Title: John Kiriakou - Reluctant Spy
Show: The Opperman Report
Date: 2024-09-18
URL: https://youtu.be/x0fzn4Ur3ZU
Duration: 125:00

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[00:02] it's the oerman report and now here is investigator it oerman okay welcome to the oerman report I am your host private investigator at oerman tonight we have again forget it tonight's a blockbuster show we have John kiru and uh he is a former CIA agent and he's the author of The Reluctant spy and uh he pretty much just got out of prison uh for uh being like a whistleblower uh

[00:33] so John are you there I sure am thanks for having me thank you so much I'm really excited to have you on here uh especially the little chat we had off the air uh so give us an idea who is John caraku and and what is your story well um I joined the CIA in January of 1990 as an analyst working on the Middle East and uh loved that job uh did it for seven and a half years and then decided I was ready for something new and I switched to operations also within the

[01:03] CIA and uh did that for another seven and a half years so after the September 11th attacks I became the chief of CIA uh counterterrorism operations in Pakistan and in that capacity led a raid on the night of March 28th 2002 that turned out to be the biggest counterterrorism raid in CIA history which still stands we captured out a beta who we believed at the time was the number three in al-Qaeda and we caught

[01:35] 51 other Al-Qaeda Fighters I went home from Pakistan in uh in late 2002 and was asked when I got home if I wanted to be certified in the use of what they called uh enhanced interrogation techniques I called them torture techniques and I declined to be trained uh I left the CIA in 2004 went into the private sector for a while then I went to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and I was the senior investigator for that committee and I

[02:07] was the senior intelligence adviser to the chairman John KY uh but in 2007 I went on ABC News and um and I said three things that really changed the course of my life I said that the CIA was torturing its prisoners I said that torture was official US government policy and I said that that policy had been approved and signed by the president now the President George W bush had said earlier in the week with his eyes right on the camera he said we

[02:38] do not torture and I said that the president is a liar and so that resulted in a four-year long uh FBI investigation I was finally charged with five felonies uh including three counts of Espionage for uh saying that we were torturing prisoners uh those espach counts were dropped I took a plea to a lesser charge I did 23 months in a federal prison not in a country club prison but in a real honest to God prison and um and got out

[03:09] this February how old are you now I'm 51 just turned 51 wow 51 okay that's not easy time going into 30 months in prison 47 years no no not not easy time at all and I'll tell you what you know my only exposure to prison had been watching MSNBC at 11:00 at night um so I I really didn't know what to ECT and and I thought I was going to a minimum security Work Camp uh that's what the judge had recommended that's what the prosecutors had agreed to uh in fact the

[03:39] the Bureau of Prisons does whatever it uh it pleases and so uh as soon as I arrived they they took me around to the back and put me in the actual prison rather than in the minimum security Camp yeah sometimes when I'm watching Rachel mattow I feel like I'm in maximum security I'm sorry I can't watch those shows anymore okay so you just got out now uh how old were you when you went into the CIA um I was young let's see I was 25 when I joined the CIA and what' you

[04:10] do before that um I was in grad school I I got a Bachelor's degree in in uh Middle Eastern studies and I was working on a on a master's degree in legislative affairs when one of my professors uh who liked my writing style uh asked me to stay after class one day and uh to make a long story short it turned out he was actually undercover as a professor he was working as what used to be called a CIA spotter looking for grad students who would fit into the agency's culture

[04:43] and so um he recruited me into the CIA right out of graduate school you know there must be a lot of that because I know I've had another I've had a lot of CIA guys on the show and uh uh I I believe I've heard that story before that they were recruited Yeah by a professor yeah it actually to be quite common it it really you know until 1992 or 93 with the passage of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act it was pretty much the only real way to get into the CIA you had to be noticed you had to be

[05:13] spotted I mean it's like it's like being at the soda fountain at whatever that famous uh drugstore was in Hollywood you know if you wanted to be an actor so um you know there there used to be senior Cia officers under cover at important universities all around the country and I just you know was lucky enough to to have one as my grad school adviser now so but now but you had no plans uh even though you were taking these foreign languages uh you had no plans to go to the CIA or something like that no I was

[05:45] thinking that I I would probably end up on Capitol Hill or maybe take the foreign service exam I knew I wanted to work in foreign affairs uh doing something but I hadn't really given the CIA any thought until they approached me okay gotcha now now you said you were at first you were an analyst or something like that yeah I was for the first half of my career and the the analytic jobs at the CIA are a lot of fun if especially if you're an introvert because you're going to sit in your cubicle nine or 10 hours a day and think

