Title: John Kiriakou — CIA Whistleblower — Episode 83 — The Georg
Show: George Peyrouton
Date: 2024-09-03
URL: https://youtu.be/Lfbf9gSVdJM
Duration: 1:13:00

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[00:00] now. Yep. Okay. So, for the audience that does not know you, feel free to introduce yourself. Hi, I'm John Kyaku. Uh former CIA officer. Uh I'm the CIA torture whistleblower. I also spent some time as the uh senior investigator on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. And now I'm a journalist, author, columnist. Yeah, keep busy. So, let's get started with a big one. What's the biggest lesson that you've learned

[00:30] having lived the life that you've led? Well, that's that's actually a hard question. Um, there are several. And I don't mean to be cynical. I don't mean to be cynical, seriously. But, uh, trust no one. No one but yourself and the excuse me and the attorney that you're paying to represent your interests. That's it. Yourself and your attorney.

[01:01] Um otherwise, you know, much less cynically, I've learned that for the most part, people want to do the right thing. They often don't do the right thing because they fear the risk to themselves. And that's okay because there is a culture of activism in the United States. And um and those activists work hard to uh

[01:33] to keep the government in line to keep everybody working within the confines of the law and to make sure that uh that wrongs are writed. So those are the two most important things I've learned. So ultimately um and also let's go like just for the audience, right? Because I know your story very well, but I feel like people are going to be very confused if they're listening to this for the first time. So you basically expose the enhanced interrogation techniques that the CIA was using. Um,

[02:04] and you basically just went on ABC News and you're like, "All right, enhanced interrogation techniques," which is a fancy term for torture, is happening. So, from that, right, how do you view US intelligence now? Like, how do you view the CIA now? Because everybody goes into the conspiracy rabbit hole that they're evil, they're this, and they're that, but what do you think of them? I think that for the most part the CIA is made up of very smart and very patriotic

[02:34] hardworking people for the most part. Um, is the CIA evil? Well, I'll let individuals make that judgment. I will say that the CIA has done evil things certainly in the past. Um, I think that there's credible evidence that CIA officers had something to do with, for example, the assassination of John F. I think that uh MK Ultra uh is a is a dark oily stain on the history of the

[03:07] country. I think that what the CIA did over the years in Cuba is um nothing short of felonious. And um one of my real regrets about the CIA is that in the post 911 era, it has turned into a um a paramilitary organization. And the CIA was never supposed to be a paramilitary organization. You know, when I was when I was in my last headquarters job, my last headquarters job, I was the executive assistant to the CIA's deputy

[03:37] director for operations. And in that position, I had access to literally everything that the CIA was doing around the world. And so one of the things that I that I learned and I learned it because the deputy director repeated it as a mantra was that the CIA's mission is to recruit spies to steal secrets and to analyze those secrets to allow policy makers to make the best informed policies. Okay? Even

[04:08] though I had this job immediately post 911, he never said, "And the CIA's job is to send teams around the world to assassinate our enemies or to kidnap them and take them to secret prisons to undergo torture." It's illegal, first of all, and secondly, it doesn't make Americans safer. You know, it might make us feel better because we're able to exact a little bit of revenge for what happened on 911, but I think that the

[04:39] CIA needs to get back to its uh its core mission. With that said, I think I've come around to the to the position that we really don't need to have a CIA anymore. There's so much redundancy in government that uh the CIA and and certainly ODNI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, is just layer upon layer upon layer of organizations doing the same thing. So, we probably just don't need it

[05:10] anymore. And I'm not that's not like John's original thought. That that was actually vocalized first by Senator Daniel Patrick Moyahan of New York in 1976. So it's not like I came up with it, but I've finally come around to it. So given the life that you've led and given this very unique circumstance of going from very devout intelligence officer or devout, I don't know if that's the right word, but I guess devout, you know, patriot. Sure. Sure. than um vocalizing something

[05:42] you you know we can get into the argument of that but the that you weren't legally supposed to because it was the right thing to do right so having lived that life what do you think your biggest regret in your entire life is number one and then I have a follow-up question to that my biggest regret you know to tell you the honest to God's truth I'm not really I'm not really a person to to have regrets. And it's because I I really believe that

[06:15] our experiences for for good or for ill make us the people that we are. And had I not had negative experiences my in my life, I wouldn't be the same kind of person, the same person that I am today. And so I I really can't say I mean certainly there are a handful of things or there is a handful of things that I would do differently were I to do them again but in terms of regrets I can't really say that I have any.

[06:46] Well the followup to that is would you personally have rather lived a life where you were never hired by the CIA and never became a whistleblower? No. No. I'm glad that things turned out the way they turned out even though the road has been a rough one. I I'm glad that I had the opportunity to play a role and to make a contribution. You know, the day after I blew the whistle on the torture program, I got an email from a retired deputy director of the CIA, and I had worked for this guy

[07:19] 16, 17 years earlier, and he said, um, you've chosen a difficult road, but I'm glad somebody did. I only wish I had had the courage to do it myself. So, you know, I actually saved that email as a souvenir that that really made me conclude that I had done the right thing regardless of of what was ahead. So to follow that up, define heroism.

[07:53] Define being hero heroism in two sentences or less. I'll preface it by saying I'm definitely no hero. Um, you know, I What is a hero? A hero is somebody who is somebody who takes an extraordinary action um to the benefit of others without thought to his own safety and security. That's what I would call a hero.

[08:24] Yeah. And I worked with a lot of heroes when I was there. I really did. like people who wouldn't give themselves two seconds of thought and would jump right into the middle of something to save others. So to follow that up, what would you use if you could only use one word to describe humans as a species? What would you use? Complicated. Or maybe I would use the word irrational.

[08:56] Both of which work very well. [laughter] Well, you know what? I had the conversation with someone I know, and he's very, very um bright, and I said to him, if you had if you if you were an alien species and you could if you had to use one word to describe the human race, you know what word he used? Huh? Petty. If aliens were to describe the human species in one word, it would be petty. And I thought about that for a second. I'm like, you know what? He's

[09:27] 100% right. I think that's how aliens view it. I think, you know, maybe chaotic, random, that would definitely go in that too. But Patty, Patty's a very good one. I saw a cartoon recently, a print cartoon. I wish I had thought of it myself, but it was two aliens and they've just landed their spaceship and they're standing in front of Jesus on the cross. And one alien says to the other, "I'll tell you what we're going to do. We're going to get the [ __ ] out

[09:57] of here. That's what we're going to do. And to me, that encapsulates the complication that is the human race. Well, so I mean, the way I would interpret that, because I feel like I've seen that as well, um, is that we had a guy who was literally perfect in every way, and human's first thought was to kill him. Yes. [laughter] Right. Yes.

