Title: John Kiriakou Podcast: Inside CIA Recruiting and My Most Shocking Prison Experience
Show: The JK Report
Date: 2026-07-08
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHdQWVhiA04
Duration: 1628

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[00:00] I am John Kiriakou, and welcome back to another Q&A here at Deep Focus. I love these Q&A's. I'm always happy to do them. Please feel free to drop a question in the in the chat. We'll pull them out and and save them for the next Q&A. Also, and I've said it a couple times. I I have to say it again. We're coming up on 100,000 subscribers. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It's all because of you, and it's the fact that you've been talking about this and sharing it and and bookmarking it and telling people about it. So,

[00:30] thanks. Please continue to do that. We're going to get to 100,000 very soon. So, we have a bunch of questions here, which I had in front of me. There we go. Cisco 169 says, "John, great video as always. Thank you." I love you interviewing other agents from other countries. I've always wondered, what was your typical loadout while in the field? Firearms, cash, etc. That's a good question. And you know, I don't think anybody's ever asked me that question before. It actually depends on the day when I was and the assignment. When I was assigned in Athens, I kept

[01:01] fully loaded 9-mm semi-automatic handgun in a tearaway fanny pack on my waist and a fully loaded Smith & Wesson.38 snub-nose revolver on my ankle. Kept a a Buck knife in my back pocket just in case things turned to [ __ ] And I also kept two extra fully loaded magazines in my fanny pack. So, I had 47 It was either 47 or 49 rounds of ammunition for the 9-mm, another six bullets in my

[01:32] .38, and my knife, and hoped for the best. Um in Pakistan, I kept just a 9-mm and only with the one magazine. Kept it in a a holster on my waist. So, it was an extended mag, so I had 17 rounds in that. And honest honest to God, I'm being completely serious in saying this, I would pray to God every morning that I didn't have to pull it out and shoot somebody that day. That's the kind of place Pakistan was. But anyway, cash is another good good

[02:02] question. And the answer is that also depended on the day. If I was going to do a surveillance detection route and to meet with a source, I would have to have the sources monthly pay plus expenses. And I would have to have money for myself for my surveillance detection routes. So, on a normal day, I would have between say $2,000 and $5,000 in cash on me. Mind you, this is 25 years ago. So, it

[02:33] would be a lot more now. And intelligence is a cash business. Um if if I was doing an operation, I've said in podcast that that um a colleague of mine and I requisitioned a van from the agents from the uh sorry, the embassy motor pool in uh Islamabad when we were going down to Faisalabad to do the Abbottabad raids, and we had $2 million in cash in two duffel bags. So, depends on the day, depends on the op. It changes wildly.

[03:04] Mark Ryan 1452 says, "Hi John, just a quick question. How does the US government work with the main companies like Google and Microsoft?" Ah, they work hand in glove with all of the big tech companies. In fact, a former boss of mine, when I came back from Athens, I was assigned to a branch in the Counterterrorism Center where I was training Middle Eastern intelligence services how to do counterterrorism operations. And I worked for this guy, really great guy, laid-back. He'd been in a long time. He'd been chief of a big station and two small stations. And he

[03:35] he came up to us one day and he said, "Hey guys, just wanted to let you know I'm going to resign." We're like, "What? You're still 5 years away from your 30. Why would you resign?" And he said, "I got a really great job at Microsoft, and they're going to pay me eight times what I'm making here." And that's normal. So, they're everywhere. It's not just Google and Microsoft. It's It's Meta and it's It's X and it's It's everywhere. They're everywhere. Uh there's a benefit for both sides. You know, from the CIA side, my God, it's

[04:07] obviously you get access to the biggest, most advanced, most important tech companies in the world. And for the tech companies, you've got a direct a direct channel to the intel- intelligence community. You know, you don't just forget about all your contacts and your friends and former colleagues when you leave to go into the private sector. So, that works out for both sides, which is actually a dangerous thing. Austin Powers 1999 says, "Hi John, can you please create an episode on Georgetown's Applied Intelligence Program and how CIA recruits from the program?"

