:59] and I should say its obligation to support democracy. This is what President Clinton said, verbatative. So, as someone who knows how US covered policy works behind the scenes, John, does Cyprus stand as one of the clearest examples of a country sacrificed for strategic interests? And if so, who decides what a people's sovereignty is worth? It's not an accident that Henry Kissinger is known as the butcher of Cyprus. It's not an accident that he's known as the butcher of Cambodia and the

[32:30] butcher of Chile. uh that that was American foreign policy in the in the 70s and frankly it hasn't changed too too terribly much since the 1970s. I do blame the United States for the division of Cypress. I don't think the Turks would have had the guts to go into Cyprus had they not received the green light from the likes of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. And never from those two has there had there ever been an apology. They're both dead now. I was actually in President Clinton's

[33:02] speech in Athens when he made that apology. I was serving in the American embassy in Athens at the time. And it's nice to make an apology, but what are you going to do about it? What are you going to do to back it up? The United States still has an arms embargo on on Cyprus. Cypress joined the European Union and has a successful economy, but a third of the country is occupied by hostile foreign troops and the United States isn't doing anything to to try to push Turkey out. It's been half a

[33:34] century and still how many how many criates are missing and presumed dead from that invasion? How many Americans are still missing and presumed dead? It's something like 11 or 15 or 17 or something like that. This is a an embarrassment of of American foreign policy and it's an embarrassment of historical proportions. It it's it's a mistake, a series of bad decisions that has

[34:04] affected hundreds of thousands of lives and has altered history. And now the United States prefers just to pretend that it hasn't happened or okay, it happened. It's no big deal. The Greeks and the Turks aren't fighting in Cyprus now, so the status quo is acceptable. It's not acceptable. This is a hostile military occupation of a sovereign country. And I'll tell you, if I were president, um, I would come down much much harder

[34:35] on the Turks than any American president ever has. You know, there's there's one there's one thing a professor of mine mentioned one time. Wouldn't it be wouldn't it be nice to throw the Turks out of NATO? But we can't throw the Turks out of NATO. Do you know why? Because there is no mechanism by which to throw a country out of NATO. It never occurred to the creators of NATO in 1947 that they would ever need to throw a country out. And so Turkey is perfectly

[35:06] free to invade Cyprus, to invade northern Iraq, to invade Syria and Kurdistan, to to uh fight against the Armenians and the Georgians and anybody else that wants to do to threaten the Greeks in the Aian. Exactly. To to to destroy the the Greek Orthodox community in in Constantinople. And there's no price to pay, nothing. We just take it. Impunity. So there's literally nothing positive on behalf of the United States

[35:37] to say about this situation. Nothing. It's an embarrassment of historic proportions. Thank you for that. And just to put it in context for our audience to understand, 5,000 Greek citrates were killed during the invasion. 1% of the Greek cate population at the time. That that would contextually in for the US amount to 3 million Americans killed in an invasion. That's exactly right. Lasted a month. Also a third of the Greek cpriates me my family including became refugees in our own country. A third imagine 110 million Americans

[36:09] being forcibly displaced from the northern part of America to move to become refugees in the north in their own country in the southern part of America. And that's right. When you say a third of the island is under occupation for the last 50 years, that's the equivalent of California, Texas, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, uh Georgia, North Carolina, and Michigan combined under foreign military occupation for half a century.

[36:39] Now, if if if maybe that putting it into that context and not just seeing this tiny dot on the map being Cyprus, maybe this makes it more tangible to people. And I would add something. As horrible as that is, what you just described, add to it that Turkish settlers have taken over uh land, property, houses in the north that belong to Greek

[40:46] your time. I'd like for you to share a few words about what you're working on now. I know you have a new book on the way and beyond your work as a journalist and a speaker, you're also a screenwriter with credits on films like Kill the Messenger. So, you've got the CIA declassified series on Unified TV and some exciting YouTube projects as well. What should we be watching next from you? Oh, thank you so much for asking. I have two podcasts on on YouTube right now. One is called uh Deep

[41:17] Focus with John Kuryaku. The other one is called uh DProgram. DProgram is kind of a news recap uh uh podcast and Deep Focus I have individual subjects that that I interview just like you and I did and we go deeper into these issues. Unified TV um carries my TV show CIA Declassified. It's a it's a an internet-based TV network, and we take declassified CIA documents, like the documents related to Cyprus, for example, and we tell these historical

[41:49] stories based on what the CIA was saying at the time. And um yeah, I have my eighth book coming out in a couple of weeks and um and doing a lot in Hollywood. I try to I try to stay as active as as possible in Hollywood. I I sold the rights to my first book um to a production company that wants to make it into a film soon. And um and I sold a script just two weeks ago. So, a little bit here, a little bit there, and I can put together a bit later. Which one of the What was the book's title? The first book was it the what about The first

[42:20] book was The Reluctant Spy, My Secret Life in the CIA's War on Terror. Great. Great. It's going to be it's going to be turned into a movie. That's fantastic. Thank you so much, John. Thank you for your time, your cander, and your courage. In an age of disinformation, few voices can speak to the inner workings of the intelligence world with the clarity and firsthand insight that you bring. So, I hope this conversation has helped our audience see through the fog to better understand how truth is buried, how power operates, and what it

[42:52] costs to challenge the national security machine from the inside. Thank you so much. This channel depends on you. So, if you file found this interview interesting, hit like, drop a comment, and subscribe. Don't forget also to tap that notification bell, or else you're going to miss on new drops. As always, stay informed, stay questioning, and stay unfiltered. [Music]
