Title: 018 — State Sanctioned Torture, Whistleblowing & 9/11 —
Show: The Open Forum Podcast
Date: 2023-01-13
URL: https://youtu.be/QiWoQ0Y86DE
Duration: 1:18:00

---

[00:02] hey everybody and welcome back to another episode of the open Forum podcast today we have with us John kiriaku John is a former CIA analyst and case officer eventually over the course of his 14-year career becoming the chief in Canada terrorism operations there in the Pakistan office uh after the 2001 landscape and over the course of his 14-year career he is the only person from the CIA who was convicted for crimes related to torture and I want to be very clear

[00:34] here not as a result of carrying out torture not as a result of approving torture but actually for blowing the whistle on the torture program that was greenlit by the government and was part of the cia's response as to interrogation um but after that uh 23 months of prison he came out and himself worked on the podcast words in Consulting and also is currently the host of the uh political

[01:06] Misfits show on Sputnik radio which as I mentioned to John is something that in the Netherlands at least if you want to listen to it on Sputnik you actually have to use a VPN to get around that or there's Rumble which I only figured out in the last week but John enough about me uh very brief sort of one minute intro into who you are maybe you can take two three minutes tell us a little bit about yourself and then we'll just dive on in sure uh wow where do I start uh I'm I'm just a normal average guy grew up CIA

[01:39] guy yeah xca guy yeah I grew up in Western Pennsylvania wanted to go into public service wanted to see the world and uh was recruited by the CIA when I was in graduate school at George Washington University here in Washington uh spent the first half of my career as an analyst working exclusively on Iraq uh then I switched I made an unusual switch to counterterrorism operations uh primarily because I was the only person in the entire CIA who spoke both Greek and Arabic fluently and so I first went

[02:12] to Greece as a counterterrorism officer back to headquarters then back to the Middle East again and then after 9 11 over to Pakistan as the head of counter-terrorism operations with that said um I've always been a very firm and strong believer in both human rights and in the rule of law and we have very specific laws governing the treatment of people including people we don't like people whose politics we don't agree

[02:42] with those laws and their rights were being violated after 9 11 all in the name of security which is sort of a catch-all when a government wants to do something that is so foul that they can't even let their own people know and um and I blew the whistle on the cia's torture program in December of 2007. four years later I was arrested and charged with five felonies including three counts of Espionage for going public about the torture program

[03:13] the Espionage charges ended up being dropped but uh that didn't keep me from doing 23 months in a federal prison uh you know it's funny my detractors say well you never expressed any remorse nor will I ever express any remorse uh I'm glad that I did with what I did somebody had to say something uh Senator John McCain just six weeks before I was released from prison got up on the floor of the Senate and said that I should never have been arrested in the first place that the country owed me a debt of gratitude because had I not said

[03:44] anything the American people would not have known what our government was doing in our name so all worth it uh it's funny too because I had a very good career a very um upwardly mobile career at the CIA and uh and I was perfectly willing to give it up and I like what I do now sort of pseudo-journalism I have a radio show every day I have a television series once a week I do some Consulting in Hollywood on movies and TV series I have

[04:16] a column that runs in 220 small town papers around the country so you know a little bit here a little bit there and uh and you put together a decent living keep him busy that's for sure yeah I am so before we get on to 2001 and sort your background in in getting over to Pakistan one of the interesting things that you said there is you were the only person in the CIA uh around the mid 90s that was able to

[04:49] speak both Greek and Arabic now um Greece is somewhere there uh that correct me if I'm wrong was somewhere where training and recruitment was being done for people right not there with regards to the CIA but that was the reason that you were stationed there as there were some um extremist groups that were converging that the Greece of the 1990s uh is not the Greece of 2022. uh the Greece of the 1990s was a was a way station for every

[05:22] Arab terrorist group you can imagine they all had a presence there and many of them had training facilities there the popular front for the liberation of Palestine the pflp general command the Democratic front for liberation of Palestine Abu nidal organization any one of a myriad of Libyan groups uh they were they were all there and you know there were always these rumors that the former Greek government of Andreas papandreo the socialist government had this agreement with these groups that if

[05:53] you don't kill Greeks you can come and go as you please well that worked for a little while and then they started killing each other which was just as bad on top of that um there were Greeks going to training facilities in Lebanon in the Becca Valley and in Libya that were run by these groups and then they were returning to Greece and carrying out terrorist attacks in the name of of two groups uh revolutionary organization 17

[06:24] November and popular revolutionary struggle they killed a lot of people dozens of of people and wounded hundreds and so you know one of the little known facts of that period was that the United States spent more money on Embassy Security in Athens than they spent in any other city in the world including Beirut where our Embassy had been blown up twice so we took we took Security in Greece

[06:55] very very seriously back then yeah and um I've heard you mentioned before actually you were one of the few people that would ride around in an armored car right which potentially uh may have saved your bacon uh but one of the interesting points I've also heard you make is there weren't very many Arabic speakers in general in the CIA which I also find baffling due to the fact that that's the word yeah

[07:25] because because who are we kidding the CIA helped to to fund the mujahideen right it it has a wealthy past shall we say in in helping to get arms that way uh it also has uh its pause over things like the Arab Spring and other little bits and Bobs here and there uh uprisings in Iraq uprisings across other Middle Eastern countries so given the fact that they did

[07:56] or do so much work there given the fact that part of the reason that Saudi Arabia became the country it became even in the 70s was because of U.S intervention in some way shape or form uh I sure you're probably familiar with the name John Perkins former Chief Economist at Chastity Maine spoken to him on the show as well um so so you know the the cia's maneuverability around the Middle East around those oil rich countries it is a prolific one how is it that they had so few people

[08:29] who who could speak and understand Arabic because yeah that in a way adds to the tripping over of all the intelligence information between NSA CIA FBI of what happened in 2001 and what ended up shaping that um those final years of your career in essence uh there there were a couple of reasons um short-sightedness um arrogance

[08:59] uh when you're in one of the gulf countries for example Saudi Arabia Kuwait Bahrain Qatar Oman the United Arab Emirates everybody literally everybody speaks English and so it's more expedient just to send people over there with no uh language background but then how do you really get into society how do you get to understand society and put the gulf aside what do you do if you're stationed in Jordan or in Palestine or in Libya or or even Egypt you have to you have to know the

