Title: Radio Liberty interview, 4-15-10, John Kiriakou (former
Show: Soundwaves 2000
Date: 2019-06-19
URL: https://youtu.be/cPfqguIwcqU
Duration: 59:00

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[00:03] Well, this is Dr. Stan here at Radio Liberty, coming to you from the hills overlooking beautiful and picturesque Monterey Bay and bringing you the news behind the news, the story behind the story, hoping to convince you that reality is usually scoffed at, that illusion is usually king. But in the battle for survival of western civilization it's going to be reality not

[00:35] illusion or delusion that will determine what the future will bring and I need to remind you the views that are expressed here and not necessarily those of the owner's management. Staff sponsors and supporters of the station you're listening to, they're my views and well for the next hour they're going to be the views of John Caracobo, we're going to be talking about his book Reluctant Spy. And you know we see a lot of things happening all the time America got involved in a war in Iraq and of course we entered that war in 2003.

[01:08] And the reason we attacked him is the President told us that we found that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and they threatened our country and Colin Powell went before the United Nations and talked all about those weapons of mass destruction. There was such a threat to the United States and that's why we were going to have to invade Iraq in 2003. So how do we know what truth is? I mean how do you really get the truth? Because basically you have people who work for government and if they ever tell the

[01:39] truth they face imprisonment or even worse. And most people are not willing to risk their jobs or their families or their lives ready to come forward and tell the truth about what they learned when they were working in government and when you work in government you sign an agreement saying that you will not reveal anything you found out unless of course you have special permission to do it. Well John really worked for the CIA for a good period of time. He has a fascinating story and parts of the story you've never heard about before

[02:15] but he has one of the most amazing revelations you're ever going to hear. And you're not going to read about this in Newsweek Magazine or U.S. News and we'll report it elsewhere and that's why we're so pleased to have John with us. Even John Caracol author of Reluctant Spy. Hi John, how are you doing? Hi. Hi Dr. Stan. Thank you so much for having me. Well it's really a pleasure to have you because we've got a real good listening audience this time of evening on both sides of the country. So what did you tell our listeners just a little bit about yourself? How it was that you ended up working as a CIA and for the CIA and wound up of

[02:51] course leading the effort to capture one of the most important Taliban leaders of the terrorist movement ever captured and well just give the background and we'll get into some of your amazing revelations in your book. Thank you. I was in graduate school at George Washington University in the late 1980s and I was taking a class called the Psychology of Leadership and it was being taught by a psychiatrist. He actually called himself a political psychiatrist in that he had a PhD in psychology, a medical

[03:27] degree and a PhD in political science and the class was just fascinating. It looked at world leaders and their state of mind at critical times in history. So I got a lot out of it and he assigned us a paper one night where we had to shadow our bosses and then write a psychological evaluation of our bosses. So I did that and he liked my paper and asked me to stay after class the following week. He asked me if I had any plans for graduation and I said well I'm getting married right after

[03:59] graduation and I don't have a job and I don't seem to have any prospects for a job and I'm not sure what I'm going to do and he said well would you consider working for the CIA and I thought about it and I said well sure I guess so I hadn't really considered the CIA but why not. Well it turned out that this professor was actually undercover as a professor. He was acting as a CIA spotter back in the days when the CIA did this kind of thing. It's illegal now to do that because of equal opportunity employment laws and he picked

[04:33] up the phone and called somebody in CIA personnel and a week later I entered into a series of tests for the agency mostly written tests followed by medical exams and then a polygraph in the end and the next thing I knew I was starting my first day at the CIA. Pull that thought we'll be back in just a moment with John Caracogh. His book we're a lucked in spy we'll be right back. All right John why don't you go ahead so you get into the CIA and then what happens.

[05:06] Well I get into the CIA and I enter into the Directorate of Intelligence which is the analytic cadre of the agency and I'm assigned to Iraq and Kuwait which at the time I'm told is a training account in that nothing ever happens in Iraq or Kuwait. It's the same cabinet in Iraq since the 1968 revolution the same leadership in Kuwait since the country declared independence in the early 1960s. So they said learn the CIA writing style become an expert on these countries and

[05:41] then you can transfer onto something more interesting like Romania. So just at the point about nine months later where I felt like I knew what I was doing Iraq invades Kuwait and one of the senior analysts came to me and said look it's not unusual for a country we cover to invade another country we cover. What is unusual is for a country we cover to go to war with us. You need to make some hay out of this this is a big deal it's a big opportunity work hard and good things are going to happen.