[04:37] That's a good idea. I'll go one better. It's way, way bigger than Georgetown's Applied Intelligence Program. Yes, Georgetown is a is a feeder school for the CIA, but so is George Washington University. And in fact, GW sends more people to the CIA than Georgetown does. Um in addition, there are schools like you've probably never heard of, like Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pennsylvania, that had the country's very first applied intelligence master's program. Um I teach

[05:08] mostly Americans in a graduate school program in intelligence studies at the University of Salamanca, Spain. So, even though it's in Spain, they're learning intelligence. They're mostly Americans and a lot of them end up at the CIA. So, yeah, that's a good That's a good topic. Uh we'll definitely do that. JT Grizzle 3157 says, "Hey John, if 9/11 happened today with all of the technology we have now, how fast do you think we would have have been able to catch Bin Laden?" That's a good one and that's a tough question to answer. I'm

[05:38] going to say it probably wouldn't have made that much of a difference because one thing that Bin Laden did, like right at 9/11 or the day after, is he got rid of all cell phones. You know, we we were on his cell phone before 9/11 and Orrin Hatch, the the Republican senator from from Utah, went on CNN the night of 9/11 and said, "We're on his phone, so we're going to find him and we're going to kill him." And and then he never used the phone again,

[06:09] thanks to Orrin Hatch. So, um for Bin Laden specifically, I would say it probably wouldn't have made a difference. For everybody else, it would have made a huge difference. Cuz we were like chickens without heads looking for Abu Zubaydah. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, they didn't use any tech to catch Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. It was all human intelligence. But most of these other guys, they made a tech mistake. They made a phone call, they checked their Gmail account, whatever it happened to be. With the technology we have today, I

[06:40] would say we would have destroyed Al-Qaeda as an organization much more quickly and we probably would have done it with drones rather than with CIA officers in some of those cases. Good question. Alex Rivera, Y5R, what's the worst thing I saw in prison? Geez. [clears throat] What's the worst thing I saw in prison? There's no There's not one easy answer to that. I'm going to give you a couple.

[07:13] There was this old man who lived in my housing unit. He was 82 years old. He's probably dead by now. And um I was like, what in the world is this old man? The guy was hunched over and he had a problem where he was constantly [ __ ] himself. And he would you know, he could feel it coming and he would get up and then it would run down his pant leg and it would make this trail of diarrhea from his cell to to to the um bathroom. And I'll tell you there was this this young

[07:44] African-American kid. I say young, he was 18 years old on a drug charge in the same cell and he used to beat the [ __ ] out of this old man because his body was so broken down that he couldn't get on his hands and knees and clean up his own [ __ ] So, he asked me one time he lived about five cells down from me. He asked me one time if I would talk to the black shot caller and asked cuz I had good relations with everybody. I was like a one-man United Nations in there. Would I talk to the black shot caller and ask the black shot caller to tell

[08:16] this kid to stop beating him up? And I said, "Well, let me let me poke around and see what I can what I can do." Well, the first thing I did is I went to the law library to look this guy up and see what his crime was. And his crime was this. When he was 80 years old he arranged to purchase a 9-year-old girl from her drug-addicted mother in Atlanta, Georgia. This guy lived in Chicago. And he drove at the age of 80, he drove from Chicago to Atlanta

[08:49] to human traffic this 9-year-old girl so that he could rape her whenever he wanted to. It turned out there was no 9-year-old girl and there was no drug-addicted mother. It was just an FBI agent. And so they grabbed him as soon as he arrived at the hotel where the purchase was supposed to take place. And he got 17 years in prison. Now, he was 80 at the time so he would be in until he was 97. With good behavior he would be he would be let out around 94. He's probably dead by now. That alerted me to the sheer number of pedophiles in in prison.

[09:22] So, I started doing some research and I found that fully 1/3, it was actually 35% of the prisoners in my prison were pedophiles. There's a pedophile specific prison outside of Youngstown, Ohio that's only pedophiles. But it turns out that that that number 35% in my prison being pedophiles, that's consistent all across the Bureau of Prisons at the low level, low security level. Now, pedophiles cannot be placed in minimum security work camps cuz they'll

[09:53] run away and molest other kids. But they also can't go to medium security prisons or maximum security prisons because people will kill them there because they're child molesters. So, they're all at the low security level. Being completely surrounded by pedophiles was sickening in and of itself. Okay, with that in mind, I got a job at the chapel. Uh in the chapel library. So, people would come, you know, can I have that book? Yes, give me your ID. I sign out the book to them or a movie or whatever.