[06:16] the big thoughts and write important papers and send those papers to the White House and hope that the president reads them and comments on them um but you know after doing that year in year out working on Iraq you know year after year after year it it wears you down and I I thought boy I'm I'm 30 years old there's got to be more than more to the life than this so uh I decided you know I I spoke Arabic I spoke Greek and um it was time for something exciting and so

[06:48] on the strength of those two languages I was able to switch over to counterterrorism operations and this around 30 years old now so you must been in pretty good shape right yeah I I was in pretty good shape I wasn't a former military but I I was thin and young and strong and happy to jump out of the plane and be trained and everything else and you know the friends of mine were like are you sure you want to do this this is going to be rough this is going to be like being in the military at least through training and I said yeah I know yeah I can I can

[07:19] tough it out for whatever it was six or eight months at the time and I ended up doing very well and I enjoyed it very much a and cuz right cuz the operations you were doing as part of the CIA we're actually military combat operations right well no um they became military or paramilitary combat operations after September 11th before September 11th it was you know much more old schooled it was much more sophisticated uh where you we have something called the asset recruitment

[07:50] cycle it's it's every officer has to spot assess develop and recruit um an agent in order to get promoted right you have to recruit spies to steal secrets and you spot these people depending on what your target is or what kind of job you're doing at diplomatic cocktail parties or wherever I mean any number of of different scenarios after September 11th it really did change to to paramilitary operations where you know

[08:21] you're you're wearing whatever special forces where and you parachute into something and you shoot the place up and you grab the guy but before September 11th that's really not what the CIA was right before it sounds more like Amway or like you're recruiting people to come in underneath you but you know pretty much it was the same idea now you have to establish a a relationship with somebody with your target right you have to establish a rapport um to the point where you become so close to that person or at least that person thinks that

[08:52] you're close uh to the point where he's going to commit Espionage for you he's going to commit treason for you because he likes you I mean there's certainly other motivators money Revenge ideology but the real basis of the relationship is friendship wow it's it's almost like you're a con man or a cult you know I I've said years in interviews that that those

[09:22] of us who were in operations or are in operations uh right now you you're trained to l and you lie every day and you lie all day and you live a lie you just have to know when to turn it off at the end of the day a lot of guys can't and so you know the CIA has a Sky High divorce rate um but uh yeah you you are very well trained as a professional liar okay fascinating okay so now uh and you said that you you went you went to

[09:54] Afghanistan and you captured this guy who was this guy you captured in in Pakistan this was I was beta we thought at the time that he was the number three in al-Qaeda in fact he had never actually joined Al-Qaeda but his job was to provide al-qaeda's um logistical support logistical leadership he created al-qaeda's two training camps in southern Afghanistan um if you needed a false passport or you needed a plane ticket Abu zua was the guy if you needed a safe house or way to uh to get from

[10:26] point A to point B across the border you went to Abu Zeda so although he had never formally joined Al-Qaeda he had never pledged Fieldy to AMA Bin Laden he was al-qaeda's go-to guy for Logistics that's interesting so now but you hear these stories over here in the United States that they're hanging out in caves and stuff like that yeah not true okay then give us I I don't know how that rumor ever got started that they were living in caves that the whole Cave Story never made sense to me because I mean these guys are just like

[10:57] everybody else you can you can r for for only so long you people used to ask me where do you think Bin Laden is and I said I used to say I think Bin Laden is comfortable in a house in a major city somewhere and I'll tell you why because these guys always thought that we thought that they were hiding in the tribal areas because we can't get to the tribal areas except with the use of drones in fact we knew that they were all in major cities and it was this reverse reverse psychology so when they're in this

[11:29] cities thinking that we're looking for them in the countryside they tend to be a little bit more sloppy especially with their electronic communications cell phones emails stuff like that and then they're easier to catch when they're in the city I mean we caught Abu Zeda in a major city we caught khed shik Muhammad in a major city he was The Mastermind of the 911 attacks we caught uh ABD in a major city he was The Mastermind of the coal bombing we caught Ramsey Ben in major city and then of course you know

[12:01] Bin Laden was in the Pakistani version of West Point in a major city yeah right now now what do you make of that you know because uh you'd think that these guys would be on our side right or on your side you know on the CIA side uh well you I always said that the Pakistani intelligence service isi was really two separate organizations the the guys that I was working with were were just fantastic I mean they were all trained in the UK uh they all went through Sandhurst and British police