[10:27] And then all these decades later, you look at his name and what is it attached to? Homophobia and the bigotry. What all that he preached was that we're one with God and to love one another. You are absolutely right. It's it's it's I think that's the greatest traity travesty in the life of Christ. I' I've said this before. Like the biggest travesty in life of Christ was that in the thousands of years after his death, after preaching nothing but love and acceptance and how we how we're all inherently bad in some way and we've

[10:58] all done something wrong, the best thing that we can do is be fair and forgive one another. And his name is more attached to homophobia and bigotry than almost any other person in history. And that's such a shame. That really is. It's terrible. So to follow that up, um, so if you had to describe US intelligence in one word, what would it be? Overrated.

[11:29] I was thinking the same exact word. I have a friend um with with whom uh I've been planning for a long time to write a book. very very senior former government official, former deputy attorney general of the United States. And we've been talking about this book for a long time to the point where we actually wrote out an outline. And the book would be a history of CIA analytic failures. And the truth is, when you sit down with

[12:00] a paper and a pen and you start with the creation of the CIA in 1947 and go through all of the major events of world history from 1947, let's say, to the 9/11 attacks, the CIA missed every single one of them. Every one of them. from the creation of the Berlin Wall and the necessity of the Berlin Airlift through the coup in Iran to uh the Suez crisis and um the Bay of

[12:33] Pigs and and the victory of Castro. Uh I mean just all the way through history, the the entire Vietnam War, the Iran Iraq war, the Iran hostage crisis, just go all through history and they got it wrong at every single step of the way. And so the only conclusion really is that um is that having this army of analysts to try to predict future events just

[13:05] simply doesn't work. I worked for more than a half a dozen ambassadors over the course of my career. Some very important ones too like John Negropanti for example or Skip Ganine. And um and to a man, they'll tell you that when they're briefed with the president's daily brief or with the National Intelligence Daily, they'll read it and then they'll say to themselves, "I already read this. I already read this in the Washington Post and the New York Times this morning. It's already in there. All of it."

[13:36] So overrated is the word I would use. Um yes. And it that's another shame too. The fact that they collect some of the most intelligent, brilliant minds. And I feel like so much of it just goes to waste. And you know what? You can make that same criticism about the federal government as a whole where people will always say the federal government is understaffed. I disagree. I think it's overstaffed. I think there's too many people there. I agree. There's too many committees and boards

[14:07] and you know, you're shaking your head and because you've seen it all. Yeah. You know, I did have um Sarah Adams, who was who was actually, ironically enough, an analyst, but she did the Benghazi investigation, and she says that senators and all these politicians, the first thing they do when they see a CIA person, they'll try to ask questions just to get information that they want to hear. And they'll ask the questions intentionally to get information that they want to hear. And it it it's just it's such it's such a it

[14:38] people completely overrate in general the use of the federal government. And if I was let's say I was the head of the federal government, which would be the president, first thing I would do just get rid of like 90% of these jobs like 90% of the jobs of the federal government are completely useless. And in your time, actually, I'll ask you because you probably have more experience it. What do you think is the most useless job in the federal government?

[15:08] Oh, honestly, that's impossible to say because there's so many. You know, I've become kind of an activist on uh on criminal justice reform issues over the last 12, 13 years. And I can give you a couple of examples where I think uh we need to be thinking about cutting fat. Uh there was a case that I followed in Honolulu where uh there was a a GS12 which is kind of a mid-level journeyman uh level uh this woman who worked with Noah, the

[15:39] National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Now they are the federal government's u meteorologists, right? And they have these boats that are around the world and they measure ocean temperatures and stuff like that. So this woman lived in Honolulu, wasn't making much money. It's very expensive to live there. So she bought a boat and on the weekends she and a business partner would take tourists out on the boat and they would go whale watching. So one day they've got a load of tourists out on this boat and they come across an orca feeding on a on a uh a

[16:12] seal carcass. And so everybody goes to the side of the boat and they're taking pictures and they're taking videos and somebody whistles at the whale, right? just for whatever reason, an attempt to keep it close to the surface so they could get a better better video, whatever. Couple of weeks later, the FBI knocks on this woman's door. FBI, she opens the door. Uh, do you uh you have this business with a boat? You take people out? Yes.

[16:43] You did you take people out two weeks ago? Yes. Did you see a whale? Yes. Did you uh did you whistle at the whale? She's like, "No, somebody did, but wasn't me." But she said, "You know what? I film these trips and I sell the DVDs to the tourists. Let me get the DVD for you." She gives them the DVD. Two more weeks pass and then an army of FBI agents raids her apartment and they take all of her electronics and all of the

[17:15] DVDs that she's ever made from these whale watching trips and they finally charge her with one felony count of interfering with the feeding of a wild animal which is a violation of the Endangered Species Act. She didn't whistle at the whale, but this case dragged on for five and a half years. And finally, to make it go away, she took a guilty plea to a misdemeanor um for violating the Endangered Species

[17:46] Act. Okay. But in the meantime, she was fired from her job. She lost her federal pension. She lost her apartment. She lost her boat, her business, and ended up having to move in with her parents in San Francisco. So, was was that really worth it? Is American society better off because this woman, after 5 and 1/2 years of wrangling, took a a plea to a misdemeanor because she may or may not have whistled at a whale. There's

[18:18] another case that I followed in uh in Alabama where a fisherman was out fishing. you know, a commercial fisherman and um he was fishing for halibet and was it halibet? No, it wasn't halibet. It was grouper. Grouper, which everybody loves, right? And there are so many of them in the Gulf of Mexico. And um you couldn't keep the grouper if it was under 12 in. Well, he had caught one grouper that was actually 11 in. and he just caught it when the US

[18:51] fisheries investigators pulled up to his boat with their own boat and said, "Hey, we're US fisheries. We're here to uh we're going to measure the fish that you caught and they measure all of the groupers and there's one that's 11 in instead of 12." They charged him with a felony. This is a felony. You lose the right to vote. You You lose the right to own a handgun or any any gun for the rest of your life. because one of the fish that he caught was one inch too small. Now, the fish

[19:22] was still alive and he offered to throw it back in the ocean. They said, "No, no, you're already caught. You're already caught. You're under arrest." So, there are a lot of different places where, you know, we have federal jobs that just shouldn't be. The way I see something like that is more of a fall of prosecution. So, well, and also to investigators sometimes, but yeah, but don't don't forget, think of it this way, too. This is how prosecutors get promoted.