[06:12] So I worked hard and soon found myself briefing the President the Vice President the Secretary of State and I really became the go-to guy on Iraq through the Gulf War. All right final course I wasn't excited this was the first Gulf War in 1991 and so then what happened after the the war ended so we pulled our troops back we did not try to get Sudan we did not try to really of course to take Iraq itself we just simply drove Saudi Arabia out of

[06:42] out of Iraq out of Kuwait and then we of course set up a no-fly zone and we started bombing Iraq on a regular basis so for the next 10 years. Indeed on a regular basis we bombed them over the next decade and we had in the end just about nothing to show for it. I remember at the time and I know I realized that hindsight is 20-20 but I remember at the time my colleagues and I standing around the television watching the first President Bush explain why he decided to call a unilateral ceasefire and

[07:16] I remember people just being beside themselves because the job wasn't done true we had liberated Kuwait but what about Iraq you know the Iraqi people expected our assistance at least the Shia Muslims in the South and and we turned our backs on those people and afterwards there was a wholesale slaughter of Shia Muslims in the South only because we encouraged them but never did anything to protect them so I decided to continue on Iraq until Saddam Hussein was overthrown but by 1993 it was pretty clear Saddam Hussein wasn't going

[07:50] anywhere and so I applied for a one-year or two-year rather rotational assignment in the State Department that allowed me to hold up talk we'll be right back well this is Dr. Stan Chris John was there then he was initially assigned to Iraq and Kuwait and there was there when Iraq invaded Kuwait and Chris really President Bush encouraged of the the Shia's Shia Muslims and

[08:20] Iraq to rise up against Saddam Hussein he even said you know we'll help you rise up and everybody thought America was going to take down Saddam Hussein the wicked Saddam Hussein and the Shias did exactly as they were encouraged to do and then we let Saddam Hussein uses helicopters we could have stopped him at any time because we control the air but we let him uses helicopters and they slaughtered you know tens of hundreds of thousands or hundreds of thousands of the Shia Muslims who believe George W. Bush H.W. Bush and then

[08:56] then we began you know bombing Iraq we bombed Iraq for ten years nothing was accomplished and Chris John is witnessing this and so at what point was it you asked to be rotated back into the into the State Department I asked to go to the State Department in 1993 and so the CIA sent me first to Arabic language training that took a full year but I came out with some conversational fluency and then I went to Bahrain for two years that was 1994 to 1996 and then I thought

[09:29] okay I'll get this out of my system this foreign travel bug that I seem to have and I'll go back and do something interesting well by 1996 the only the only game in town was unfortunately Iraq again so I went back on to Iraq in 1996 and continued to do that for another couple of years all right and well now because Iraq at that time was under Saddam control we up in the northern part of the Kurdistan area that's that's correct we had good relations with the Kurds at the time they had a certain amount of autonomy

[10:03] because of that no-fly zone up north but we essentially we were in the stalemate where we could have continued doing this forever Saddam would violate the no-fly zone we would bomb an empty building in the middle of the night and we would continue this pattern indefinitely all right fine were you there with Robert Bear was there was he up there with you I sure I sure was Bob Bear is a good friend of mine he's very helpful in this book and well that's great because we've interviewed him and said to me carry his book we think you know we really enjoy his story see no evil under all

[10:38] circumstances under any circumstances so you're there and you're what working Kurdistan and you're actually recruiting people for the CIA was up your job was to get people who are willing to work for the CIA covertly right the job of the CIA officer very simply is to recruit spies to steal secrets and in many places like Iraq or or Afghanistan even you can't do that directly because maybe you don't have the language more likely the locals are not willing to

[11:11] speak with an American and so you have to recruit people who can act on the US government's behalf and recruit spies for you so that you can infiltrate some of these terrorist groups that's what CIA officers were doing in Iraq and then later that's what that's what we did in Afghanistan and Pakistan as well all right fine so you did that and then of course how did you get back up into the Pakistan because that's where you of course you had your one of your greatest triumphs and that of course was the capture of this of this key Taliban leader

[11:42] when was that that was in March of 2002 after September 11th like everybody else in the building I volunteered to go to Afghanistan and fight and I mean I really wanted to go and fight but because I didn't have any paramilitary experience I was passed over and and I would complain to everybody who would listen that I want to go you have to let me go and I wasn't the only one doing this everybody was doing this kind of thing because we all really wanted to go finally I think they had had enough of my complaints and they said fine can you