[12:33] training and they were really great they were great counterterrorism Partners but isi is also the same organization that created the Taliban you know when when Benazir buo was the Prime Minister of Pakistan she created the Taliban see Taliban is a word in both Arabic and in Udu that means uh students the the singular is Talib and the plural is Taliban which means students and these students were studying in madrasas in Islamic private Islamic schools in

[13:05] Pakistan and they were they were Afghan Nationals so the pakistanis were running trucks across Afghanistan to Iran so that they could sell their goods in Iran and the um trucks were being hijacked as they were crossing Pakistan so benzir B got this group of students together and said I want you to ride along in the trucks you know with weapons and if anybody tries to hijack the trucks fight them off so as these trucks would cross

[13:36] Afghanistan the Taliban were able to secure individual uh villages along the Route and that's how they ended up taking over Pakistan so Benz zerbo and isi created the Taliban they trained the Taliban they financed the Taliban they arms the Taliban and at the same time other isi officers are working with us to fight the Taliban so there was this disconnect within the Pakistani intelligence service you could trust

[14:06] some of them you couldn't trust others you just had to play your cards well okay now I I recall I forget who was president at the time but I I recall that the Taliban com to the United States and it was like a big press conference and and it was revealed that their lobbyist was the daughter of one of the CIA directors they familiar with that story yeah I do remember that story and I I recall she was based in New Jersey I think it was do you remember which CIA

[14:39] CIA director that was yeah I don't but I I recall it being sort of a non controversial issue at the time because you know we we never had any beef with a Taliban historically and some of those members of the Taliban especially the older ones were jihadis from the from the the war against the Soviets and of course we we financed them we trained them we armed them we gave them Stinger missiles and every year or two they would come to the United States they

[15:10] would meet with President Reagan they would be FedEd in Washington and they'd go back to uh to Afghanistan so we had this relationship with at least some of these these people and until Bin Laden went to Afghanistan we sort of saw the Taliban is not our fight if if they were trample women's rights well you know we had no National interest there it was none of our business it wasn't until they provided safe haven for bin Laden that we decided this was going to be a

[15:42] problem what do you make of Bin Laden okay some people say that outright that he was CIA and they had I think his name was Osman or something like that Ben Osman you know they had another name you know yeah and that uh and then you got all this stuff about how um his brothers connected up with the the Carlile group and was actually meeting with bush the the day of 911 oh oh sure but but that's not scandalous That's Not Unusual first of all Bin Laden was never trained by the CIA he

[16:12] was never a CIA Source he was never armed by the CIA he didn't actually go to Afghanistan from Saudi Arabia until after the CIA um stopped funding and training uh the Afghan mujahedin so that's kind of a common misn a lot of people think that the CIA trained Bin Laden or created Bin Laden that's just not true um you're talking about the extended Bin Laden family the bin Laden family is a very honorable family in Saudi Arabia they're

[16:43] incredibly wealthy you know 10 figure kind of wealthy because the old man abdurahman Bin Laden who originally moved to Saudi Arabia from Yemen um created what became the Kingdom's largest construction firm and and his firm would make would would do the biggest projects they would build airports and and hospitals and ports and shopping malls and stuff like that so the old man insisted that that most

[17:15] if not all of his uh children be educated in the west um they travel to the United States all the time they own property in Beverly Hills and in Miami Beach and you know they're very Americanized it's just that that one son Osama was for whatever reason radicalized and instead of going into the family business along with his 113 other brothers um he he went to Afghanistan to make Jihad and and and what do you make of uh

[17:47] people who say well he he died prior to the to the story that U that we hear in the news about yeah that's just nonsense I mean you know we we we would get these reports at the CIA all the time that Bin Laden had kidney failure he was on dialysis inside a cave uh he had some kind of spinal disorder we were always getting these these uh medical uh rumors reported back to us and and none of them ended up uh to be true but no he he was in perfectly fine Health except for some

[18:19] arthritis um he had an ongoing hip problem um but he he was he was healthy enough to wage war against the United States until the day died okay um oh boy oh okay I almost forgot St my mind for a second what what do you make of these stories about the the the Navy Seals uh who are part of that operation now all of a sudden they're all dead in U in helicopter

[18:49] crashes and stuff right you know that's actually not uncommon um being a Navy SEAL is one of the most dangerous professions in the world and um we're not talking specifically about the Navy Seals who were directly uh involved in the bin Laden takedown being killed we're talking about Navy Seals from their broader unit so we're talking about you know 100 120 150 seals so for for a number of seals a high number of seals to be killed um whether it's in