[19:54] Absolutely. They don't get promoted by not prosecuting you, right? They don't get promoted by saying, "Ah, we're going to let him slide on this one." They get promoted by making sure that you get the toughest sentence that you can possibly get. Because I know these prosecutors, I know a lot of them. And every one of them sees himself eventually someday in Congress or running for the governorship of whatever state or in the corner office at the big A-list law firm. So they are going to do everything they can

[20:28] to make sure that your life is ruined. That's how they get ahead. Yes, I'm very aware of that. It's very it's it's a prosecutors have too much power. They just do. It's it's it's it's so so I had this guy on Brennan Long, right? So he did a lot of cyber security investigations in the FBI and you know he put a lot of people away and with him though he explained to me that there were cases that he would be

[20:59] working on for four or five years and these were actually bad people and he would bring it to the prosecutors and they would say ah we're not we're not concerned about this. And that's a four or five year case that this guy worked on, put together piece by piece. And the FBI is, you know, they're very good at building cases. That's like one thing you can always say about them. They're very good because they bring you a case when it's done, not when there's like a question of evidence. It's always when it's done, right? It's not like a local cop. You know, the vetting process is much more sophisticated and you don't really get

[21:30] in through like a family connection. Usually, it's not like a local cop. you need very very good qualifications and you do and you have to you have to be good at what you do for the most part. But then you bring it after four or five years like a child porn investigation and these justice is like it's not our priority. We don't really care. And that sucks because a lot of the a lot of the people um that are prosecutors, they typically will go for like gun violence cases or like violent crimes cases, which I'm not saying that they shouldn't obviously, but it's a shame that there's

[22:00] so many it's a shame that people misunderstand how the criminal justice system actually works, which is that it's the government and prosecution, just the government at large really, is a big game of self-interest disguised as a public service. Yeah. Right. That's that that's that's the way I would put it. It's a big Let me let [clears throat] me add something to that, too. Um, a few years ago, I had a job offer that was so good that I couldn't turn it down, so I accepted it. It was for more money than

[22:32] I've ever made in my life, amazing benefits, and it was international in nature. So, every two weeks, I'm flying all over the world. I was in this job for six weeks. Six weeks. And I realized they're laundering money. This whole business is about laundering money. So I took a thumb drive. I downloaded 15,000 pages of documents. I resigned

[23:02] and I took the thumb drive with me and I asked my attorney to call the FBI and tell them that I wanted to report a massive fraud with associated moneyaundering. He did. Nobody even bothered to respond. Well, both my attorney and I are friends with a former deputy director of the FBI, retired, but still very very close to the FBI, very well tied in. So, we called him and said, "Hey, can you hook us up with somebody?

[23:33] We we've got evidence of this fraud and and I want to report it." He said, "Sure." So, he got us a meeting at the Washington field office. I went with my attorney and the thumb drive and uh we went in to meet this FBI agent and I start telling the story and we're there for like five minutes and as I'm telling the story the FBI agent puts his hands up and he says, "Guys, let me stop you right there. If this doesn't have the word terrorism associated with it, we're not interested."

[24:03] And then that was it. That was the end of it. And then fast forward, let me think, four years, a friend of mine and I are having dinner at a restaurant in Washington and she said, "I hope you don't mind, but I invited another friend to uh to meet me here. She's an FBI agent." And I said, "Ah, the more the marrier." This FBI agent comes and I got around to telling that story. And she said, "Oh, that's true." She said, "I'm the duty officer this month."

[24:34] And the duty officer hand handles walk-ins and call-ins, people who either walk in or call in and say that they have evidence of a crime that they want to report. And she said her standing instructions are if their information is not directly related to terrorism, Russia, China, or January 6th, they are to turn people away. Yep. Yeah. And it's it's it's

[25:07] there's so many cases where it's like the FBI just doesn't prosecute because it's not a priority or and and to add on top of that, I was just having a conversation with actually a mutual friend of ours last night. I'm not going to say his name, but somebody that we both know. Um I don't know if it's who you're thinking I'm thinking of, but um doesn't matter. Anyways, so I I had a conversation with him and we were talking about the IRS, right? which is in and of itself like that should be the biggest red flag about what I'm about to say. Nobody likes the IRS. No, but you know they are the scariest of

[25:40] the government agencies as everybody likes to say. And you know in this conversation I I started to realize why people truly hate the IRS. So he explained to me he's like his wife I think forgot to send like a $700 check to the IRS which I I don't know why she forgot or she didn't believe that she owed money. something like that. And so she didn't want to. And then he's like, "No, mail that check now." And then she's like, "But why?" And then he's like, "I'll put it to you this way. If you don't mail that $700

[26:11] check, you know, my our daughter's car that is leased in our name is going to be taken away. Our house, our, you know, so on and so forth. Anything that the IRS wants, they will take." And he's like, "Now, our entire lives are not worth $700. So just mail that check now. And then she immediately complied. But I realized there is the reason the IRS is so truly terrifying of an agency is because where the FBI might need to prove all these long lists of

[26:42] allegations and charges, the the IRS only needs to prove one thing. You did not give the government its share. And that is so easy to prove, right? That you made that money. And you you by the way um if you report that you made illegal income, they don't even report it to other agencies, right? Like you like it's on the website. If you stole an item, you're supposed to report you're report the income to the IRS, right? If you don't, then it's tax evasion and it's all the other charges and the crime. That's exactly right.

[27:14] Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah. So, it's such a that but that but the point is it's so easy for them to do their job because they have to just prove that one thing, right? The IRS's job. And then on top of that, they approved like 87,000 new agents very recently, right? Which is a very, very scary number. Why do we need more taxes? Why do we need to make sure that people are paying their taxes this much? And they're politicized on top of it. When I blew the whistle on the torture program, that was in December of 2007. I

[27:44] got audited for the tax years of 2007, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12. Yeah. Audited year after year after year because that's the easiest way to get somebody. Just prove that they didn't pay the government a share. Um I remember James O'Keefe, the journalist. I'm sure you're familiar with him. Oh, yeah. I spoke with him yesterday. Oh, good. Good. Um he actually lives in my uh in my county, funny enough. I didn't I didn't know this um until very like I looked up his Wikipedia page. But anyways, with him, he uh what did he do?