[12:16] go to Pakistan I said definitely when I said done so the next day I got on a plane and I went to Pakistan and I became chief of counterterrorism operations there for the CIA well that's a pretty responsible job for somebody who just sort of shows up there you know unannounced like I say I hounded them until they finally relented one of the funny things too is that I really had very little operational experience I had done one overseas

[12:49] operational tour but I was not really a seasoned counterterrorism officer so on my first day on the job I went in to introduce myself to the deputy station chief and he kind of looked up and I think he assumed that I was a seasoned operations officer in fact I was a seasoned analyst and he said listen I need for you to come up with a plan on how we take down a terrorist safe house we need to have a standard operating procedure so I went back to my office

[13:19] and I literally sat there with a with a legal pad and I was thinking to myself well if I were gonna take down a terrorist safe house how would I start and I finally came up with something that I thought made some sense and proposed it and that became our standard for for doing counterterrorism raids in Pakistan but of course the thing is that the Taliban certainly Taliban leaders were there Sydney at that time why we don't know where some of Ben Laden was they supposedly was hiding somewhere in Pakistan but they were

[13:52] concerned about other Taliban leaders and who was the one Taliban leader that they were so important and interested in targeting we were most interested in in Abu Zubaydah who was actually an al-Qaeda leader now for a couple of reasons number one he was the commander of the larger of al-Qaeda's training camps in Afghanistan and we believed he was he was the number three person in al-Qaeda at the time more than that and this is really the reason why he was so valuable was that he was what what al-Qaeda officials described as the hub of

[14:27] the wheel he knew everybody in the organization he was great at logistics he was a detailed man and we thought if we could capture him then we would be able to disrupt countless attacks so we set out looking for him but the only instructions that we had were that we had to take him alive and he was somewhere in Pakistan but Pakistan is the size of Texas and it has 55 million people in it so we were we were left to our own devices to figure out exactly how to do that all right fine and so basically it well how many were the

[15:02] 10 or 20 different houses he could be in any one of them right you had to raid them all simultaneously hoping that you'd get the right one yes we had never done more than two counterterrorist raids in a single night and unfortunately we just could not get the the possible targets any lower than 14 and so we decided that we were going to just try our best and we were going to hit all 14 sites simultaneously at 2 o'clock in the morning and just hope for the best so we brought in a large team from Washington half CIA half FBI

[15:36] with plenty of weapons and equipment and night vision goggles and of electronic devices and equipment and we hit all 14 sites at exactly the same time sure enough much to our surprise there he was he tried to escape and he was involved in a shootout with Pakistani police he was shot three times and very severely wounded well now eventually was he cooperative as far

[16:08] as revealing information to the CIA in the beginning no I had some long conversations with him I was the first person to guard him and the first person to speak with him when he came out of his coma following surgery and I told him look I'm the nicest guy you're going to encounter in this experience so I urge you to cooperate you're our prisoner now and your life can be very difficult or it can be very easy I'm going to tell you again and again you have to cooperate and in the beginning he was not sure he was going

[16:45] to survive he was not really interested in in cooperating and I would repeat the message as frequently as I could he would rather have spoken about poetry and about Islam how Islam was better than Christianity and he would go through these emotional periods where he would cry and say how he would never know the touch of a woman he would never know the joy of fatherhood and I would repeat look you're an adult you knew exactly what you were getting into you knew those towers were going to come down you have to face the

[17:19] consequences of your actions but he would not give me any actionable information there was nothing I could really work with well basically did he just tell you that he did not favor the attack on America I know many of the Al-Qaeda people but he didn't want to do that but they were concerned about the consequences of bringing it down did he play any part really and bring down to the Twin Towers no not not really and in the beginning we thought that he had but he did not pay did not play any direct

[17:50] role he did support the attack but he said that really he had no problem with the Americans his problem was with the Israelis and he was very clear that that his goal was to kill Jews not Americans but because this was something that bin Laden himself had ordered he had gone along with it all right fine so basically but I think the most thing one of most significant things was when you actually you got the rate of these homes you got all sorts of records on all sorts of telephone calls by the Al-Qaeda to