[19:21] accidents or in combat is actually very sadly uh common okay so ni so you're saying that the when we hear these stories about how the Navy Seals who killed Bin Laden now most of them are dead it's you're saying it's not the actual same guys it's just the guys in the same no not at all okay it's not the same guys uhuh interesting okay um yeah let me interrupt you you know when when people talk about SEAL Team Six um or you see SEAL Team Six in movies you you imagine

[19:52] a dozen or dozen half guys that make up SEAL Team Six in fact it's several hundred guys that make up SEAL Team Six and it's you know from those several hundred U that that we find these these individuals who have been killed in accidents or killed in combat now what about uh the stories about the the funeral like this this ocean funeral and then even some uh congressmen who saw pictures and stuff like that said it looked like it was fake and and then even the White House

[20:22] had to kind of step back on some of the official story around that what do you make of that yeah you know I don't know what believe I I think he probably was buried at Sea the way they they say he was buried at Sea maybe some of the details are wrong cuz God knows the White House's story changes constantly uh every time this comes up but I I don't I just don't see any conspiracy related to it I I see a bunch of people talking out of school and and pretending to know the details of what happened

[20:52] when in fact they don't really know the details and I think that's why the story tends to change but I do think that Bin Laden was killed uh in whatever it was May of 2011 I think he really was buried at Sea um and I I'm just not sure that the details are really that important now now how about when you were in CIA were you ever involved in like a a promoting false stories and and uh no you know I there there is such a thing as a false flag operation false flag operations are very very um difficult

[21:25] and there are a lot of moving parts and you have to have a lot of people would buy into the conspiracy um but but we really didn't use those very often because they were so complicated it wasn't until you know just recently you know where people have started to email me or Facebook me or contact me on Twitter about false flag operations and you I even have one friend who just thinks that every event in life is a false flag operation and it's just it just seems so Preposterous

[21:55] to me because they are so labor in ensive and so difficult to carry out that just doesn't make sense to me yeah I I I sympathize with you I get those emails too they mean well they really do but I know and you kind of can't blame some people for being paranoid you know you can't blame people with being parent no you can't you know when when you have a government that's not transparent right when you have a government that that pretends to tell the American people the whole story uh related to these to these

[22:26] terrorist uh you know operations and then the story changes you can't blame people for being for being suspicious of the government line right right and and you said now we have a government that tortures people and says it's okay exactly and that denied it and denied it and denied it you know I said this I said this the other day in an oped that I wrote everything that the government has told us about torture since 2002 has been a lie so why would you believe them now you know George W bush said in 2002

[22:57] we don't torture and he said it again in three and four and five and six and seven that the week that I went on ABC News he looked right in the camera and he said we do not torture and I remember saying to my wife that is a bald-faced lie he's just lying to the American people and George Tennant said the same thing in 2005 on 60 Minutes he came off in that segment like he was unhinged he was practically shouting it we don't

[23:28] talk torture we don't torture we don't torture well of course we torture and what makes it worse is not only are there us laws that that prohibit torture but there are international treaties and conventions that the US is a signatory to and in some cases that the US wrote and bullied other countries into signing and then we violate those International treaties and conventions by torturing let me tell you another

[23:58] thing in January of 1968 The Washington Post ran a front- page photograph of a of an American Soldier waterboarding a North Vietnamese prisoner when that photo was published the Secretary of Defense Robert mcamera um ordered an investigation the soldier was arrested and he was charged with torture and he was convicted and sent to prison so why was torture illegal in 1968 but it wasn't illegal in 20 200 2

[24:29] cu the law didn't change there was no there was no Amendment to the law Banning torture saying well okay now it's okay you know there was no law that said well water boarding is not torture cold cells not torture sleep deprivations not torture the law didn't change but we just had a group of attorneys in the Justice Department who decided that they were going to twist the law uh to do what they wanted and that's exactly what happened yeah this is really you know you and I are the

[25:00] same age you know uh and and this this is such a a disturbing uh that even that we're even talking about this and and that people are excusing it and uh it's really uh shattering it is it is you know I I I consider myself to be a patriot and not just a patriot but a patriot who who spent 20 years serving my country in some of the most awful and dangerous places on Earth and I know

[25:32] that my country is better than this my country shouldn't be waterboarding people or or forcing hummus up their rectums or murdering them in the middle of of uh interrogations or to make matters worse droning American citizens overseas who have not been charged with a crime who have not had the right to meet their accusers in court that's not the America that I know and love I don't know where this came from okay well then