[28:18] Okay, so happened was he starts he started doing something with Ashley Biden and her diary and I think he bought her diary and and the FBI claimed that it that you know stolen property. It was which in reality everybody knows what that means. Like nobody cares that much about a stolen diary unless if it's the diary of like the president's daughter. But um with him immediately all of a sudden all of a sudden he's not paying his taxes. All of a sudden the IRS comes in and starts investigating him for not paying his taxes. It's what

[28:48] happened with Trump too. Trump immediately all of his tax returns. Where's his tax returns? We got to we have to do this. We have taxes auditing taxes. That's because that's the easiest way to get somebody and no matter what crime they've committed. If you want to get somebody on anything, look at their taxes. I hope that they didn't pay that one thing. Have you Have you read the book Three Felonies a Day by Harvey Silverglate? Harvey Silverglate's a professor of law at Harvard. He wrote this marvelous book back in I think it was 2011 called Three

[29:20] Felonies a Day. And he says that we are so overcriminalized in this country, over over legislated, overregulated that the average American on the average day going about his or her normal business commits three felonies every single day. The point being, if they want to get you, they're going to get you. And there's almost nothing you can do about it. I'll put it to you this way. if um well

[29:50] also too I also want to add one more thing to that is when people say they and this isn't anything against you it's every it's everybody that uses the term they when it when I when people say they they have to be very specific people that use the term they including myself because I've been guilty of saying it before so um you know because that's how you pro that's how you truly understand something you get very specific that's what I like to think so you know when people say they it could be a number of people it could have been a who called in a favor from a guy and,

[30:20] you know, they just want to screw this one guy over. You know, in your case with the um whistleblower uh uh being the whistleblower enhanced interrogation, I believe it was was it Obama who personally asked for you to be surveiled and for the case for you to be opened up again? It was John Brennan. Okay. So, he's the director of the CIA or Obama, but that's still the same idea. Same idea. So, who did he ask? Did he ask the FBI? He asked Eric Holder directly and then um we got discovery later on in my case

[30:52] and we found a a memo that Brennan had written to Holder saying charge him with espionage and Holder wrote back and said my people don't think he committed espionage and then Brennan wrote charge him anyway and make him defend himself. So they charged me with three counts of espionage. They waited until I went bankrupt and then they dropped the charges. Well, that's actually a constitutional violation because that means that you

[31:23] had to prove yourself to be innocent. That's right. That is by definition a a constitutional violation of your rights. You're absolutely right. And I'm sure I'm not the only person that you're hearing this from. No, my lawyers said the same thing, but they said um if we were to uh challenge it and take it to the federal court of appeals, we would have to do that postconviction. So, take the deal they're offering or roll the dice. So, having lived through

[31:57] a lot of the corruption and, you know, self-interested actions of the government firsthand, right? Um, you did something that I would consider to be heroic and brave that most people would not do or would not do ever at the cost of their job, their livelihood, etc. And you sacrificed it all so you could do you're welcome just to do something really good that needed to be heard. So, as somebody that was at the hands of, you know, these different agencies, and you learn how favors kind of operate

[32:28] and control the government and favors and self-interest, I I always use the word self-interest because that's the best word I can use to describe it. Selfish nature, you know, what did you learn about who the CIA really answers to and who US intelligence really answers to? Yeah, that's a good that's a good question. And maybe it's maybe it's easier not not even easier maybe it's more appropriate to say who the CIA um

[32:58] doesn't answer to. It doesn't answer to the congressional oversight committees. It pays lip service to the congressional oversight committee certainly. But with most administrations, most but not all administrations, it will answer directly to the president. If the president happens to be somebody like Donald Trump, it just pretends he doesn't exist, in which case it answers really to nobody, maybe to the national security adviser if that person is a professional, strong person. Um, HR

[33:30] McMaster for example under Trump or even John Bolton. As much as John Bolton and Trump hated each other, the CIA worked closely with John Bolton. Uh, but really the CIA is self- sustaining. It it answers to itself. It it operates in a in something of a governmental vacuum. Like I say, it goes through the motions of pretending to have appropriate oversight, but it it doesn't. If it did, we would have never had a torture program or an assassination program or a

[34:02] secret prison uh system or a an international rendition and kidnapping program. We wouldn't have these things, but we do. So, yes. Okay. So, this is something I've I've wondered because when people talk about the CIA, they talk if you're talking about somebody that's like that that worked for the CIA and had a great experience, their answer is going to be CIA answers to the president, right? 100%. Um, and that's a really nice idea. Um, sometimes it does.

[34:33] Sometimes sometimes it does. this mutual friend of ours um that I spoke about before and I will tell you his name afterwards so you're not keep on wondering but he said um the CIA is like a cat right they're like a cat whereas the FBI is something like a dog right where the administration of that FBI like the presidential administration you know they want to usually answer to whoever that administration is run by and the cabinet members of that administration right you know not necessarily the president maybe because the president can control who's in in

[35:05] his cabinet and who's Not [clears throat] but generally that administration but even that you know then you can get to so many different cases where they don't but the CIA on the other hand is like a cat where they kind of just do whatever they want. And you know this is another thing I thought about. Well, the CIA, and this is something that you've said, Andrew Busamonte has said, and numerous people have stated that the CIA, including Jack Barski, who I have also had on, right, is that the CIA hires people that are,

[35:35] you know, usually of higher intelligence, um, but have a distinct quality of being notably lacking in a degree of care if what they do is immoral. Oh. Oh, listen. It's it's that's a formal policy to to hire the the a CIA psychiatrist once told me that the CIA actively seeks to hire people who have sociopathic tendencies, not sociopaths, because sociopaths have no conscience.