[18:21] Taliban centers and Al-Qaeda centers all across the United States and really what dozens of them or something and and our government refused to follow through on the information that didn't make sense this was really something that was very chilling to me we rated the Taliban embassy in Peshawar Pakistan and as part of the hall and when I say hall we took everything we took all their computers their filing cabinets their cell phones their weapons you name it we took it and as part of this hall we found a file folder full

[18:52] of telephone bills and the telephone bills reflected 163 calls from the Taliban embassy in Peshawar Pakistan to numbers in the United States all across the United States Buffalo Los Angeles Chicago Kansas City the says the Maryland all over the place 163 calls they ended abruptly on September the 10th 2001 and then they started up again on September the 16th so we informed the FBI saying be aware we think we stumbled onto something very important

[19:26] and the FBI responded by saying thank you very much good catch please send us the originals so we sent the originals and we heard nothing at the end of my tour in Pakistan I asked again what's going on with those numbers and I was told numbers have been received we're working on it thanks for your interest but no real follow-through as far as you could tell and we have to ask ourselves if we're really involved in a war on terrorism why weren't they tracking all of those telephone calls we'll be right back with John here well John you go

[20:02] ahead pick the story up thank you so we we informed FBI headquarters of these calls and they said that they would that they would investigate in fact we learned later that they did not investigate and the excuse I heard was ridiculous it was that the FBI did not have the adequate posh to language skills to translate the files and I responded that that that was the entire point that the files were in English and there was no reason to to wait to

[20:32] examine them because of translation issues but a couple more years past I ran into an FBI agent friend of mine and I said whatever happened with the Taliban numbers and much to my surprise he said that they were never taken out of the box the FBI never looked at them and in fact they had been sent to an FBI storage facility in suburban Maryland never to be seen again to the best of my knowledge to this day now all these eight years later no one has ever looked at those numbers no one has ever traced them and I hate to say it

[21:05] but we have potential terrorists living among us never to be traced and I think you have to ask yourself how could the FBI be this you know a foolish unintentionally we see the same thing there were other instances and other studies and stories we've heard where the FBI had all sorts of records from the initial the fellow who tried to kill I guess he did kill certainly rabbi kaha the hitter leader of caulk in the United States and when they got

[21:38] those records from this fellow's house man who did the assassination why you know there were all sorts of records going into that would have led to this terrorist group that tried to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993 and the FBI just refused to try to interpret and he had all these boxes of records and did absolutely nothing with them and yet information is the key and you have to ask yourself how could the FBI be that incompetent unintentionally or is

[22:10] there somebody there that well we don't know that doesn't seem to be that interested in getting to the bottom of the information anyway this really bothered you the fact that you'd given them all these telephone numbers in English here from calls from the Taliban Embassy there and in Pakistan of the United States and yet the FBI just wouldn't do anything with them do you think this was incompetence or something else I think it was incompetence the one thing that really offended us was that we had you know without

[22:41] overstating the case we had risked our lives to do that raid you can't just break into a foreign embassy and just think it's no big deal and that everybody's going to be fine we really did take a great personal risk in going to that embassy the whole point was to try to collect information to save American lives now here we actually collected that information and still the FBI did nothing about it I learned overseas that that the FBI and the CIA have bureaucratic problems for what I believe is a good reason and it's

[23:13] because they have specifically different missions the FBI's mission is to build a criminal case against a person or a group the CIA's mission is to infiltrate terrorist groups to disrupt terrorist attacks so oftentimes we're at loggerheads overseas but this was something that we could really fully agree on and it was bureaucratic incompetence that that caused the FBI to drop the ball they had the opportunity to make good on it you know for years they they could have

[23:44] gotten actionable intelligence out of those numbers but somebody at FBI headquarters just decided they want this problem to go away and if they ignore it long enough well the thing is that the problem is still here we'll be back in just a moment well this is dr. Stan because John was simply telling about Sydney that when they raided the Taliban embassy there in Pakistan and they actually risked their lives the CIA agents did risk their lives to get the information they found files with all sorts of telephone calls made

[24:17] from the Taliban embassy in Pakistan to the United States right up until September 10th 2001 and then resuming again on the 16th of September and of course these telephone calls they knew the numbers the telephone calls went to from the Taliban headquarters obviously Taliban sympathizers and yet the FBI FBI steadfastly refused to actually follow through with the information and their excuse was well well we can't speak Arabic and of