[26:03] then coming from where you are right now today and and just having served 30 months I believe right 30 months yes do you still consider yourself a patriot do you still support the Iraq War the Afghanistan war do you still uh where are you now well I I am a patriot I never I never supported the Iraq War though I never thought that was a just war and I even spent a good amount of uh space in my in my first book about it U that was a war of choice that was a war of venge for the Bush family uh but yeah I I always supported the Afghan War I don't anymore because because the the

[26:34] whole point of the Afghan war was to defeat Al-Qaeda and we defeated Al-Qaeda by the middle of 2003 so the rest of this since 2003 this has been nation building which is never a good idea but yeah I I am still a patriot and I want my September 10th country back and ruined by by George W bush and by Barack Obama equally what about the overthrow in Libya see this is another thing Gaddafi was a was a very bad guy but we actually

[27:06] had a very healthy working relationship with with Qaddafi and Qaddafi hated Al-Qaeda as much as we did so flipping sides at the last minute like we did to overthrow kadashi was a was a terrible policy error I mean look at the place now it's it's literally Anarchy it's chaos right well you say it's a policy area but according to Wesley Clark he says that's the plan all along is to cause D stabilization to cause chaos see this is the thing and and West Clark I mean West Clark was a fourstar general

[27:37] um he ought to know U what he's talking about so I if that's if that's the policy I think that's an incredibly short-sighted policy because invariably where there's a power vacuum we get dragged in and when we get dragged into something like this like we did in Lebanon for example in the 1980s we can't get ourselves back out again do do you think there's a motive to get us back out when the when these companies like Hal Burton are making all this money on laundry and and it just it's unbelievable the kind of money they're making over there that that's a

[28:09] really important point I never believed that until I'm going to say the last four or five years and I I've come to the conclusion that that we need economically we need for war to be a permanent thing yeah and already the American people are sort of numb to the idea of War in part because we have an all volunteer military uh and I think that's why we're not seeing demonstrations in the streets I mean already Afghanistan it's the longest war in American history it's

[28:40] twice as long more than actually it's more than well now it's it's three times as long as World War II was and uh you know nobody's really upset about this so now John where did um the torture ing get started was this at Guantanamo was this in Abu gra where did you it it was before Abu gra and um actually before Guantanamo uh ABA was the first

[29:12] highlevel uh Al-Qaeda related prisoner that we had captured and so you know at the time and when I say at the time I mean I mean immediately after the September 11th attacks Osama Bin Laden released a statement in which he said that Al-Qaeda was planning another attack that would dwarf September 11th and we were panicked at the thought because September 11th was a was a disaster it was an intelligence failure it was just an an across

[29:42] theboard you know American failure so we were worried about this this what they call the ticking Time Bomb scenario and so cia's leadership believed that Abu Zeda had information related to whatever this upcoming attack was or was going to be in fact there there was no upcoming attack uh he just said it to panic us and and he succeeded so a decision was made at CIA headquarters that we were going to come

[30:14] up with these with these torture techniques it was a list of of something like 10 different torture techniques and um and they sent this list to the justice department which approved it and then it went to the lawyers at the National Security Council they approved it from there it went to the um National Security adviser who was she was cond condesa rice at the time she approved it and sent it to the president well nobody in the cia's leadership thought the president was going to approve this

[30:45] because it was clearly torture and sure enough he approved it and I remember sitting in a meeting with the deputy director of the CIA um the day after the memo the signed memo came into headquarters and the deputy director said something like three times during the course of our conversation I can't believe the president signed that memo I can't believe it and that's how the torture regime started Guantanamo I mean we we really didn't even how should I say that Guantanamo

[31:17] was supposed to be a temporary stop see we were we were capturing people so quickly and we were capturing so many of them especially after the fall of torab Bora in October 2001 that we needed someplace to just park them long enough uh for us to put all the paperwork together and then send them to the United States to stand trial because September 11th was still an ongoing open criminal investigation guantan was never supposed to be permanent they were supposed to stay there only long enough

[31:49] for us to then send them onward to the states for uh for trial and of course nobody ever went on trial and here we are 14 years later and we're still talking about whether or not we should close Guantanamo you know my next guest tonight uh Michael uh bo the attorney uh and and the story is about how the Marines turned a blind eye to child sex abuse did you ever run across any of that over there yeah in Afghanistan you

[32:19] actually run into it with some regularity it's this weird thing in Afghan culture that if a boy um does not yet have whiskers if he hasn't yet reached puberty um you can have sex with him uh it's specific to to um Sunni Muslims and uh that's why a lot of a lot of Taliban uh would would rape young boys it's just this weird perverted cultural thing that they have what about