[09:30] language otherwise you can't really understand what's going on in a society so arrogance and expediency uh were two of the reasons another reason was you know you train somebody send them to Language School here in the United States and you send them to the region for a second year of language and then they do their two or three year tour and then they resign and go to Exxon or BP or something like that where they can make real money for a change because God knows you don't join the CIA for the money so that that is an ongoing problem I

[10:04] think the biggest problem though was just this institutionalized belief that that languages weren't necessary especially hard languages you know in my own Arabic class I I went into full-time Arabic in uh let me think the last week of August of 1993. and there are only six of us for the whole CIA there were six of us learning Arabic and when I graduated I learned that there were only 16 Arab speakers Arabic speakers in the entire

[10:34] CIA that's just unacceptable unacceptable and so when I applied for this job in Athens I went down it was it was the job was hosted by the counterterrorism center I went down to speak to the to the uh senior officer who was in charge of hiring and I said listen I want to apply for this job in Athens because it said either Arabic or Greek strongly preferred and I said I speak Arabic and Greek fluently but I don't have any operational experience whatsoever

[11:09] I didn't believe that I spoke the languages so he asked me if I was willing to be tested I said of course I said I just tested in Arabic a week ago but I'll retest if you want me to and it turned out that Not only was his secretary ethnically Greek but she was born in Greece on the island where my grandparents came from and so she came out we had a quick conversation in Greek and she said he gets the thumbs up from me and he said how recently are your Arabic

[11:39] scores I said A week ago and I showed him you know I tested fluent and so he said well it's a lot easier and a lot cheaper for us to take a linguist and teach him operations than it is to take an operations officer and teach him how to speak Greek and Arabic and they gave me the job geez so for me it was kind of I've always had a I've always had a facility for languages they've always been easy for me um and and that's how I made the transition into operations okay and then

[12:10] you uh in Greece I think for a couple of years yes and then um 9 11 2001 September 11th happened and uh can you talk to us a little bit about that and what your next steps were there yeah so 911 takes place I was in headquarters at the time I was supposed to go to the White House this morning with the head of counterterrorism Ambassador uh Cooper black um and I walked over to his office to tell him that our car was ready it was waiting to take us downtown and his

[12:42] secretary had a small TV on her desk and one of the World Trade Center towers was burning I said what happened to the World Trade Center and she said oh a plane flew into it and I said a plane flew into it it's so clear today I said how can you not see that you're flying into the World Trade Center and as soon as those words came out of my mouth the second plane hit the second tower and she turned and looked at me and she said did you see that or did I imagine

[13:13] it and I ran back to my office I said guys I think we're under attack two planes just hit both towers of the World Trade Center that was a really bad day inside the CIA and um we were ordered to evacuate because there was still a plane in the air and we didn't know if it's going to hit us or the white house or the capitol we so we evacuated grudgingly in fact the security officers that came to our our office said that if we didn't evacuate we would be arrested because

[13:45] when they ordered the evacuation nobody left so we all evacuated I had to abandon my car halfway home and I just walked the rest of the way along with 50 000 other people walking from the White House in the State Department of the Pentagon which by then was on fire and um and then I went back a few hours later and and didn't leave for four days I just uh you know slept under my desk and and worked all the time almost immediately like everybody else

[14:17] in the building I volunteered to go to Afghanistan and I kept saying that my Arabic is excellent right we've got to be capturing these these guys hand over fist and my Arabic is excellent excellent certainly you need interrogators and I was ignored and I volunteered three times and was ignored all three times finally the deputy director of counterterrorism was an old friend of mine I had worked for him and I went into his office and I said listen if you don't send me to Afghanistan right now

[14:49] I am going to walk straight to Exxon with my Arabic and I am not looking back what I didn't know at the time was they weren't capturing people they were just killing them I ran into a legendary figure in the hall a contractor who who would he had won he had won 17 purple hearts which is one short of the uh of the the record here in the United States he had

[15:20] fought in the second world war the Korean war in the Vietnam War Billy wall was his name and um he and I had worked closely together in uh in the Middle East and I ran into him I hadn't seen him in like six weeks and I said hey Billy where have you been and he said I've been in Afghanistan I said really what are you doing in Afghanistan and he looked at me like I was crazy and he said I've been killing people what do you think I've been doing and I realized that that's why they hadn't sent me they didn't need linguists they weren't interrogating

[15:50] anybody they were just killing them and so finally my former boss said all right all right uh can you go to Pakistan I said yes when he said tomorrow I said done what do you want me to do there he said I want you to be the head of counter-terrorism operations I said done so I called my then girlfriend she became my wife a year later and I said I gotta go to Pakistan tomorrow and I don't know when I'll be back and she said okay I'll meet you at your place and I'll help you pack

[16:21] so she came to my apartment that evening we packed the next morning I flew to Pakistan and and I was there for seven months I guess it was yeah and then during your time there something happened you guys had what was thought of at the time as a big break uh the perception was that you had captured the number

[16:51] three in the whole of Al Qaeda so this would have been Bin Laden's number three guy yeah essentially his right hand man or left-hand man um that later came out to not quite be all it was painted up to be correct um can you maybe talk to us a little bit about that and then we'll talk about what happened to Abu zubaida after that right I I was in Pakistan for two weeks and we got word that Abu zubera was somewhere in the country and

[17:22] the CIA was convinced that Abu zubetta was the number three in Al Qaeda we knew that Bin Laden was number one we knew that aymani was number two and we knew that Muhammad atef had been number three his title was director of military Affairs we killed him in torabora in October of 2001. so we believed that that uh Abu zabeta was the number three that turned out to not be true Not only was it not true had never formally joined Al-Qaeda he

[17:53] had never pledged fealty to Osama bin Laden uh more damaging and I wrote a book um about this later on with Joseph Hickman who was one of the guards at Guantanamo uh there were two episodes there was the opposite that we captured and a first cousin of his also named Abu zubaida and so we had files on both of them not realizing that it was two different people so on paper he looked like a terrorist Superman