[24:50] course as John pointed out that the information was in English I mean anybody could look at it be very very simple but the FBI for some reason steadfastly refused to follow through with the evidence that would have allowed them to track down Taliban agents all across America back in in the 2003 I guess it was and and to this date they've never done that we have to ask ourselves why John thinks it's just incompetence well I think probably the

[25:21] most significant thing or one of the interesting things about your book after you'd left the CIA and you wrote your book why you wanted to tell the story and it has some very important information in it and I said to you but you had to submit it to the CIA and and basically you got the book back every page blocked out so why don't you pick up the story how you were actually able to get the information because ladies and gentlemen there's it information in this book you'll never hear elsewhere and everything was done to suppress it but you tell the story you know it again at the risk of

[25:57] sounding dramatic this really was the book that the CIA does not want you to read as you said dr. Stan I submitted my book the first draft for CIA clearance and it came back three months later with every single word blacked out and they said the book is rejected in its entirety because the entire document is classified they said it's currently and properly classified so there's an elaborate appeal process and I went back and I appealed and I said look it's not

[26:31] classified that I was raised in western Pennsylvania and it's not classified that I speak Greek so they said fine the first chapter is cleared everything else is redacted and again I appealed I said it's not classified that I went to George Washington University it's not classified that I applied because of professor of mine spotted me and thought I should apply okay the first two chapters are cleared everything is redacted I ended up going through nine separate drafts over the course of two years and finally when I went to submit

[27:06] the ninth draft somebody from the the CIA's Publications Review Board called me and said why don't you come in for a face-to-face meeting well I knew from colleagues including Bob there that the purpose of a face-to-face meeting was just to convince me to walk away from the project and and to not publish any book so I went in and we argued about three central chapters in the book that they were objecting to and then they offered some alternative language well I readily accepted this alternative language and I made a big

[27:38] production by saying well this is great we have an agreement we have a book I shook their hands finally one of the board members said let me walk you into your car and I knew that this was going to be the real message that I had been summoned there to receive once we got outside the building he said look even if you make these changes we're still going to reject the book because you have a lot of enemies here because I had spoken out against waterboarding in December of 2007 in an interview on ABC News and he said I

[28:11] just I thought you deserved an explanation and I said well my attorney is really chomping at the bit to file a federal suit but I appreciate your your warning and then I went to my car and I called a former CIA colleague of mine this was the week before the 2008 presidential election and my colleague said that he was on the transition team for the for the Obama campaign for intelligence that I should go ahead and make these changes to the book but not resubmit it until he told me to so I made the changes a weekletters

[28:45] later senator Obama is elected president and I waited six weeks and finally my colleague called back and said go ahead and resubmit there's been there's been some change in the CIA's leadership so I submitted it and a week later they cleared the book in its entirety and that's why I mean it's just almost miraculous that this story gets out because as we'll tell you in the next half hour what does that day John discovered in the early part of the year

[29:15] 2002 suddenly shortly after after the September 11th attack it's like probably well he'll tell you exactly what it was but this was the early part of 2002 he was given information that every American should know but they did want you to know they still don't want you to know I really think it was a fluke God's intervention but at least it's here in the book the reluctant spy and we'll tell you more about it when we get back right here at radio Liberty well this is

[30:38] doctors stand back here at radio Liberty and city how did it happen I mean here you were at a good profession working in the CIA why did you resign from the CIA the problems with with the CIA's culture is that the job is very very hard on marriages I was determined to not become a CIA divorce statistic and unfortunately that's exactly what happened to me in 2000 what was it 2002 my my

[31:13] wife of 14 years and I divorced and she moved back to Ohio with our two young sons and I I made the decision that it was more important for me to have a relationship with my boys than it was to continue working for the agency so I'm very happy that I made the choice to choose my my sons over over my career that was an easy decision I've missed the agency every day that I've been gone but the decision was the right one all right and do you want to spend your

[31:47] weekends with your son so how does that work I do what I ended up doing was driving to Ohio every Friday afternoon picking up my my sons and spending the weekend at my parents house which was nearby I would do that until Sunday and then I would return to Washington I'm proud to say that in 10 years I've never missed a weekend all right fine and now actually you're working up in one of the legislative offices there yes I'm a senior staff member in the

[32:20] United States Senate working for one of the Senate's foreign policy committees all right fine well I guess courses John Curacao and his book is called the reluctance by my secret life in the CIA's war on terror it's fascinating reading and of course it's got a lot of little details and tidbits in here but of course we'll be telling you in just a moment or two the most important part of the story a part of the story which is suggested much of what we've