[32:51] the stories we heard of of uh young boys being raped at Abu gra in front of their parents as part of interrogation um to the best of my understanding that didn't happen although I mean it's almost as bad uh it's my understanding that some of our soldiers threatened prisoners with that that if you don't talk we're going to rape your children if you don't talk we're going to rape your your wife or we're going to rap rape your children in front of your wife we'll rape your wife

[33:23] in front of you you know that kind of thing now that that's also a violation of law both US law and and uh the um United Nations convention on torture uh but we we actually did that kind of thing in Abu grave at least threatened it I mean well if you look at some of the pictures that came out of Abu have you been to Abu grave what do you know firstand no no I've not been to ABRA okay but you you've seen some of those pictures that came out of there oh yeah they horrific naked guys and naked guys

[33:53] in a pyramid you know it's Way Beyond the naked guys with electrical wires attached to their scrotums you know we we did horrible things to people over there so whatever hor things that that aren't that aren't appropriate in any circumstance whether in war or peace or even effective to get uh confessions out of people and really that's the most important point they're not effective in any way in getting confessions or in getting any kind of intelligence you know we know now from both the Senate torture report and the CIA inspector General's report that was released in

[34:24] the spring of 2009 that torture never worked that that CIA interrogators never gathered any actionable intelligence and that no American lives were saved and and let me add one more thing about that too you hear a lot of people now saying well it was just the Senate intelligence committee Democrats that signed on to that report let me remind those naysayers that the Senate Democrats and the Senate intelligence committee investigators used primary source

[34:54] documents that is original CIA intelligence cables from the field to write that report so there is no rebuttal you know there is no excuse torture didn't work it never works it didn't save any American lives did you watch the hearings yesterday I did okay so did I the whole thing all day long now now what do you make of that it seems to me that something more was going on down there with the CIA compound across from this

[35:25] uh you know you've heard the rumors right about gun running and these kind of things what do you make of that yeah I think there's actually uh some evidence of gun running yeah you know this this whole idea of gun running um has been a problem really since the very beginning of the uprising against Gaddafi already already Libya is kind of a No Man's Land because it's its borders aren't clearly defined the desert is constantly shifting Libya is an intensely tribally based society so you

[35:57] can't really you know people in Libya never really trust their central government and then you've got vast numbers of weapons uh changing hands so you know who's involved I'm not sure we're ever going to really get to the bottom of that story was the CIA involved were the British involved were the Egyptians involved I don't think we'll ever really know and it doesn't seem like that these hearings are even trying to find out yeah you know there are so many

[36:28] legitimate issues that we could be talking about related to Benghazi or or Libya more broadly um and instead it just devolved into this this political thing between Hillary Clinton and the Republicans on the committee I don't think anybody did the American people any service by allowing this to become political when there are some very important intelligence issues at play here and you know I I saw a thing on the news the other day saying that in the years that George W Bush was was

[36:58] president something like 60 attacks there were 60 attacks around the world against American embassies and consulates including I forget what you know half a dozen or a dozen deaths and we've never investigated any of those maybe we should maybe we should investigate every time there's an attack on a on an American Embassy or consulate or anytime American Personnel overseas are killed it shouldn't be political it shouldn't be partisan it should be something we're doing so that we can improve the protection of our own facilities and our own people yeah there were half a dozen EMB attacks that

[37:30] weekend it was demonstrations but they breached reg yeah so yeah why aren't we why aren't we investigating that well a good question you know it's a circus that's why look at Donald Trump we gotta wait all that all that it's a circus over there right now man that's right I wish it would torture me I wish I can't take any more of this what do you make of uh we just had this thing in the news just in the past week with this guy this Fox news commentator was claiming to be a CIA what's going on with that man you

[38:02] know it's funny to me I have run into so many people over the years who claim to be agency right and um and you can spot them from a mile away because they they get the lingo wrong uh I interviewed a guy one time he I was working in the private sector after I left the CIA and I was working um in competitive intelligence business intelligence and so this guy applied for a job and on his resume he said he was a CIA officer and I thought oh okay well I'm going to I'm going to take this guy to lunch and uh

[38:34] you know maybe we have some friends in common I'll see if he's any good so I took him to lunch and I said to him listen I said it's it's not clear from your resume whether you were from the director of operations or the director of intelligence uh so where did you work and he said oh both I was I was both and I said well that's kind of impossible you have to be from one or the other oh he says I was operations I said oh okay uh so where did you work he said oh I was counter terrorism I said well that's