[18:25] the obser beta that we were after had founded the House Of Martyrs Al-Qaeda Safe House in Peshawar Pakistan and had um and had created al-qaeda's two training camps in southern Afghanistan one in Kandahar the other in Helmand Province and that was pretty much it if you needed some sort of logistical help you needed money or a ticket home you would go to Abu zubaida but the number three in Al Qaeda it just wasn't true we ended up catching him in late March

[18:57] of of 2002 and it was all downhill from from there for him now we talked when I added the importance of having people that spoke Arabic um within the CIA and actually uh from listening to to that book that you've done that you just mentioned one of the things that you guys mentioned within that book was the fact that this is essentially a failure of the intelligence to pick up on the the the difference in language that uh you had

[19:30] in Arabic with regards to the name Abu zabeter and the um the different ways that it could be spelled the different meanings that these had and the different implications of this as you put it way more succinctly than that in the book but short story long that that was kind of it so with that being said you have yet again another failure of intelligence there very much so um barrier of intelligence that ruined a man's life yeah remember that Abu

[20:02] zubaida has he's been incarcerated he's been in in U.S uh custody uh at a series of secret prisons around the world where he was tortured mercilessly and since 2006 at Guantanamo and he's never been charged with a crime never he's also not entirely innocent no no no no he's a bad guy in that picture correct He's the bad guy but you know we have we have lost their trial was meant to be yeah and this is one of the things

[20:33] that uh again something you've uh mentioned before George Washington said we don't torture uh our enemies even if there are enemies that's what the British were doing to the Americans and didn't want to stoop to that level that's yeah part of the reason why you guys have the laws that you have there and I'm um I'm a big fan of the US Constitution especially with things that have happened over the past few years the U.S Constitution is one of the things that's managed to keep some places quite free and open and honest relatively speaking

[21:04] um so you know being from the UK and sitting in the Netherlands we've uh had a bit of a different approach across both of those countries across the EU and all the rest of it but with that said once he was captured can you maybe talk to us a little bit about the capture what happened there because that also leads to a pretty rough story um before we even mentioned the unauthorized Medical Treatments that he was given and the reason why he wears an eye patch but can you maybe talk to us

[21:36] about the capture element yeah the capture was uh extraordinary uh we just could not narrow his possible location down to any fewer than 14 sites uh it it there's a long preamble to that but we we had an analyst come in to try to narrow it down and we just couldn't we couldn't narrow it down to any fewer than 14 sites so we flew in a huge team from the United States half CIA ffbi we uh we coordinated very closely with the

[22:08] Pakistani intelligence service the isi and um and a group called The Punjab Elite Force which was like a SWAT team a quick reaction team and we rated uh 13 of the 14 sites we dropped one because we realized it was a pay phone at a shish kebab stand so we rated 13 sites simultaneously at two o'clock in the morning uh on the night of I think it was March 22nd or March 28th now I can't remember anymore and um we captured many dozens of Al Qaeda

[22:40] Fighters I'm still not allowed to say the the exact number but dozens and dozens of Fighters and in the best fortified safe house that we raided we found Abu zubaida he his bodyguard who was from Syria and a Syrian bomb maker uh fled to the roof of the house when we started to break down the door they tried to jump to the roof of the neighboring house to escape the bomb maker was killed instantly he was shot

[23:11] by a Pakistani policeman after I had specifically said that we need to take everybody alive uh abusiveda jumped second and was shot in the stomach the groin and the thigh with an AK-47 and The Bodyguard jumped third and was shot in the leg with this AK-47 we rushed Abu zabeta to a hospital that is a story in and of itself um not a good one uh and then we put him on a helicopter a few hours later and

[23:42] flew him to a Pakistani military base where he underwent further surgery I was instructed to not leave his bedside so I was afraid I was going to fall asleep I had already been up for more than 24 hours so I tore up a sheet I tied him to the bed arms and wrists and ankles and um and I just sat there and I waited for him to uh to wake up he finally came out of his coma after about 24 hours and uh

[24:13] panicked when he saw me panicked to the point where they had to shock him uh to uh to get his heart beating properly again uh they gave him some Demerol and he was out for another six hours and then he finally woke up and um tied to the bed he motioned like this for me to come next to him so I did and I I moved his oxygen mask over to the side I said in Arabic what is your name and he shook his head so I said it again

[24:45] and he said to me in English beautiful English he said um I will not speak to you in God's language I said that's okay abusive we know who you are and then he started crying and he asked me to kill him he asked me to smother him with a pillow and I said no no no nobody's going to kill you we've been looking for you for a long time and I said uh I said you're going to get the best medical care that the American government can provide he was very upset pardon me there you go a lot more than that geez boy did he you

[25:16] know in the beginning well the executive director of the CIA which is the number three most senior officer in the CIA after the director and the deputy director uh happened to be on the board of directors of Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore and so when I called Headquarters and I said look he's been shot severely he's bleeding to death I don't know what to do besides rushing to this Hospital the executive director called Johns

[25:47] Hopkins and put their best trauma surgeon on the cia's private jet and he arrived in Pakistan 16 hours later to oversee the surgery Jesus so he really did get the best medical care that the US government could provide which was great in the first 48 hours but like I said a moment ago it all went downhill for him from from there so he asked me what was going to happen to him and the the honest to God's truth was was that I didn't know I didn't know

[26:20] what was going to happen to him and I told him that I said listen I am the nicest guy that you're going to meet in this experience my colleagues they're not nice like I am so if there's one thing that you do it's that you have to cooperate and he said you seem like a nice man but you're the enemy and I'll never cooperate I said well suit yourself I had never heard of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques I had never heard of secret prisons which at that

[26:53] point still didn't exist um and then another day passed that private jet arrived and three FBI agents and I carried his gurney out to the jet he asked me to hold his hand he was crying the whole time so I held his hand we maneuvered him onto the Jet and and we tied him down to the luggage rack in the back and I leaned over and I said remember you have to cooperate and he squeezed my hand I wished him luck and uh and I

[27:24] never saw him again now as as I was getting off the plane there was a there was a team on the plane dressed completely in black with black hoods and masks and uh one of them said John and I said who are you and he lifted up his mask a little bit and I recognized him as a former boss of mine and uh he said who's your prisoner he must be important if they brought us out this was the rendition team and I said oh man I'm so sorry I'm not allowed to