[32:50] been told by the controlled media just is not true as to why the United States went to war it with Iraq we'll be right back well this is dr. Stan cruiser John eventually wanted actually left the Central Intelligence Agency he unfortunately as so often happens with the CIA wife of course he was away so much at the time and his wife eventually left him and they were divorced

[39:52] goodness we just found out about these weapons of mass destruction of the Saddam Hussein has and he might give to Al-Qaeda and Al-Qaeda might them use them against us and and the yellow cake and all of this thing this was all simply a cover to justify to justify an illegal invasion of Iraq which was planned and of course this is isn't this considered a war crime to invade a country that doesn't threaten you I think it probably is and and there was some detail to this to went when I when I pressed the guy he said what we're

[40:26] going to do is by the end of the year we're going to go to the United Nations we're going to make it look like we want an international coalition but we know that the Russians the Chinese and probably the French will oppose us and we'll be willing to go it alone he said we expect to enter Iraqi territory by March of 2003 I was stunned and I tell the story in the book also of one instance in which I went up to his office to drop something off and he

[40:56] was sitting at his desk redesigning the Iraqi flag with some crayola magic markers and I said what are you doing he said oh I'm redesigning the Iraqi flag and I said my goodness don't you think the Iraqis should be redesigning the Iraqi flag as if the thought had never occurred to him that he shouldn't be the one doing it this is the this is the environment the atmosphere that we were working at that time it was almost surreal and I think ladies and gentlemen this is really probably to me as I read the book and it's really all

[41:28] fascinating a lot of great information in it but the fact that it was known almost a year ahead of time exactly what was going to happen when we were going to invade Iraq and all the fall to all that you were hearing through the media and television and radio and news magazines and the newsweek and US news and world reporters it was all fall around me but this isn't has already been made by the people who really run things behind the scenes we were going to attack Iraq and what was this about at least nine to ten months

[42:02] before the attack came at least at least and there was something even more offensive and that was vice president Cheney's determination to try to link Saddam Hussein with the September 11th attacks the truth of the matter is there was absolutely no connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda Saddam Hussein was only barely Muslim there's a famous story about when Saddam went to Saudi Arabia to make the Hajj he didn't even know the prayers and an aide

[42:32] had to kneel next to him and whisper the prayers to him so that he could repeat them but there was really nothing religious about Saddam at all in fact al-Qaeda hated Saddam Hussein almost as much as they hated the United States so the idea that Saddam was connected to the 9-11 attacks was so preposterous inside the agency that many of us called it the big lie and one thing that frightened us was that it actually seems to take hold among the American public as though every time Dick Cheney repeated this lie more and more people

[43:07] believed it and I think we still see that in public opinion polls today where there's still a large minority of Americans who believe that Saddam Hussein helped to coordinate the 9-11 attacks with al-Qaeda and somebody once said doesn't matter how ridiculous something is if you say it often enough and convincing enough people will eventually believe and this is the great tragedy of the day and why I do what I do and I'm sure that's why John is willing to come on at late at night back where he lives but he's staying up

[43:39] late to share this story with you I think it's so important as you've told this story certainly on other radio programs what sort of response have you gotten you know it's funny Dr. Stan most people just don't seem to care about Iraq anymore to me this information is explosive and it's something that Americans ought to be concerned about but I'm surprised at how few people really focus on Iraq they want to hear fun stories they want to hear something exciting but they don't want to hear any notion that the government

[44:12] may have committed a crime and of course we've lost probably four thousand men dead and I don't know how many tens of thousands permanent decrypled in Iraq and some people estimate we may have killed as many as a million Iraqi civilians maybe it's only 500,000 but I would think it's probably much much higher than that and of course all the depleted uranium there will contaminate that area of the world for a good long time depleted uranium coming from the use of UN of course munitions and and yet where was the

[44:42] concern and you know men and women do become accomplices to the evils they fail to oppose let me repeat that men and women become accomplices to the evils they fail to oppose and you out there in the listening audience what are you doing about this are you going to get this information get the book try to help us get a copy of this tape and try to help us get the information out our number of courses one triple eight two four liberty one triple eight two four liberty or four six four eight two nine five and

[45:16] this is really one of the most explosives stories by an insider and I am amazed that you you must have had somebody there really working in your favor to get permission to tell this story after all the secrecy agreements that you signed I think it was just almost like a well of truly miraculous that you were able to write this story I was very fortunate in that George Tenet's book came out before my mind did and because of his authority as a former director