[39:06] great I was counter terrorism what division were you in and he just looked at me with this blank this blank and I said you made all this up didn't you and he's like I'm really sorry I really need this job and I said okay thanks nice meeting you and that was the end of it so this guy on Fox News you know he said he was like something like outside paramilitary Special Operations well those are just meaningless words there is no such position as outside paramilitary Special Operations I mean it it sounds like very

[39:38] woo very intriguing and it's it's all these buzzwords but it but it doesn't mean anything there is no such position and so you know the first time I heard this guy say I thought absolutely no way he's CIA he may have been a contractor you know he may have been inflating what he did but there's no this guy was CIA and then sure enough he wasn't okay but now first how do you get away with that you know it's why doesn't the CIA step in right away and say this guy's

[40:09] not the he's not the real deal yeah he's not the real deal the the real shame about this whole thing is that apparently this son of a gun was able to trick people at at DOD into giving him a security clearance just because he told them he had been CIA this guy went overseas to Afghanistan stand to advise our generals on strategy because he said he was from the CIA well I can tell you any CIA officer I've ever worked with could peg this guy in five seconds and say this guy's making the

[40:41] whole thing up well okay you know we spend a lot of money to support the CIA right yeah do they have TV sets do they have cable news couldn't they turn on their TV over there and see this guy on TV and say hey does anybody know this guy yeah and we do that right like every once in a while if I'm flipping through Fox News I'll see somebody like well I won't even say his name but I'll see somebody I I served with and I'm like oh hey he ended up on Fox news good for him or else I saw I saw a former boss of mine on CNBC and I

[41:11] was like oh hey there's Mike he's on CNBC good for Mike but this guy I mean you would think that somebody would say you know gez I'm paramilitary CIA I never saw this guy before or or even active duty right now CIA would they must be checking to see what information slipping out through Fox News or through the news you think yeah you would think I I would have you're you're exactly right I would have expected somebody at the CIA to call Fox News and say hey this guy's an impostor and especially when we know for a fact that the intelligence uh departments have a lot

[41:43] of control over what goes on in the media and the news and movies absolutely yeah I got some guys here I'm working with Pierce Redmond and Tom Seer they they they get the F records of how the military and the defense department is so involved in the movie industry into such detail you wouldn't believe it's embarrassing yeah so now how did this guy get away with this for so long I don't know it's I I hope that this is an anomaly no it's I hope that somehow for whatever reason this guy slipped through the cracks I will add though that his

[42:16] message on Fox News was always solidly pro- CIA solidly Pro dood and I wonder if people at the CIA did know that he was an impostor but figured well you know he's saying all the right things so we're not going to object okay yeah because because I you know in my business I run into a lot of these guys who make these kind of claims in my business as a pi and also as radio host I run into these crackpots all day long you know and some of them are radio

[42:49] host and I don't understand how uh they're getting away with this I worked with a guy in the private sector who I I never met anybody who so desperately wanted to be a CIA officer as this guy and so he finally got himself u in as a contractor and I said to him so what are you doing over there anyway and he says well uh it's it's it's pretty Hush Hush but it's a special intel Ops support uh special weapons and tactics and and I'm like dude you make yourself sound like a fool yeah because none of those words

[43:21] mean anything and you get that a lot especially in Washington it's pretty sad yeah I hear you I hear you I people they try to talk this lingo you know it's just boots on the ground you know exactly all the buzzword and the and the catchphrases oh man you know we that's like the last nine minutes you know what do you want to leave us with give us some advice here well one thing that I'm really that I'm really upset about uh since

[43:53] September 11th and and this is something that I I write about a lot I take very seriously and it's the loss of our civil liberties the civil liberties of individual Americans in the name of National Security when I first uh joined the CIA we had several rules that were written in stone and that was that the CIA did not spy on Americans and that's the NSA did not spy on Americans and if for example if the NSA had accidentally stumbled on to an American who had

[44:25] accidentally um intercepted a telephone call every trace of that interception had to be purged from nsa's records and then NSA had to inform Congress oh my God we've accidentally intercepted the phone call or the email of an American citizen well now nsa's primary targets are American citizens NSA just built a a a new facility in the desert in Utah that has enough storage space to save every every

[44:57] phone call every text message and every email from Every American for the next 500 years we have the CIA droning American citizens overseas as I said earlier who have never been charged with a crime who have never been able to face their accusers in a court of law and uh and there just doesn't seem to be any outrage over this if if the the government can kill uh you know an American citizen overseas then can the