[27:54] tell you who he is he didn't have a need to know and this was a very compartmentalized operation so I said where are you taking him and he said oh buddy I'm sorry you don't have a need to know which was true I was not read into the compartment saying that we were opening these secret prisons just like my old boss wasn't read into the compartment saying that we had a high value Target operation and so it it wasn't until months later

[28:25] when I returned to headquarters I got promoted uh based on the on the abusive beta capture I became the executive assistant to the cia's deputy director and um it was only then that I had access to literally everything that the CIA was doing around the world that I realized we've got a torture program we have a an international Renditions program we have an archipelago of secret prisons that were opening all over the world none of which did I believe was legal

[28:59] uh but that's the situation we found ourselves in in the summer of 2002. there's a couple a a couple of things there now um you mentioned that uh extraordinary rendition um wasn't a thing prior and the secret prisons weren't a thing prior also now I find that pretty hard to stomach given the cia's prolific um in for me with the different programs

[29:30] that they have now one of the things is that I believe if I'm not mistaken it was around the fall of 2002 where George Bush had signed the um uh what's it called enhanced interrogation August 1st August 1st okay so it's okay just before fall then August 1st he'd signed it

[30:01] but despite the fact that it was put into legislation that people wouldn't be able to be imprisoned as a result there were indications that this was already happening so this would then predate the summer of 2002. and when was it that you captured abusa beta March of 2002. so these things would have already have been happening yeah and as you mentioned there were things that you weren't read into and as we've seen from the Snowden files there's a lot of things that happens that even people at the

[30:31] executive levels weren't quite aware of and there have been further leaks for different things so it's one of those things that I I kind of have to push back in a sense of perhaps it was something you're unaware of at the time but more than likely it it was probably happening like Occam's razor in this case is probably wasn't anything new it was probably just being passed around a bit more we said in the book that there were

[31:02] indications that I was about his torture began well before August 1st and that it began in anticipation of George signing the executive order yeah um secret prisons there's never been any information that's come out saying that secret prisons existed before the one where Abu zabeta was initially brought I'm not allowed to say where but it's been reported on extensively in the media uh now in in many of those cases perhaps most of those cases

[31:35] um even the presidents and Prime Ministers of those countries didn't know that there was a secret prison in their country these were handshake deals done between George Tennant the CIA director at the time and the director of those respective uh intelligence agencies so when when things started leaking to the media really as early as uh as the spring of 2003

[32:05] these world leaders were saying look I don't know what you're talking about we don't have any secret prison here and they genuinely believed that they didn't but these secret prisons existed in what a half a dozen different countries at least at least a half a dozen different countries but then there's also the issue of the enhanced interrogation and that was something that was brought to your attention right something that you were actually offered to be a member of one of the first teams trained for or in May official teams yes

[32:37] June June 6th I think is is the date that that I was yeah I was just in the cafeteria and a senior officer from the counter terrorism Center approached me in the cafeteria very casually and said oh hey I'm so glad I ran into you do you want to be certified in the use of enhanced interrogation techniques I said what's that mean and he said we're going to start getting rough with these guys and I said what do you mean rough and he described these techniques I said that sounds like a torture program

[33:09] and he said it's not torture it was approved by the justice department and the president signed off on it I said and then let me think about it for a for a little while I went upstairs to the executive floor and spoke with with a very very senior CIA leader I had worked for him in the Middle East 10 years earlier I said what do you think about this they just approached me and asked me if I want to do this and he was very clear he said look let's call this what it is it's a it's a torture program they can use whatever

[33:39] euphemism they want but this is a torture program and you know how these guys are he said somebody's going to go overboard and they're going to kill the prisoner and then there's going to be a congressional investigation then there's going to be a Justice Department investigation and somebody's going to go to prison do you want to go to prison I said no I don't want to go to prison I went back downstairs and and I said this is a torture program and I don't want any part of it I said I have a I have a moral and ethical problem with it and frankly I think it's illegal and so they asked 14 people in that

[34:10] first round two of us said no and then one of the two changed his mind so in the end I was the only one who turned it down I was actually passed over for promotion because of that and then the deputy director promoted me out of cycle uh which was a very generous thing to do uh the the head of counter terrorism by then was the notorious Jose Rodriguez he said that I had uh I had displayed a shocking lack of commitment to counter-terrorism because

[34:40] I wouldn't torture I was a beta got it basically because you wouldn't follow orders right that's what it was yeah you know they used to they used to call me the human rights guy behind my back and I knew they were saying it and I kind of thought it was funny and finally a friend of mine said buddy that's not a compliment and I said I know I know but I'd rather be the human rights guy than the war criminal so you know we all make our choices in life yeah and the enhanced

[35:11] interrogation uh correct me if I'm wrong I think it was 10 steps that you guys outline right um and what were those steps and for the listeners as well they were meant to go incrementally from one to ten not correct start halfway through could you maybe talk us through these right so number one was uh the attention grasp so it would be you grab I was waited by this shirt and give them a shake and say answer my questions

[35:41] all right that's not really tortured but see that in every movie yeah yeah that was number one number two was the the belly slap right it makes a loud cracking sound it leaves a mark it doesn't hurt that much but you know it's invasive number three was um the slap across the face so now you know the point is to humiliate right you give them an open-handed smack across the face a [ __ ] slap let's call it what it is Big slap that's right it was a [ __ ]

[36:12] slap yes and then you go to um you know something called walling for example where you're supposed to roll up a towel place the towel around the prisoner's neck so he doesn't get Whiplash and then you shove him hard into a wall that's made out of plywood so it has a little bit of give he hits his head in it but the towel prevents any real damage the problem is the problem was that they didn't put a towel around Abu zubaida's neck and the

[36:43] wall was made of concrete block rather than rather than Plywood And so he he received permanent brain injuries you know traumatic brain injuries there was another prisoner who was the son-in-law of Khalid Sheikh Muhammad um who was permanently debilitated by having his head repeatedly slammed into the wall and is unable to participate in his own defense now at Guantanamo so you know they ignored they ignored the rules

[37:16] that headquarters had so painstakingly uh placed around around these techniques uh other techniques were were sleep deprivation and you know the American Psychological Association the APA has deemed this to be a form of torture what they would do is to strip the prisoner naked chain him to an eye bolt in the ceiling so that he couldn't sit or lay or get comfortable in any way and um and have these industrial strength