[36:06] They'll they'll blow right through a polygraph exam, but you can't control them because they don't feel guilt or remorse. People who have sociopathic tendencies do feel guilt. They they do react in a polygraph exam, but because they believe we're the good guys, they're happy to work in moral, legal, or ethical gray areas. Yes. So, yeah. So, so much of the problem with the CIA is the fact that every any

[36:39] form of administration or oversight or whatever you want to call it um control of the CIA has in a way been corrupted isn't the right word. That's too like that's like that's not the right word, but it's it's it's very close to corrupted. It's been like if you had like sandpaper and if it was something clear originally, it's like you're roughing it up like with sandpaper. That's how I would explain it. Not corrupted, but just damaged like worn down and slowly influenced by the

[37:10] CIA itself. Right. And you know, it it functions in many ways like every other government agency, but with one major flaw, which is that it can do whatever it wants. That's the nature of the agency and all the people within that agency have to be willing to do whatever they want, right? Yes. So, you have I feel like the problem with it and I and I'm also going to say this. I think that there should be a CIA. I don't think there should be the CIA, right? I don't think that there should be an

[37:41] agency where we're intentionally hiring borderline evil people and with no restrictions. Those two things that that's I Yeah, I think I answered my own question. I think or not my own question but I'm talking as I'm thinking. So I think if you combine a a a group of intrinsically, you know, evil or uncaring people, borderline sociopaths, borderline evil people, and you pair that with laws that protect them and say that they're allowed to do whatever they want so long as it's in

[38:14] the interest of national security, which then is is such a vague term. So then you begin to wonder, well, this agency is built off of lying, right? Hiring bad people. The public can't know anything about it, which is, you know, secrecy and lying go in hand. And then on top of that, they're legally allowed to break any law that they want. I think it's under title 50 of the US. Yeah. The question is, what type of agency does that bring about? Yeah. A rogue agency.

[38:44] And every every few, you know, decades, it needs to be reigned in. And, you know, where it was reigned in in a big way in 1975, 1976 with the Church and Pike committees, uh, and then again to a a little bit of a lesser extent in the 1980s near the end of, uh, of, uh, Bill Casey's, uh, tenure ship as the director. It just hasn't happened since then. I mean post 911 would have been a great

[39:16] time to just clean house and start from scratch and they doubled down instead. So let's go now to enhanced interrogation which you know more commonly known as torture. So everybody agrees that torture is terrible. Me personally I'm not a fan of it. So you know I don't really know anybody who is. I don't think anybody's going to sit out there and say we you know torture is a great thing. I mean maybe there is. There probably is. But what's the alternative to brute force for information?

[39:47] Oh, the FBI has perfected this. The FBI has been, excuse me, the FBI has been doing custodial interrogations since 1946, since the Nuremberg uh trials. and um their their MMO of establishing a rapport with the target. Um doing it kindly, offering a a cigarette or a cup of coffee or, you know, a pen and paper so

[40:20] you can write to your mother or whatever it is is successful. It sometimes takes days, it sometimes takes weeks or months, but eventually the target opens up to them and that's how they collect information. And not only has it worked over the years, it was working with Abu Zuba when the CIA in a fit of frustration took primacy and began torturing him.

[40:52] So, what do you think? What do you think internally like in the CIA, right after seeing administrations come and go? Um, how long were you in the agency, by the way? Uh, almost 15 years. Okay. So, almost as old as me. So, right. Yeah, because I'm 17. So, I was going to say that with the internal structure of the CIA, um, you know, I remember with Mike, who was it?

[41:25] So, Hunter Biden's laptop, you know, we can talk about that. And this is very important to the understanding of like the internal structure of the CI, I think, right? Because when people hear the story, they think of, oh, the CIA is such a corrupt and terrible agency, which is fine. That's a fair approach. But I think what that says more is how the agency is structured and how it really works. Because then the question becomes why did 40 people that it you know either weren't working for the agency that were just independent contractors. Why did the CIA pay all these people to sign a document basically not not

[41:57] literally pay? It was it was closer to 90 people, I think. Uh, you know, led by the likes of Mike Morurell, the the former acting director of the CIA. See, this is another one of those weird post 911 changes in the CIA. Pre 911, you wouldn't have had any idea who these people were because their names would never have been public in any venue. right now. They're all on, you know, MSNBC and Fox and CNN and they're writing memoirs and they're writing

[42:29] articles and they're being interviewed and, you know, they're doing guest spots at the Council on Foreign Relations or the Atlantic Council or the German Marshall Fund. They're everywhere. You can't get away from them. And so one of the things that I learned while I was there is every one of these people sees himself someday as secretary of state, secretary of defense, national security advisor, ambassador to, you

[43:00] know, Israel or the UK or whatever. And so they decided they were going to get on the right side of this president. Now, mind you, well, not mind you, maybe you didn't notice, but they used very CIA specific language in this open letter about the Hunter Biden laptop. They did not say that it was a Russian disinformation campaign. They said it bore all the hallmarks of a Russian

[43:31] disinformation campaign. See, that's their little out. They can say, "Well, well, we never said it was the Russians. We said it bore all the hallmarks of what the Russians would do if they intended to do something like this." So, you know, don't blame us. That way, if it's a failure, which it was, they point at the other guy, you know, and if it's a success, they can say, "Hey, I was one of the original signitories that blamed it on the

[44:01] Russians, and it was the Russians, so maybe I should be the Secretary of State. Times have changed quite dramatically." So now that begs the next question because with the modern Twitter files, right, and um very recently too with Mark Zuckerberg saying that the White House administration was telling him to censor information and you know we're having now public right circumstances like publicly exposed by the likes of people like billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, head of Facebook, some of the most

[44:32] powerful people in the world. um Elon Musk exposing the documents saying, "Look, the CIA, the White House, they're asking us to do certain things." [clears throat] So now that begs the question, how does the CIA exactly influence um the American public like in terms of the media? Right. Well, that's that's a great question and it's a very important one. The answer, excuse me, the answer is a little bit complicated because they do

[45:03] it in several different ways. Um, number one, there's an office within the CIA's office of public affairs whose job whose only job it is to lies with Hollywood studios. So, every um depiction, excuse me, [laughter] every depiction of the CIA on film and on television is positive. That's how we

[45:33] end up with with completely fake movies like um Zero Dark 30 which just perpetuated the lie that the torture program led to Osama bin Laden's location. It's just simply not true. Um number two, there was a program pre-1975 called Operation Mockingbird, and that was where the CIA uh recruited members of the press to plant pro-CIA uh articles in the media, including in the American media. that has been illegal since 1975. But they don't need