[10:25] We had a rule in the chapel in the chapel. You can't talk about your case. Well, the pedophiles never went outside to the yard because people would beat them up out there. So, they would congregate either in the chapel or in the library. Just outside my little window where I would hand out the books, there was this big child molester we used to call Chomo the Giant. Chomo being prison slang for child molester. The guy was 6'7.

[10:56] And uh and he's regaling all these other pedophiles about his sex crimes against, you know, pre-pubescent girls. And so, I went up to the window and I said, "Hey, no talking about your case." And he looks at me indignantly and he says, "Jesus loved the little children." And I went to the chaplain and I said, "Chaplain, you got to throw these guys out or something bad's going to happen." And he ended up throwing them out. He also kind of threw me out. What he What

[11:26] he did was he offered me um a no work, no show job and he would continue to pay me the princely salary of $0.24 an hour, which is what I made. No, no, that's not true. It's $0.24 a month. Um, which I happily took. And, um, it was hearing these pedophiles every day, seeing these pedophiles every day, listening to the pedophiles relive their crimes. There was one guy in my This was the worst guy. It was my very first day in prison.

[11:56] Um, I was very briefly employed in the library, just to wipe down tables. And, um, the sort of the crew leader was this guy, Mark Brown. I'm happy to say his name, cuz what's he going to do? Is he going to sue me? So, Mark Brown, he says, "So, you're the new guy on the crew. How long you here for?" I said, um, "30 months. How about you?" He said, "Oh, I have 27 years." And I said, "27 years? Do you mind if I ask you what you did?"

[12:28] And he said, "I got caught looking at crime scene photos." I said, "What's that supposed to mean?" And he said, "Well, having sex with children is a crime. I got caught looking at the photos." And I said, "Oh, please." I said, "You're not the victim here." And he says, "Well, what really did me in was the subfolder." And I just looked at him. And I said, "Okay, I'll bite. What subfolder?" And he gets really excited and he says, "Well, I like to masturbate while looking at pictures of dead children,

[12:58] and I had a friend who worked at the morgue." And I said, "Stop!" I said, "Don't ever speak to me again. Do you understand?" And he goes, "Yes." I said, "I'm serious. Don't ever speak to me again." And he didn't. That was the worst thing I saw in prison. Before I go on to our remaining questions, a word from our new sponsor, American Alternative Assets. Three billionaires, four major banks, one respected economist, all pointing to the same thing. a historic move in gold

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[20:14] it didn't really register at the agency. Septile 118s, and thank you for the $2.99. Q&A question, as a Greek Australian, I'm incredibly proud of you. Ah, thank you. I appreciate that. After the terrible shooting at Bondi Beach, I have begun to wonder, what is Australian intelligence known for globally? The region around Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Australia, etc. is really heating up now, but no one talks about it. Man, that is so true. It is just not on the radar in the

[20:46] international media. And I would add to that, the Philippines. Um just as an aside, I'm planning to go to um the Marshall Islands in July with Jeremy Kuzmarov, Dr. Jeremy Kuzmarov. Jeremy and I are on the board of directors of Covert Action Magazine, and Jeremy is the editor of Covert Action Magazine, and we're going to go there precisely for this reason. Um, to do an on-the-ground political reportage on this fight between the

[21:18] American government and the Chinese government about who gets to control the abandoned Japanese bases from World War II. I don't know why this isn't in the news, but it's not at all in the news, not in the United States, not in Australia, and it's a serious issue. So, we're going to we're going to go to the Marshalls and try and figure this out. Um, the Australians are known as a good intelligence service. They're especially concerned about China, China, China, that's all they ever want to talk about is China. Uh, they're happy to,