[37:48] lights on in 24 hours a day and and death metal Hard Rock blaring 24 hours a day with that said the APA tells us that around day seven with no sleep people begin to lose their minds around day nine they begin to die because you're you go into organ failure with nine days with no sleep the CIA was authorized to keep prisoners awake for

[38:19] up to 12 days so that was far more cruel than the CIA ever LED on uh even internally at the beginning another one was the cold cell we murdered people with this technique you you strip the prisoner naked again you chain him to that eyeball in the ceiling again so he can't get comfortable you chill his cell to 50 degrees Fahrenheit and then every hour a CIA officer goes into the cell and throws a bucket of ice water on him

[38:49] and like I say we killed people with that technique killed them with hypothermia uh the technique That was supposed to be the worst was uh was waterboarding so waterboarding I mean pretty much everybody knows what waterboarding is now you're you're strapped to a board your head is immobilized uh material is placed over the mouth like cloth a towel and then water is poured on the face and it's supposed to give the sensation of drowning well in the case of abusive beta we did drown him his heart stopped

[39:21] beating he had to be revived by a doctor on site so that he could be tortured more later something that Dr Mengele would have done during the second world war you know and there were other techniques like uh forced nudity uh we would we would uh strip them naked and then leave them naked for months at a time and then have them interrogated by women just to humiliate them Abu zabeta mentioned once during an interrogation that he had an irrational fear of insects and so they

[39:54] they stripped them naked they put a diaper on him they put him in a coffin for 11 days and then they poured a box of cockroaches on top of them oh geez closed him in the coffin uh they kept him for weeks inside a dog cage so that his muscles cramped to the point where he was nearly paralyzed and then they did things that were never approved they played Russian roulette with him uh they used an electric drill and threatened to drill into his skull

[40:24] and give him a lobotomy you know things like that they did even worse things with Khalid Sheikh Muhammad they threatened to rape his wives they threatened to kill his children none of those things were were permitted by anybody but they did it anyway and no one was ever ever punished two questions um now one that uh I think people unfamiliar with the situation may want to hear um now there must be a reason why torch

[40:57] is being done you know people need information there are lives at risk there's torture in any way shape or form actually work no torture does not work in in any way the prisoner is going to tell you eventually what you want to know but he's going to tell you a million other things just to get you to stop torturing him and then you have to spend six months dozen analysts pouring through all this information to see what's true and what's not true or what makes sense

[41:29] and what doesn't make sense and then by then the bomb has gone off the next attack has taken place and you've wasted all that time okay uh listen I hate the FBI and it kills me to have to compliment the FBI but they know what they're doing when it comes to interrogations the only way that you can successfully interrogate a prisoner successfully collect actionable intelligence that that saves American lives and disrupts future attacks is to

[42:00] establish a rapport to establish a relationship with a prisoner over the course of time and to treat him with respect that's what the FBI did at Nuremberg in 1945 and 1946. that's how they were able to get these Germans to confess to war crimes that's how Ali sufan from the FBI got Abu zubaida to give us actionable intelligence that really did disrupt attacks now the reason why the CIA did this was not even really to collect the

[42:30] information the FBI was already collecting the information it was to satisfy that need for Revenge from 9 11. 911 was the greatest intelligence failure in the history of our country three thousand Americans were killed because we had failed at our job and so many in the cia's leadership and in the cia's counter-terrorism center wanted revenge on the people who had done this to us that's what it came down

[43:01] to oh one of the interesting things is the initial in if you you gave I think it was ABC was it yes when asked that same question at the time you said that it did work yes what's the reason for the disparity there yeah I'm glad that you asked that question it's going to take me a minute to um to explain it yeah nothing but time one of the things one of the the ongoing themes of the

[43:33] relationship between the CIA and the FBI is they've hated each other since the CIA was created with the National Security Act of 1947. Jay Edgar Hoover when he was the the director of the he was the founder and director of the FBI director for 48 years he opposed the creation of the CIA until President Truman disingenuously told him that the CIA would be a division of the FBI and so he raised he uh sorry he lifted his objection

[44:04] well the nice the National Security Act of 1947 created an independent uh CIA and Hoover ordered the FBI to not cooperate with this new organization that was 1947. that lasted until the 9 11 attacks until after the 9 11 attacks so here we are post 911 it's 2002 and the CIA and FBI computer systems are not compatible right so Ali sufan is is interrogating abusive beta coming up

[44:35] with this wealth of information dutifully reporting it back to the FBI at the end of every day and the FBI is like oh my God look at all this great information we have they never shared it with the CIA it was compartmentalized right and their view was that 911 was an open criminal investigation the FBI has Primacy over International crimes and the CIA didn't have a need to know well the CIA had come up with this enhanced interrogation program it cost

[45:07] 108 million dollars that they paid to to contract psychologists uh Mitchell and jessen Mitchell and jessen convinced George Tennant to go to President Bush and convince President Bush to pull the FBI out of the secret site and to let the CIA take over the interrogations for whatever reason and he's never explained his actions President Bush agreed to do that and so on August 1st the day that the

[45:39] president signed the uh the executive order allowing the torture program uh the CIA took over the interrogations and the FBI withdrew all of its Personnel from the country not from the secret Prison from the whole country because they knew what was coming and they didn't want to be they didn't want to give the appearance of an association with this torture program so they began torturing I was a beta on August the 2nd 2002.