[46:05] Operation Mockingbird anymore. Now, what they'll do is say, "You better not criticize the CIA or you will never be invited to the Christmas party ever again." And this is true. They actually do this. And we will never give you a a behindthescenes or off therecord briefing ever again. Kill that article. And you're going to kill the article. A third way is that as soon as somebody retires as CIA director, he becomes the

[46:38] national security or intelligence or terrorism consultant for literally every single one of the news networks. Flip to any of them. You know, Clapper is on CNN, Brennan is on MSNBC, uh Hoffman is on Fox. They're on every one of these of these uh networks. And so what you're getting is is the CIA company line on every network, right, left, and center. It doesn't matter which one you're watching. So there are a lot of

[47:09] different ways, legal, but in ethical gray areas where the CIA influences American public opinion. One thing that I think a lot of people fail to realize, you know, is when people think of a conspiracy, they tend to think that it's this very complicated 10,000 people need to be involved. Oh, you really think that 10,000 people could be involved in this conspiracy? You think that everybody would know? No, you don't need that many people. You need you might even just need yourself. You might even just need one guy to be

[47:39] involved in this. That's y conspiracy is just an action. It's just the desire to commit a certain action. Right. Conspiracy just means you want to do something. Right. Right. So a conspiracy theory is just a theory that somebody's doing something. It's a speculation. Yes. When people think of oh the CIA and big farm and everybody's working together. No, no, no. It's just a lot of people that are deeply self-interested that all work separately.

[48:09] And it just so happens that when their interests align, they kind of work together. Yes. So, there's a saying by George Carlin, there's no need for a formal conspiracy when interests align. And that's that's that's the best way I could have put it. Oh, that's perfect. And and it's 100% true because I I've always admired Carlin. Um I think he's very brilliant in terms of his Oh, yeah. commentaries on human nature. Ahead of his time. Very much so. Very much so. But he's absolutely right when he's saying that these oil companies and political

[48:40] parties the the truth is all of them see you as a number on a page. I mean he didn't say this now I'm like paraphrasing his ideas but it's true. All of these CEOs and board of directors and all these conspiracy guys look like and you even said this in your TED talk where you're like look blog about it you bring awareness to it that's nice but it doesn't do anything. Like we could go back even as early as Rosa Parks where when she um boycotted by just sitting in and then eventually I think she got arrested

[49:10] um with her. The only time that the buses actually allowed black people on. Do you know when this was? No. When they stopped making money. Yeah. When when the bus company started bus boycott. Yeah. Once they start stop making money, all of a sudden, oh, black people are allowed. They realize they were they lost their market. So, they'll be good so long as money is to be made. Yes.

[49:41] Sad but true. Very, very sad. So, now moving on from this onto another topic. What do you think in your lifetime was your biggest accomplishment? You know, years ago, I would have said that the capture of Abuazuba was the highlight of my professional life. And now that is just simply not true. You know, six weeks before I was released from prison, I called my wife. I was allowed to call my wife every

[50:12] other day for 15 minutes. And so I called her one day in December, December 14th, and I said, "How was your day?" And she said, "It was great." And I said, ' Really great? Why? Why was it great? And she said, 'Because the torture report was released today and John McCain stood up on the floor of the Senate and said that you had provided the American people with a great public service and it proved that everything you said was true. And I think that's my

[50:44] greatest accomplishment. John McCain said that that the American people would never have had any idea what the government was doing in their name had I not said something. And then he credited me with being with [clears throat] being the impetus of passage of the McCain Feinstein amendment. That's what I'm most proud of. Do you believe that um

[51:16] who or actually you know let me ask you this in a sec. Who do you believe the most powerful either group of individuals or man in the United States is? Well, that's that's tough. Um, I think we should not underestimate the power and long reach

[51:47] of our billionaire CEOs and corporate leaders. Yeah. I mean, you can say you can say whoever happens to be president at any given time is is powerful. Of course they're powerful. Of course they are. But in terms excuse me, of unregulated power. I mean, even 20 years ago, billionaire CEOs were not household names. 20 years ago, we didn't have Elon

[52:21] Musk's and Mark Zuckerbergs and Sergey Breen and, you know, all these, you know, Larry Ellison's and all these multi-billionaires. Um, I'll tell you kind of a funny story. In my spare time, I like to write television pilots. It's a hobby, and I've actually sold eight of them in Hollywood. It's kind of a fun It's kind of a fun thing to do, and there's always the potential for a big financial score. So, I had an idea for a

[52:52] for a show, a news show. This was unusual for me. [clears throat] So, I mentioned it to a friend of mine in TV and uh he said, "Hey, you know what? I graduated from high school with a guy who is now the president of NBC News. So, let me call him and maybe we can pitch the show to him first. I said, "Great." So, my friend Rich called and his buddy said, "Hey, I'm I'm actually going to be in Washington in two weeks. Obama's

[53:24] having this big fundraiser at the White House for wealthy Jewish Democrats. They're going to raise like a billion dollars. So, why don't we meet for drinks after this White House dinner? So, we agreed to meet at the Hey Adams Hotel. There's a kind of a famous bar in the basement of the Hey Adams. It's directly across the street from the White House. So, um my buddy Rich and I are down there and his friend calls and said, "Hey, I'm running 15 minutes late. Do you mind if I bring a friend of mine?" Excuse me. And he said, "No, the more the marrier."

[53:56] So, he comes 15 minutes later with this guy. Sorry, did you hear that? There's somebody at my door. Can you pause? Are you able to do that or No, I can pause. Yep. Okay. Sorry. You're all good. Uh I'm I'm just making two notes. Okay. It's 556.