[45:47] he really blazed a new trail in terms of what could be released and what couldn't so I I argued in the end successfully that wait a minute you let George Bush say ABC in his book certainly you have to let me now say XYZ and you know that along with a thread of a lawsuit I think finally made them give in well that and the problem is it changed administration was an important thing wasn't it that was the key that was the key the

[46:17] administration changed and suddenly and sometimes with an administration changes a little confusion there and and I suspect that somebody in the CIA watered your information out and said uh however it came about I'm just so grateful it did because I think ladies and gentlemen it's so vitally important that you understand that when George Bush got up and said oh we just found out about those weapons of mass destruction and boy we're just trying to protect you and he wasn't telling the truth and Dick Cheney wasn't telling the truth

[46:50] and all the media wasn't telling the truth and have you read about the this book the reluctant spy and in any of your publications and well before we go on do you have a web page or and how can people get your book well thank you the book is available in in most bookstores Barnes and Noble borders books a million joseph best and and at amazon.com it's called the reluctant spy my secret life in the CIA's war on terror and it really is a fascinating story and of

[47:22] course an awful lot of good people in the CIA you know I think there may be some other things that go on the CIA is really highly compartmentalized isn't it so that you wouldn't necessarily know what other people in the CIA were doing that's exactly right in fact I had an experience the night that we turned up as a beta over for a movement to a to a secret prison the private plane landed that was going to take him on onto this prison and one of the

[47:53] CIA officers clad completely in black got off the plane wearing a black mask and black came up black mask yeah black mask okay good came up and said uh... john and i i said who are you and he lifted his mask up and uh... he was a former supervisor of mine and i laughed and i said what are you doing here in the middle of the night and he said i'm here to uh... to take your prisoner who did you catch and i said i'm sorry

[48:25] but uh... unfortunately you don't have a need to know who we caught and i said to him where you're taking him and he laughed and he said i'm sorry but you don't have a need to know where we're taking him we laughed but you know i knew and and he knew that we were right it was none of my business where they were taking him and frankly he didn't need to know i was a beta's uh identity just to take him from point a to point b but that's that's very typical and normal of work in the CIA

[48:55] it's highly compartmentalized well now basically uh did you go with him after that or how did you happen to be with him then when he was recovering from his injuries no wait once he left pakistan uh in late march 2002 i never saw him again he went on to a secret prison uh from there he was moved another couple of times and and he finally found his way to guantanamo where he sits today all right fine and certainly you say you pretty talk to me he loved poetry he loved uh i really was very interested in the philosophy of religion

[49:28] he was he was very interested in religion um not in an ideological way but but in a more um historical and philosophical way um he he wanted to debate the merits of islam versus christianity he loved writing poetry he liked to recite the poetry uh he was quite an accomplished doodler he had a little book that he carried with him and he would draw pictures and poems in the book and it was really quite impressive he was very artistic

[49:59] well did as a human being did you like him a good question and you know you're the first person that's ever asked me that well you don't have to answer if you haven't thought of it but really somebody who likes to quote poetry and and write poetry and you know somebody i could identify with even if we disagreed philosophically we get a lot of people on my programs that don't necessarily agree with but i can like them and get along with them that's right and because this is one of the big problems today i mean it an effort to

[50:31] get us to hate the moslems i'm probably worried that we're moving towards a war with iran and there's organized effort within this country today to get the christian population to hate the moslem population i'm sure they're they're working over there and the moslem countries to get them to hate us and this isn't going to solve the problems do you think i agree with you completely we'll be back in just a moment here to wrap up tonight's program with john karako well john we've got three minutes for you

[51:03] to wrap up the program and then we'll let you get to sleep but what are your thoughts you'd like to leave for our listeners out across america well one of the reasons why i wrote this book is i i want the american people to understand how hard the cia works to keep the country safe most of the time the only thing the public sees is uh is reporting on the cia's failures um Pulitzer prizes have been won based on the cia's failures and most of the time the truth is that the cia's successes

[51:36] really can't be spoken about can't be written about in many of those cases because operations are successful they continue to produce actionable intelligence even years after they've been implemented and i think people have a right to know maybe not the details but they have a right to know that the cia is working hard to keep the country safe and you did actually we were able to actually recruit a number of spies to actually gather intelligence for for the cia yes i i actually had a knack for it