[46:10] um they tortured him mercilessly and he immediately clammed up so what Mitchell and Justin did is they took Ali sufan's reporting they retyped it in the CIA system and then we're receiving it at headquarters saying oh my God I told one of the guys who had gone through the training I said maybe I was wrong about this look at the information and if we we waterboard him one time they said we waterboarded one time and oh my God he

[46:42] opened up and look what he gave us and I'm like holy [ __ ] I said I can't believe that he's given us all this information maybe I was wrong well we didn't know that they had committed this fraud on the government until the CIA Inspector General the inspector General's report was released in April of 2009. so from 2002 to 2005 when the report was written to 2009 if you didn't have access like I

[47:15] didn't have access anymore I had resigned in 2004. we believed that as horrible as it was it had worked so that's why I told Brian Ross at ABC News I said I I thought it was torture I said I said three things that that just changed the course of the rest of my life I said the CIA was torturing its prisoners I said that torture was official U.S government policy not the result of a rogue and that policy had

[47:47] been personally approved by the president and as odious as it was the reporting indicated that it had worked not knowing that the reporting was fraudulent it goes to show how good the CIA propaganda is that their propaganda can be used on their own people on I said that at the time I

[48:20] said that at the time they were propagandizing their own people and you know I wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post uh in 2017 or 18 it was when Gina haspel was named CIA director and I said that that she was part of the internal propaganda Network he knew exactly what was happening because she was there at the secret site sitting in the room watching him be tortured she was the one who after the

[48:51] White House Council specifically said do not destroy the tapes of the torture sessions she destroyed them anyway she put them in an industrial grinder to make sure that no one would ever see those torture tapes I think she needed Hillary's cleanup team maybe they would have done it a bit near I think so too um foreign but with that being said part of the reason that you did blow the whistle was also because

[49:22] you felt in a way potentially the Wolves were closing in on yourself you'd already been contacted by ABC so as altruistic as it sounds there is also a human element to you blowing the whistle as well and then I want to also talk about the treatment of whistleblowers both in the U.S and outside of the us as well but can you maybe yeah you're exactly right about that um like I said I had this reputation as the human rights guy and so when we're I mean word was leaking out that this

[49:53] torture program had existed Human Rights Watch came out with a report uh International committee the Red Cross had a report and Amnesty International had a report and then there was a senior former CIA official who was working at the White House as a director for the National Security Council who was escorted out of the building and her badge was taken from her because she had blown the whistle on the secret prison system um so the walls were closing in and

[50:23] Brian Ross called me from ABC I had never I had never spoken to a journalist before and he said that he had a source who said that I had tortured Abu zubaida I said that was absolutely untrue that I had been kind to Abu zubaida I was the only person who was kind to Abu zabeta and that I had never laid a hand on Abu zubaida or on any other prisoner and he said well you're welcome to come on the show and defend yourself this sort of sent me into a mental tail

[50:54] spin like what do I do I didn't know this was an old reporter's trick because I'd never spoken to a reporter before I said I'd think about it a few days later president uh bush is giving a press conference and somebody asked him about torture and he looked right in the camera and he said we do not torture if you can hear that in in George W Bush's voice and I said to my wife who was also a senior Cia officer I said he is a bald-faced liar he is looking the

[51:26] American people in the eye and he's lying to us and then a few days later it was a Friday afternoon he was walking from the south Portico to the helicopter to go to Camp David for the weekend and a reporter shouted a question about torture and he turned and said well if there is torture it's the result of a rogue CIA officer and immediately I said to my wife Brian Ross's sources at the White House and they're going to try to pin this on me so sure I opposed the cia's torture

[51:58] program but I decided to do that interview to make it absolutely crystal clear that I was not the torturer now as a result of that there was an FBI investigation into you that you weren't aware of and at the end of that investigation they realized that actually we kind of don't have a case here so by the end of the Bush Administration you were out scot-free Skype free they

[52:29] walked away yeah and then unbeknownst to yourself the case was reopened under the Obama Administration and under the Obama Administration you had six um eight six eight eight whistleblowers I was the sixth you were the sick that's the that's the ticket eight different whistleblowers who were convicted under the Espionage Act or the Espionage Act was used and people's finances were drained in their defense and whatnot and then slowly but surely a couple of

[53:01] charges were dropped here and there right and then people were convicted for other offenses as well um but ah very briefly how did that happen after you'd already or after it had already been decided that we kind of don't have a case here right so uh that's that's kind of a sad a sad account of what happens in government uh John Brennan was a long time enemy of mine from CIA

[53:32] headquarters he was he was involved in the torture program up to his neck he was the deputy executive director at the time that I was uh there and uh he actually had been my boss early in my career we were colleagues when I first joined he was a nobody well John became the deputy National Security um advisor under Barack Obama Deputy National Security adviser for counterterrorism he was supposed to be the CIA director but the the progressive

[54:04] wing of the democratic party objected because of his history with torture so he became Deputy National Security adviser and just three weeks into the administration asked the justice department to secretly reopen the case against me now later on I was arrested three years later I had no idea that for three years my phones were tapped my emails were being intercepted teams of FBI agents were following me and my family everywhere we went no idea

[54:36] and then um when I was finally arrested we received Discovery from the justice department they turned over 15 000 pages of classified documents in those classified documents one was a letter that Brennan wrote to Eric Holder who was the Attorney General of the United States and it said among other things it said charge him with espionage and Eric Holder wrote back and said my people don't think he committed espionage and Brennan wrote back and said charge

[55:06] him anyway and make him defend himself and so that's what they did they charged me with five felonies three counts of Espionage they waited until I went bankrupt and then they dropped the Espionage charges you just alluded to that and um said they would drop uh another charge if I agreed to plead guilty to violating the intelligence identities protection act of 1982. I had confirmed the name of a former colleague to a

[55:36] reporter who never made the name public never no damage no victim um I decided to turn that down saying that once I got in front of a jury they would see how ridiculous this is and that the only reason that I'm being charged in the first place was because I embarrassed them by outing their torture program one of my lawyers got right up into my face very angrily and said you know what your problem is your problem is you think this is about

[56:08] Justice and it's not about Justice it's about mitigating damage take the deal and so after much how should I even say it much discussion with my wife I took the deal I was facing 45 years in prison I said to the lawyers if I if I turn the deal down and I'm convicted realistically what am I looking at and they said realistically 12 to 18 years and I was being offered 30 months of

[56:39] which I would serve 23. he said take the deal and so I did but that's what they do it's called charge stacking they'll charge you with everything under the sun and they'll agree to drop all the charges once you've gone bankrupt if you just take a plea it's similar to what they do with people who who decide to go by the Constitution and not pay taxes in the US because constitutionally you don't have to and then the IRS will come up right here and

[57:10] there and there was no federal tax until the 1920s yeah yeah but um it it's not even malicious prosecution it's just persecution at that point when they're purposefully trying to to just drain your bank accounts to just take every bit of will out of you and that kind of brings us on to how all whistleblowers are treated in the US now we've got Snowden who's who's had to seek refuge in Russia uh we've had other