[45:27] government kill an American citizen you know on his Ranch in Idaho we don't know and the Attorney General of the United States at least the the previous one uh Eric Holder wouldn't even answer that question when when asked it by uh Senator Rand Paul so I'm just seeing a real Devolution in our civil liberties and uh I think it's a very U dangerous uh Trend yeah and the government whether or not they they they're killing people you

[45:57] know off the street they they definitely are throwing people in prison off the street yeah they sure are and you can testify firsthand and I got to tell you a good number of my guests on this show have been to prison you know uh and it just seems to be a recurring I got former guests that are in prison right now you know for for nonsense again Liberty kind of stuff you know yeah yeah good grief I'll tell you I was charged under the Espionage Act because I had had a conversation with a with a

[46:28] reporter from The New York Times and I said that we were torturing prisoners so that bought me three Espionage counts um the Espionage Act was written in 1917 to Target German sabur during the first world war between 1917 and 2009 it was used three times but since Barack Obama became president it's been used nine times against Americans now none of us none of us have been accused of of

[46:59] passing information to a foreign government to an enemy these were all for um information that uh that went to the press and for several of us and I'm thinking about you know myself and Tom Drake for example from NSA and Jeffrey Sterling from CIA it was after we had either reported through the chain of command or gone public with evidence of waste fraud abuse illegality or a threat

[47:29] to Public Health or safety that's the definition of whistleblowing so here we are near the end of Barack Obama's uh second uh second term and I can safely say I think that Barack Obama is going to go down in history as the enemy of transparency as the enemy of of whistleblowing and of transparent government and that's exactly what he said he would not do when elected president okay that's a good question what do you make of Barack Obama because a lot of

[48:00] people I've had on this show that have met him okay like cynthy mckenny and Cindy shean and others uh including a a former State Department guy who's a K Street lobbyist right now okay uh and when I ask them this question you know because obviously his paperwork and his background is suspect he doesn't have the right paperwork do you make him to be a CIA creation I've been very public with my opinion on this and I'll tell you what I think has happened you had a a very Junior Senator

[48:32] a very Junior first term Senator who had no exposure to National Security uh no experience in National Security at all that's exactly the kind of young new president the CIA wants because as soon as that new president sees his first blue border report or black border report something that so many levels Above Top Secret they can't even keep track as soon as he's brought into his first super secret

[49:03] operation they have him hooked and they've essentially recruited him and I think that that is exactly what happened to Barack Obama you know he campaigned as an outsider he C campaigned on the idea of of clean government and transparency and as soon as they brought him into the club they had him there was a book that came out in 2014 by Halper and hman uh two reporters Time Magazine and MSNBC they had done a

[49:35] report or they had done a book rather on the 2008 election and then they did a follow-up book on the 2012 election and there were two quotes from Barack Obama in that second book that were really chilling and Obama had agreed to uh to an interview for the book so these came right from the horse's mouth first he said I never told anybody I was a liberal and I thought that was just f fting the second quote was I never had any idea I would be so good at killing people and with that he was talking

[50:05] about the Drone program and and that tells me that that's not how he went into his presidency it's how he changed once he became president it's very interesting but uh I had a guest on here that discussed U some of his previous employment and uh he described it as a a classic CIA front operation yeah but the CIA doesn't do stuff like that I mean they they just

[50:36] that's that's the stuff of movies and fiction books that's just not how it works okay and and and the history with his parents and stuff like that and the travels and associations with Communists and that you don't see anything Suspect with that either no I don't I mean you're talking about about a plot that would have begun with with his birth I mean I I don't know anybody that's that smart or that's that good to be able to carry out this conspiracy from from the guy's birth all the way to the

[51:07] presidency like a Manchurian Candidate gotcha okay I I really want to have you back um to to discuss the whole story of Abu grabe you know and all that kind of stuff just just specifically to get into all the details on that just uh uh 100% specifically but once again what's your your website oh thanks my website is uh www.j kiraku Doom it's John J N kiraku is k i r i a

[51:41] k.com and we got the book reluctant spy my secret life in a cia's war on terror uh but you got a couple other books you're working on too as well yeah um I've got two books completed that are out for bid right now one is called letters from Loretto uh which um is based on a series of blogs that I wrote from prison and the second one or it's the third one I guess um it's more fun it's it's called do doing time like a spy how the CIA taught me to survive and thrive in prison okay listen you got to

[52:11] promise me you're going to come back all right I'd love to thanks for having okay man that's good stuff we got to get into that thank you so much for coming on my friend oh it's my pleasure thanks a lot good night bye-bye [Music]

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