[54:27] Yeah. Oh, we have It's funny because uh the times that I have to edit out are 10 exactly 10 minutes apart. 5:45 to 5:46 and 555 to 556. Sorry about that. All good. Yep. And my coughing fits. So anyway, are you ready again? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So So they show up 15 minutes late. He shows up with this guy and my friend and and his friend are like hugging each other and oh my god, haven't seen you in 25 years. remember this girl we used to go out with or remember when we, you know, got drunk

[54:58] this time at the park and whatever. And I'm kind of getting bored. So the other guy that was the tag along, his name was Elon. And I said to him, "So Elon, what do you do for a living?" Just trying to make some conversation. He gets real excited. He goes, "Oh, I have this passion for technology and I created a company called PayPal and then I sold it for like a billion dollars and then I took my billion dollars and I bought another company called Tesla and

[55:28] then I took the money from Tesla and and I bought Starlink and we're going to go to Mars." I go, "Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Are you saying you're Elon Musk?" And he goes, "Yeah." And I said, "Like the Thomas Edison of our time." He goes, "I don't know. Anyway, yeah, I guess. But anyway, we're going to go to Mars and we're going to colonize Mars and we're going to put a bubble and there's going to be oxygen in the bubble and we're going to we're going to send people there and they're going to live there and they're going to cultivate." So, all night long, this is

[55:59] how he was talking. I never pitched my show, you know? He just he never closed his mouth. And then 10 years later, he's the richest man in the world. and arguably the most powerful. Wait, so it was actually Elon Musk. Wait, yeah, it was Elon Musk. So, wait, I'm I'm a little lost. So, you your f So, your friend Elon Musk just happened to be at this dinner. Okay. And he's friends with my friend's

[56:32] friend and he's like, "Hey, I got to meet these guys across the street for drinks. You want to come with us?" And Elon Musk is like, "Yeah, sure. Whatever." I didn't know who he was. I mean, I knew of this guy named Elon Musk, but I didn't recognize him. And now here we are, what, 16 years later. He's probably the most famous man in the world. He's the richest man in the world. And I would say the most powerful. You know, when where NASA has to go to Elon Musk and say, "Hey, can you send up a spaceship to rescue our

[57:03] stranded astronauts?" And he's like, "Yeah, sure." That's pretty powerful. You know what I would love to live in a world of? If the US space and science budget was as big as the defense budget. Amen. If they were flipped. If they were flipped, that would be an awesome world. Amen to that. You know, I travel a lot. I've been to 72 countries. I've been all over the world many times. And

[57:35] when you compare our infrastructure to what else is out there, we should be ashamed of ourselves. We do not have first world airports, first world interstate highways. Our hospitals are second rate for the most part. Our bridges are collapsing into the rivers below them. You know, and it's because our defense budget is bigger than the next eight largest countries combined. That's what we spend our money on.

[58:08] So, I had a conversation with my friend the other day and I said to him, "The only reason that nuclear war doesn't happen is because there's no money in having everything on Earth be dead." Yeah. Yeah. The only reason humanity does not go to nuclear war is because there's no money in having everything on Earth be dead. And he started laughing, but it's true. If there was money in nuclear war that was usable, yeah, we we the human race would have been wiped out, you know, that's probably by by very greedy leaders. Um, and I

[58:41] think this is a quote by Socrates, I think. Uh, it's, you know, people that feel that they should be in power are often the least deserving of it. Yeah. And the chase of power is it's it's probably the most useless. And you know, I'm reading this book, too. Um, it's it's a controversial book. It's called The Fountain Head, but there's Oh, yeah. And yeah, I'm not even done with it, but it's like it's a very good book, I think. You know, I don't care what anybody else says. I think it's a good book. And, you know, when people say

[59:11] it's about conservatism, I I think they're missing the point of the book. The point of the book is like all these archetypes of humans, right, of people. You know, you get Ror who's the embodiment of an individual. And then you get, you know, people like Gail Wyan who believes that the only way to fix a man is to control him, you know, and then you get and all these different characters. You've read the book? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I sure do. Yeah, it's a very good book. Um, it is a very good book. Yeah, I'm on page like 170 right now, but it's it's very very interesting. But, you know, in that book, you get

[59:45] Gail Wein, right? Who has no principles, no values. You even see him in the book um having the newspaper stand, you know, support the workers that are striking against the building that he's having be built. Why does a man do that? And the answer to that is because he has no principles. And the only principle he has is the feeling of control. Right? So, and

[1:00:15] even in the back of the book, um I think it's I'm trying to think what it says about Gail now that I'm thinking about it, but the point that I'm making is that Oh, sorry. Yes, it's what it says about Gail is that he is a man who only has power over everybody around him so long as he says what everybody around him wants to say. Exactly. So, or wants him to say. So, you know, we see it with the strikers. Why is he doing that? Because he knows that that's

[1:00:46] what they want to hear. So when you get Fox and CNN that are both catering towards, you know, the right and to the left exactly and perfectly, you have to wonder, you know, people like Rupert Murdoch, that's a total gale. It's like you're controlling billions, you're controlling billions of dollars and you're striking against the people and you're you're supporting things that are directly against the people that are working for you and that you're hiring. Why would you do that? It's because you want to play both sides

[1:01:17] so you feel powerful. But then you get Ror who, you know, if you read the book, it's he's an individual. He doesn't need to be told what to think and to, you know, again, people will always talk about this as the conservative Bible. It's I don't think it that I thought it was far more libertarian than conservative. Yes. One. Well, I I don't even think it has anything to do with politics. I think I agree. I think I think assigning it to politics kind of defeats the purpose. I think the whole point of ROR as a character is I am my own person,

[1:01:49] right? I have a relationship with myself. Um I know what I want for my life. I'm one with my passion. And that's Einran's ideal of a man, right? Gail on the other hand is the Nietian Superman who Right. Right. who has created his own principles and values and as a result you know sure he has power and that's his only principle is power but it's like this endless bottomless pit of a soul that he's made for himself he's a tragic hero really because I think there's a point where he's on a balcony

[1:02:19] saying you know the only way to control man like you know you have to control people but it doesn't you have to understand control really means nothing in the end like all the most powerful leaders um and I know I'm I'm going on a tangent but there was one quote There's one story by Dioynes. Do you know who Dioynes is? Of course. Great. Yep. So, Dioyny's um the father of cynicism if you want to say he gave there was this very great story about him and I think there's two but there's that I really like but there's this one

[1:02:51] that I really really like which is Alexander the Great comes up to him and he's like what are you doing and um or somebody some like great ruler comes up to him and because he's in a pile of skulls and Dioynes is searching this pile of skulls and he's saying oh you know I was searching for your father's skull amongst this pile of bones of slaves, but I couldn't differentiate the two.

[1:03:21] Very powerful. Yeah, that's a great one. It is. What have you learned about people in power? What have you learned about what drives people like you know jail in the story or you know the people that are I I think you know it's internal dissatisfaction you know like where you're endlessly everything that you do is a game of more

[1:03:51] but what do you what what are your thoughts on what drives the people I found that to be true listen the the pursuit of power is is a pursuit in and of itself to its own ends. Um I I worked with people I'll give you an example. There was a guy hired about a year after I was now I I had gone into the CIA with a master's degree and I had finished about half my PhD coursework. He came in with a PhD.