[52:09] uh i i had some really terrific counterterrorism um operations and um recruitment over the course of my career and and not only you know cynically using money but if you engage somebody in a dialogue and you have a chance to develop them over a period of time a lengthy period of time where they can come to know you and understand where you're coming from and appreciate your argument uh you really do have some success i was able to recruit one

[52:42] arab national who was the first person the cia ever recruited in a european country who had admitted to carrying out and the anti-american terrorist attack in that country but over the years you know peace was made with the palestinians he decided he had been on the wrong side of the fight he wanted to make good and uh he was ripe for recruitment and i'm curious this i'm sure is really very very rewarding to you when you can actually get people to be willing to come over and to reveal the information because

[53:15] we're so dependent upon understanding what the people on the other side are doing would that be of of correct evaluation oh i think you're exactly right we need to really understand how people on the on the other side think and the only way to succeed in doing that is to recruit them and have them help us to understand otherwise i think we're we're going to be in trouble for a long time well i'm afraid we're in trouble for uh for a good while anyway right now but i

[53:45] want to thank you so very much for being with us i think we have you on one more time to talk to a different audience but god bless you thanks very much for being up with this thing up late tonight john we look forward to seeing you guys bye bye god thank you so much good night all right we'll be we're gonna listen dr stan and we do hope you enjoyed i interviewed with john karako and of course his book the reluctance by an excellent read but the important thing is

[54:17] that when the uh the fbi got all of this valuable information allowed them to track down the whole taliban network or most of the taliban network in in the united states they refused to follow through with the evidence why would you do that unintentionally we hear the same story over and over again from paul williams at one of his books about all the information the fbi had this was the the obtained from the fellow who actually killed of rabbi kahanah who headed cock here in the united states

[54:50] and he was assassinated they raided the home of the assassin and they got all the files that would have led them to anticipate the bombing of the world trade center the first bombing in 93 and the fbi refused to do anything about it and it wasn't because they didn't know what was going on because they were tracking the all of these people who've never seen the dvd so vitally important called jihad in america now this was totally suppressed in america it was initially released in 1994 a lot of it fbi footage obviously were tracking the

[55:24] islamic terrorists in the late 1880s and the early 1990s the dvd was shown one time on television and then banned so it could never be shown again it was never shown again until after the september 11th bombing and you have to ask yourself why would that be this is one of the most important dvds ever made it's called jihad in america it's available from radio liberty i think it's in video form but it's well worthwhile getting well worthwhile watching a number of times and then of course to pretty

[55:58] understand what's going on let me suggest a book we carry called the devil's game goes into how the cia and mi6 created the whole islamic terrorist movement how they created the islamic terrorist movement how they financed and created hamas these wicked ayahuasca terrorists who were attacking israel today and yet they were actually financed and organized by the cia and the ma and the

[56:28] of the best enemy money could buy and as with so many things that go on today nothing is it appears to be so the the book is called the devil's game we do carry robert bares excellent book in titles see no evil where he actually goes into his experience working in kyrgyzstan at the same time john karako was there and uh they're apparently are good friends but john has written by me or robert bares written several books one of them of course going into the

[57:01] background of the uh the coming war with the ram he thinks we should not be going to war and i say we should not be going to war but it would appear that the brotherhood of darkness is intent upon plunging the world into a great and horrible and bloody war in the middle east all you need to do is read the newspapers read the wall street journal read the new york times one supposedly on the right the other on the left but really both sides controlled by the same people

[57:32] as they gradually condition the american people to be prepared to go to war to protect israel to protect ourselves to protect the world against the wicked iranians who were installed back in 1979 by the very cia that is so compartmentalized that most people working for the cia have no idea what's going on we hope you'll want to get the books i mentioned certainly the uh sleep in uh the uh see no evil

[58:04] the uh um devils game of the dvd uh entitled she hot in america they're all available by calling one eight hundred five four four eight nine two seven you need to get my book brotherhood of darkness and read it two several times you get the dvd or if you can't afford it it's a see it watch it free on the internet at radio liberty dot com under videos that's radio liberty dot com because you can listen to our programs there

[58:36] nine hours a day on the satellite four hours live get the information help us to get it out we're involved in a spiritual battle that is energizing dark spirits of forces our number one eight hundred five four eight four eight nine two seven please pray for radio liberty for our provision and our protection