[57:41] whistleblowers who have taken their own lives as a result of the persecution that they've been under yes um surprised that hasn't happened more frequently no absolutely I I mean it it becomes more and more difficult especially in the digital age that we're in now when when you blew the whistle that was back in 2004 um and oh sorry 2007 seven uh and there wasn't really a Twitter there

[58:13] wasn't really a proper Facebook the way it is now there was no social media where you'd be charged vitriol thrown at you every 30 seconds where you have no escape from the things going on around you and in a way having all this social media has helped some people because then you kind of get a trial in the court of public opinion which can help to shape the way things move

[58:43] but at the same time that hasn't helped Edward Snowden that hasn't helped Julian Assange and I know some people don't think that Snowden is a whistleblower in the truest sense but I personally feel that he is um what what is it that still drives people to do this and put everything out on the line because I've interviewed whistleblowers before on on this podcast and I've had other whistleblowers who

[59:15] unfortunately because their cases are ongoing were instructed by their lawyers not to engage just yet sure as you know situation you found yourself in before but what the hell is it that keeps people going there's a fantastic book called beautiful souls written by an Israeli journalist by the name of Al press and he examines this from a from a psychological perspective and one of the things that he found was that whistleblowers have an unusually clearly defined sense of right and wrong far

[59:47] more clearly defined than the General Public um they tend to the craziest this sounds they tend to not really consider their financial well-being when making their decision to go public or you can't yeah no yeah because you're you're going to lose everything everything um and this is another theme um he that he found that um they never work in their chosen field

[1:00:18] again and they never make a financial comeback no matter how hard they try they never make a financial comeback so really it's this clearly defined sense of right and wrong where you just can't live with yourself if you don't say something you can't sleep at night if you don't say something you know one of the things that I think about all the time and my friends and family always tell me stop just stop is would my children be proud of me you know I've got five kids and one of the reasons why I wrote my first book was I wanted I wanted my

[1:00:50] grandchildren who may not you know know me they may come after I'm gone or whatever I wanted to leave a legacy so they knew who I was and I wanted them to be proud of me that from a historical perspective to know that I made the right decision you know I I what blowing the whistle when I did was an extraordinarily unpopular thing to do I can't tell you how many death threats I got to the point where with one of them the FBI recommended that we leave our house for

[1:01:21] a week my wife and and I took the kids to Mexico for a week because we had to get out of the house this this crazy person was coming from Oakland California to kill me so you know in retrospect this is why I said to you at the beginning of the podcast that I have no regrets none I don't care you know I I'm I'm very happy to say that I've gotten to a point in my life where I genuinely don't care what people think about me you know if they oh you're a traitor

[1:01:51] okay well you've clearly never read the Constitution because the Constitution actually defines treason and you obviously don't know what you're talking about you know so I I have no regrets I did the right thing I'm glad I did it and I'll tell you whistleblowers or would-be whistleblowers call me all the time and ask for advice and the advice that I give them is always the same the big mistake that I made was I should have hired an attorney before

[1:02:22] giving that interview and I didn't and so I hired one after giving the interview and I had to be reactive when I should have been proactive that was a mistake so I said have someone who specializes in whistleblower defense sitting next to you in the chair and Advising you as you do this because there's there's a way to do it to still protect yourself and then there's a way to do it where you're going to go to prison or you're going to have to run or you know something they're exposed what's

[1:02:53] happening to Julian Assange yeah yeah and so you've mentioned you had death threats um you know you're also quite a public figure you've given talks you've received awards for the work that you've done for blowing the whistle you're also radio TV columns and whatnot in a way you've had some bounce back what was it like in the initial years and also coming out of prison because

[1:03:25] those are often aspects of whistleblowing that people don't talk about everyone's aware of what's happening with their Julian and Edward Snowden um but then for other folks um once their main story blows over they kind of lost to the wind The Godfather of all national security whistleblowers is Daniel Ellsberg and uh Dan blew the whistle on uh he released the Pentagon papers which

[1:03:56] showed that the the Pentagon in the White House were lying to the American people about the Vietnam War Dan sort of took me under his wing um early on and one of the things that was hardest at first was struggling with uh with depression right the whole weight of the US government is falling on your head I was looking at 45 years in prison and so like people had to actively work to help me not commit suicide for that first year prison was the easy part I was in a low

[1:04:28] security prison it was Groundhog Day every single day I read more than I've ever read in my life I wrote a book doing time like a spy how the CIA taught me to survive and thrive in prison which did very well and um and then I got out um getting out was even more stressful than going in that's something that they don't tell you the the post-traumatic stress disorder is sometimes overwhelming

[1:04:58] it got to the point where my my wife who was a rock of support for me uh through this whole nightmare uh ran off with a co-worker and uh and we divorced and uh you know getting a job I I mean I couldn't I couldn't find a job anywhere I'm a convicted felon I I was rejected by grocery stores by department stores I was rejected by McDonald's and then finally got a job at a

[1:05:29] progressive Think Tank here in Washington but I had to raise the money for my salary so I was only making the federal minimum wage and so it took me it took me years to rebuild uh I will say that you know one of the one of the most insightful things my wife said to me in this whole process it was right after my arrest she said well you don't have to hide your politics anymore and she was right and so I've spoken my

[1:06:02] mind ever since then uh it got to the point where I've got a group of dedicated followers I write constantly um so I've got my radio show I have a TV show I have two syndicated columns one in in covert Action magazine and the other at Consortium news uh I I've consulted on a dozen different Hollywood movies and and TV series I'm doing one right now for CBS that's coming out in uh in March

[1:06:34] I speak at universities and colleges all around the country and so you know I've been able to put together actually a pretty good living but I'm I'm the exception uh to the rule uh absolutely it's harder even for other people you mentioned the Ellsberg the Vietnam War and something that came out officially a lot later was the NSA papers around the Gulf of Tonkin which yes just further bolstered the

[1:07:06] information that Daniel osberg had leaked in the US government was lying to the citizens now we've also got operation northwards we've got the Tuskegee experiment we've got operation midnight climax we've got prism Stellar Wind Blue Book Mockingbird which um as a yeah a journalist CIA yeah paper clip um but the Mockingbird one as a journalist someone from the CIA and someone who also does work in in