[1:04:21] So I was hired as a GS 9 and he came as a he came in as a GS11 and he had been at the agency for all of like a week and I went to a dinner party and he was there and I said, "How are you uh how you fitting in now that your first week is up?" I had been there for about a year and a half maybe. And he goes, "Yeah, it's all fine, but they hired me

[1:04:52] at a GS11." Like he was insulted. He goes, "Me? A GS11?" And I remember thinking, "And who the [ __ ] are you? There are people who've been here for 5 years that are GS11s. You just got here on Monday. Who do you think you are?" Well, what I saw then over the next 10 years was him clawing his way to the top on

[1:05:23] the backs of everybody around him. So, in the end, he made the Senior Intelligence Service, which is all he ever wanted. It was just this constant drive for power and authority. He had more enemies than you could shake a stick at, but they were all below him gradewise. You know, he pandered to the people above who could do him good. His wife had left him because he had an affair with his secretary and then he married the secretary. But that was a very

[1:05:55] common way to get ahead at the CIA. It was almost a cliche to watch him go through it. Yeah. So again, forgive my cynicism, but that's just real life at the agency. That's a total keying. It's a total keying. It's a that's a it's an anti-roor. Yes, it is because one one major note that Einran always makes um and again she's so heavily criticized, but you know what? The most

[1:06:26] work thing the most like thing I could say is yeah, but I I I can reason with this. I like it, so what do I care? But, you know, in any event, you know, you get these characters that are anti-individualistic that are, you know, that feel this strong will to impose. It even describes in the book how Keading gets this thrill at some point about how he um imposed his will onto another creature. Like, it describes her thoroughly. And this is another thing I really like about how she writes is you

[1:06:57] get very very good into the head and the logic and the understanding of how these people really work. And one of the words that it uses is or the phrases literally that he gets he gets a sense of enjoyment that he imposed his will onto another creature or that he altered the course of the life of another creature. And that is I think the most accurate description of power. Yes. That you know you get a thrill out of controlling the life of another creature which isn't really yours to control to begin with. No. No. That's right. Yeah. You see that in spades.

[1:07:30] 100%. And I can only imagine what it's like at the agency because they teach people to be like that. They reward it 100%. Who do you think that now begs the question, who do you think the most evil person you've ever met was? And to tell you the truth, I'm not sure that I should answer that just kind of for legal reasons. Um, listen, I knew a lot of I knew a lot of stone cold murderers at the CIA,

[1:08:04] but I can't even say that those were the worst people. They were stone-led murderers, but they believed in most cases they were doing it in the cause of good and righteousness. There were worse people than I knew at the CIA. What is the archetype of the most evil people that you're thinking of?

[1:08:35] It's people, you know, I said that the CIA actively seeks to hire people with sociopathic tendencies. The downside to that policy is that you're always going to have sociopaths slip through the process. Lots of them. Lots of sociopaths. And those are the ones because they have no conscience that end up in leadership positions. And that's the problem because it's not just that they're running operations against the Russians, the Chinese, the, you know, North Koreans, the Cubans,

[1:09:06] whomever. They're running operations against you to make sure that you're not going to pose a threat to them professionally. To make matters worse, the CIA culture is such that the agency strongly encourages CIA romances because you're both cleared and so you can talk about work. Um, the CIA at the very same time has the highest divorce rate of any governmental entity. It's over 80%. There's a reason for that because when

[1:09:38] sociopaths marry each other, they can't help but to cheat and to lie and to connive and to steal. And that is not what a successful marriage is based on. It is the complete antithesis of what a good organization would be. You know, um the complete antithesis. That's right. The diametric opposite. A good organization in terms of American do democracy would be one which is uh

[1:10:11] highly transparent. That's the first word I would use, highly transparent. Um number two, cares very very deeply about all people equally. Um or I'm sorry because that's equally is a very very strong word. Um, and I have to be careful how I use it, but fairly it it cares about people fairly and necessarily, right, according to the needs of the people. Um, and I would say that it would hire people that

[1:10:41] complete the full truth and nothing but the truth, right? You know, I had I had a conversation with Jim Lawler. He even told me he's like, "Oh, Jim Lawler." Yes. Jim's a good guy. Jim's a good guy. Yeah. And one thing I'm supportive with him is that he's like, "Look, dude. Like, you don't need to torture people. You don't need to like He's like the best information I've ever gotten. I've had people He's like, "I've had people flip in like 15 minutes and just say, "Okay." Yeah. And you've had it too. I have too. Yeah. I've met many people have done it that have just gone, "Hey, look, dude. You

[1:11:12] know, I see you're kind of lonely. I see you're not really liked here." Because that's what he would say the profile is. You got to get people that are not liked. Um or, you know, have some grudge against the agency and then you just work from there. But it's it's it's such a shame how just the the organization, not the entire organization, I should be very careful with that. It's this 15 or 30% I would say that has u that does just the most corrupt and insane and just evil and bad things that

[1:11:43] you can imagine. Just things that are completely abhorent. And every time the American public finds out exactly what they are, everybody's in shock and then nobody cares. And then everybody goes about their day. And that's it's it's all such a shame. Like it re it really is that some of the most power that in in America, right? We have, you know, everything between there was even a politician yesterday I saw where he he hired a hitman, I think, or something like that. He murdered investigative journalist. Oh, in in Las Vegas. Yeah. Yeah, I think in Las Vegas. Yeah.

[1:12:13] Las Vegas. This is America where we're having like third world problems. We're having political assassinations and like arresting our foreign our our former leaders. It's it's it's it's insane. Yeah. Yeah. Agreed. So, I want to end this off with a positive note and then I want to talk to you after the show. So, what advice you have for young people? Listen, I'm a realist and I know that the CIA is not going anywhere. So my advice for young people is if you have an interest in intelligence, in international affairs, in terrorism, and

[1:12:44] you want to have a direct impact in how policy is made, join the CIA. When you get to around year 10 of your career, you're going to realize that you're in a position of authority. And so you can make positive changes from inside the organization. I say go for it. That's the advice that I would give. All right. And with that, we'll stop recording. Any final words before the show ends? No, thanks for taking the time. All right. No problem, man. You're welcome back anytime. All right.