[21:50] you know, help us out by sending people to, you know, wherever, to Afghanistan or Iraq or whatever. But really, the Australians spend most of their time and most of their money on China. Yeah. Plus the fact that they're a Five Eyes country, along with the United States, the UK, Canada, and New Zealand. And so, there's a whole lot of intelligence collection and intelligence sharing going on um among those countries. Um, MLY Don NYC says, "A long one,

[22:22] uh, but thank you first of all very much for the $20, Don." Mr. Kyriakou, and please call me John. Could you help me reality check how I've come to make sense of what has been happening in Israel, Gaza, and the neighboring countries? If we use a lens of function rather than framing, it looks to me as though Israel is and has been fighting two types of wars. The first is what I'd call a precise response to offense. For example, military actions that are directly tied to October 7th or to other

[22:52] specific attacks. The second is what I'd call conquer our neighbors, a much longer-term pattern of war and policy whose purpose is not immediate defense, but territorial expansion in line with the idea of a greater Israel. Much of the destruction in Gaza and the ongoing expansion annexation of land makes little sense to me in a purely PRO precise response to offense frame, but makes much more sense in a conquer our neighbors frame. If you see Israel's actions in a similar

[23:22] way, one, when do you think this conquer our neighbors war effectively began? And two, under what circumstances, if any, do you think it will end? Thank you, ML. Wow, listen, that's one of the best That's one of the best questions I've ever received. I I would actually encourage you to write that up, flesh it out, and submit it as an op-ed. Because I think you're seriously onto something here. Um First of all, yes, I agree on both points.

[23:53] Um I think you're exactly right. We are seeing two different kinds of war, Sarah, precise response to offense and conquer our neighbors. Totally agree. Conquer our neighbors, I think, has been going on far, far longer than most people realize. Most Americans either have forgotten or never learned that the governments of Israel, the UK, and France invaded and occupied the Sinai Peninsula and the Suez Canal in 1956, the Suez War. Everybody's forgotten. Israel wanted wanted Sinai in 1956.

[24:26] They'd only been a country for 6 years, and they went and took Sinai. And it was the United States that forced them out and said to the Brits and the French, "Shame on you guys. What's the matter with you? You're supposed to be the adults in the room, and you're going to invade Egypt of all countries and take the Sinai Peninsula?" So, they were finally forced out, forced to retreat. With that said, they took the West Bank, they took East Jerusalem, and they took the Gaza Strip in 1967 at the end of the Six-Day War. Uh they took Sinai again then and only

[24:57] gave it up, you know, more than a decade later after they signed the Camp David Peace Accords, and Egypt got Sinai back for the second time. But, they're still in Gaza, they're still in the West Bank, they're still in East Jerusalem. Besides that, they have a a buffer zone in southern, uh, Lebanon, and they have a buffer zone in southwestern Syria. There's not been any United Nations Security Council resolution that allowed them to permanently occupy buffer zones.

[25:28] In addition, and this is a little thing, but this just gives you a flavor for the the problem. Um, when Israel signed a peace treaty with Jordan, the Israelis said, "Listen, um, in the middle of the night, for years, we've been secretly moving the border fence farther and farther into Jordan, and we've taken like, you know, 100 yards worth of Jordanian territory. We're going to give it back to you." And they did. But, they still land still land even when they don't need to steal the land. They steal it just cuz they can. And then they hold it.

[26:00] In some cases, forever. So, yeah, listen. Hamas is a terrorist organization. Hamas murdered civilians. Uh, October 7th was a terrorist attack, for the most part. Um, but the Israeli response can't be to kill everybody, and to commit genocide, and to commit, um, what do you call it? Um, ethnic cleansing by forcing everybody out, you know, to go to other countries. It's a violation of the international law, like multiple international laws.

[26:31] You can't do it. And at the same time, the Israelis are going to have to come to the understanding, someday, that the only road to peace is through negotiation. And the only road to peace is through the creation of an of an independent Palestine. That's it. And if that doesn't make the Israelis happy, you know, we're sorry, but that's just a reality of life. Unless you're prepared to kill everybody and be an international outcast and then maybe eventually have to use nuclear weapons.

[27:04] There's no other alternative but to diplomacy.