[1:07:37] Hollywood is an interesting one I forget the name of the equivalent for Mockingbird in cinema and TV and film but well I'll tell you they've gone public with that now yeah um now they have a dedicated unit within the cia's office of public affairs whose Soul job it is to cooperate with um with Hollywood uh film studios and TV networks that's all they did in the vein

[1:08:08] of propaganda or in the veins absolutely have you ever seen a movie or TV show in the United States or created in the United States that makes the CIA look bad I mean this is something that they that the FBI was doing in the 50s the 50s you know up until today the CIA just got with the program in the last 15 years but then true but then we've got incatel's investments into Facebook Google that's one of the scariest parts right is in qutel so the this is

[1:08:41] this list doesn't even begin to scratch uh no that's in the surface of the table of of what we have that's just what's been released and the reason I bring this up is the governments have a habit of lying to people the governments have a habit of massaging the truth or making it look in a particular light or in a particular way the response to 2001 in how quickly everything was confirmed

[1:09:11] as Al-Qaeda and I you can see where I'm going with this as someone who is in the CIA I know there's also only a certain amount that you can say but how much of what we were told do you believe as to be the truth and how much of what we were told was propaganda in order to get us into different places because if even if we look at weapons of mass destruction it was another excuse for junior to

[1:09:44] finish off what seniors War started in the 90s without any question um I I believe and I'm I'm gonna take a lot of heat for this and I don't care um I believe very strongly that Al Qaeda attacked us on 9 11. solely them there was no external help no it was Al Qaeda we knew it was coming we didn't know where we didn't know what the target was going to be we knew it was going to be huge we just never dreamed that it would be on U.S soil we thought it was going

[1:10:15] to be simultaneous embassy attacks for example something like the USS Cole Maybe but not the World Trade Center and the Pentagon but then if we take something like the Pentagon no proper footage has been released from it yeah but what footage are you expecting something that shows more than just two frames and also there was no fuselage wreckage at the Pentagon either even

[1:10:49] with the World Trade Center as they were cleaning that up there were elements of the fuselage of the plane that was being found that the pentagons uh at least to my knowledge the only playing crash site where there was no plane to be found so for me they found the engine they found the black box um they found bits and pieces of people it if if you're if you're leading to it

[1:11:21] was a missile no it wasn't there were thousands of people stuck in rush hour traffic that morning that watched that plane fly into the side of the Pentagon yeah there are also reports for people that say there was no plane it yeah it it's one of those things where again they were abducted by aliens I mean seriously come on Operation Blue Book but

[1:11:53] um and what happened to all the people that were on the plane no no I I that one I don't know the conspiracy I mean when you look at something like operation northwards and what northwards was and what Northwest was meant to be so for people listening who are unaware operation northwards was an excuse for the us to go to war with Cuba there was also the whole Bayer Pig situation but operation northwards was uh proposed to

[1:12:26] JFK as what we can do is we can say the planes will hijacked we'll take them off land them at a U.S Air Base send them back up as remote controlled drones and then crash those planes and those planes would have initially been filled with uh Personnel rather than the general citizens citizenry so there are elements of where pieces of this potentially could have been possible now by no means am I saying the planes that

[1:12:57] went into the Trade Centers well Trade Centers anything like that I don't want to um put a blemish on on those people's memories but there are elements because of the fact that the government has lied to us so frequently so often across the globe multiple reasons as to why they wanted to go to war then we've also got the whole five countries in five years that came out later as well when you look at that stacked up with everything that happened and how quickly

[1:13:30] all the information kind of span around and all the hiccups that were there between the intelligent service is it does it does bring the question up as to if there was more at play there the only planes to leave us airspace were ones carrying the bin Laden family oh yeah I I remember that very very well it's because you know the bin Laden family I mean this is a very important

[1:14:01] family it's one of the wealthiest in Saudi Arabia they all own real estate here in the United States they were all supportive of the American government I can't begin to tell you how many members of the of the bin Laden family reached out to the CIA and volunteered to help us what can we do to help the DNA samples right give us DNA samples so if we kill him and we you know blow them to bits we can at least test the DNA and make sure it's him um the bin ladens are in Beverly Hills

[1:14:33] they're in Orlando Florida they're in Georgetown they're in New York they're the bin Lads are all over America there are hundreds of them and President Bush said immediately after 9 11 we have to get every one of these people out of the country or they're going to be targets for for attack and so that's what he did yeah I'm with it I get it but at the same

[1:15:05] time there is a very big part of me that is hesitant to believe what the administration's put out there when you stack everything up with what's happened in the past as well sure that's why we have to do our own analysis and come to our own conclusions you're never going to get what what you believe is the straight story from the government from any government we're still having a debate just this week over release of of documents related to the Kennedy assassination we're never

[1:15:36] going to get the story it will never ever be released never you have a government that's either crying wolf or coming up with these cockamami operations over the years then you're going to create a citizen read that just doesn't believe what you say yeah absolutely I and that's kind of one of the other elements of the CIA right they are the people that coined the term conspiracy theory and they have expressly put out a lot of Diss and misinformation so that

[1:16:08] like you say the cockamami um missions that they produced there's also cockamami ideas that come out so that if there's a grain of Truth in something it's surrounded by a big pile of feces and you know the CIA have done so very well with that and and when you look at the Twitter files as well it's it's also something where there's all this government collaboration that's come out um

[1:16:38] of what they've been doing of of what's happened and yeah it makes like you say it it does make things difficult it does but look John um it's been absolutely fantastic getting to talk to you I really appreciate your time I know we've kind of gone over um have you got any last little bits that

[1:17:08] you'd like to say to the audience I would reiterate uh what what you said where you know we we have to educate ourselves on these issues look at history uh look at the uh these different operations that the CIA enacted or tried to carry out over the course of years and then pay very close attention to the revelations of the church committee and the pipe Committee in 1975. there's a lot of really great reporting out there um you know take a look take a look at

[1:17:41] uh Wiener's book about uh about the CIA and the rise and fall of the CIA that was republished that was published in the 19 late 1980s it's still out there there's a lot of really great reporting uh was it Roosevelt that said um there's no surprises to someone who studied history it only repeats itself something along those lines something to that effect but thank you very much and really appreciate your time
