Title: The Anchormen Show EP 105 - Spy Games w/ Pearson Sharp &
Show: Former Congressman Matt Gaetz
Date: 2026-03-10
URL: https://youtu.be/_B70u_5YXNk
Duration: 57:00

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[00:04] [music] >> Now it's time for the Anchorman podcast with Matt Gaetz and Pearson Sharp. [music] Welcome back to another episode of Anchorman. We are so excited that we're going to be able to bring you such a level of expertise and insight in this program. I'm joined as always by my co-host at Pearson Sharp, host of the Sharp Report here on our network. And the building is a buzz because we've got John Kiriakou with us for an hour. And so many of our producers, whenever we

[00:35] book John on the Matt Gaetz show, everyone's excited. Everybody wants to contribute to the discussion because we always learn a great deal. John Kiriakou was CIA officer in the lead-up to 9/11, then takes major roles within the CIA counterintelligence in 2007. Famously becomes part of this major disclosure that torture is being administered by the United States government. John later played guilty to a crime involving

[01:07] disclosure of information. He was sentenced to 30 months. He got out after 2 years. And really has been heralded by many as a whistleblower, as someone who saw things going on in the government that the country wasn't aware of, people weren't aware of. And you know, it's been really out there. John, thanks so much for joining us. I've had I've really enjoyed having you on the Matt Gaetz show talking about >> pleasure. Lots of fun. Well, you're a really smart guy. You've lived an

[01:37] incredible life. My co-host and and buddy here Pearson Sharp has been all over some of these things we've seen in the headlines and want to ask you about them. So go right ahead, Pearson. Hey John, how you doing? Good to see you. Good. So did you see the news that came out about the vaccines and the CIA operations recently? Yeah. So apparently it was called Project Artichoke and for anyone who's not familiar, apparently it ran from 1951 to 1956 and it focused on uh behavior control, interrogation

[02:08] techniques, uh psychological manipulation, but the interesting part that got everybody paying attention was the fact that it was being administered through injections and vaccines. That was the big one. And um I want to know what your take on on that was. Would Do you know anything about it? What's your thoughts? Oh, yeah. Project Artichoke was a sub operation of MKUltra, which by now most Americans know that MKUltra was experimentation essentially on American citizens mostly

[02:38] using LSD. There were a bunch of sub operations here, Project Artichoke being one, where the CIA began by experimenting on its own employees. And after that didn't go well, they began experimenting on just innocent residents of San Francisco. What they did as part of Project Artichoke was to break into um a um a a vaccine developer in Switzerland,

[03:09] steal the formula for some of the vaccines, and then try to manipulate the formula so that they could give somebody a vaccine, have it act like a truth serum, and then get these people to involuntarily tell the truth with the idea being that you would use it on Russians and Chinese. The way this all got started in the very early 1950s is there was the CIA recruited a Soviet uh intelligence officer, KB KGB officer,

[03:40] who told him that who told the agency rather that the Russians were developing this kind of technology. That was not true. The Russians were not developing that technology. The Chinese were. But we didn't know that the Chinese were. And so the CIA panicked and said, "Well, we've got to beat the Russians to this to this technology, this science." And so they started this experimentation, as I said, first on their own employees and then on just innocent Americans. As part of

[04:12] Operation Artichoke, one of the things they did was they recruited a bunch of prostitutes in San Francisco. They rented a safe house where the prostitutes would bring the Johns back. They would dose the Johns with LSD and then try to get them to reveal their innermost secrets under the the influence of the LSD. I don't mean to smile. By the way, right. By the way, there's plenty of people that you wouldn't even have had to trick to do that. >> they'd sign [laughter] up for that. It's like, you know, prostitutes and LSD,

[04:43] there'd be there's some places in San Francisco, [laughter] there'd be a long line of volunteers. Isn't that the truth? I'm so excited when we get our Merryweather Farms shipments in. You get a beautiful piece of ribeye. Look Look at that marbling. Now, I take it out of the package, let it get down to room temperature. All I've got on here is a little salt, a little pepper, and then a little avocado oil. And then I've had my pan preheating with a little oil.

[11:33] did you have any questions about artichoke? Uh no, go ahead. Yeah, so I >> before before Congressman, before you ask your question, may I add one little thing just to sort of prove to prove your point. A couple weeks after I got out of prison, I was invited to dinner at the at the Greek ambassador's residence. So, I went. And there was a Democratic senator there from the Senate Intelligence Committee. And he walked up to me and he said, "Hey, welcome home. We were so worried about you." I said, "Thanks, Senator, but I got to

[12:03] tell you, I was disappointed. I thought I thought you would stand up for me." And he got angry and he said, "Look, it took everything I had just to not lose my security clearance." And I said, "Oh, you're afraid of them." And then he just walked away from me. So, what you're saying is exactly true. Yeah, it's I I saw it and the the the unique opportunity though is one person can put people on and take people off. And so, if you if you play

[12:35] the game right and utilize leverage right, there are opportunities to get eyes on some of this. I mean, John, you said he was afraid. The people in power, the highest people in power are afraid of these people. Yes. How should the rest of us feel? It's a I know, right? Right? What a some system we've given ourselves. And and we all thought that was going to change in 1975 and it changed for a minute and then by 1982, you know, the CIA was the old CIA again doing the same CIA things it was doing in the '50s.

[13:06] >> But but it it does suffer from some of the like normal bureaucracy stuff that is common to all of the agencies in Washington. I had a CIA person who's still still with the agency who said, "Matt, everybody thinks it's all Jack Bauer, but it's way more The Office." Comment to [laughter] like comment to that, John. I mean, how this it's this mystical force that people you know, opine about but but you were inside the belly of the beast. Is it is it more Jack Bauer or more The Office?

[13:38] Oh, it's decidedly more The Office. We used to have this ongoing joke that when you went into a meeting, don't touch the table because you don't know who was having sex on it last night. >> [clears throat] >> I thought that was going to be a fingerprints reference. >> true in Congress now, too. Well, I >> Yeah, in the committee hearing rooms. >> Yeah, exactly. >> Yikes, man. It's a total lack of creativity. John John F. Kennedy once called the CIA the best and the brightest. And oh, how I wish that were true. Um yes, there are

[14:09] some really brilliant people in there. And for the most part, these are these are whatever it is now, 30, 40,000 people who who want nothing more than to serve the American people. But without appropriate oversight, you know, it's human nature just to push and push and push the envelope until somebody or something pushes back. And as a result, you have a CIA that, you know, in a cycle of every 20 or 30 [clears throat] years, it goes out of control. You've heard me talk about All

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[21:24] get them to do what you want them to do. Maybe wrong is threatening someone. >> Um threatening their family. Um you know, maybe wrong is like the stuff we've seen uh in the Epstein files where where real people are enduring incredible harm and the people who are administering that harm believe it is in service of some of some broader virtuous goal. Like, how put put the harm in buckets for us? Yes. I was unwilling to break US law. Listen, when you're a a CIA officer, your job is to break the

[21:56] law. It's to break the laws of other countries. I was thrilled to get on a plane, go overseas, and commit espionage. That's what I was paid to do, and it was fun, and it was rewarding. But, I drew the line where it came to breaking US law, and I said to my my superiors at the time, in in the middle of 2002, "We have something called the Federal Torture Act of 1946, which specifically prohibits us from doing exactly the things that you're telling me we're going to start

[22:27] doing. Plus, not only were we signatories to the United Nations Convention Against Torture, we wrote the United Nations Convention Against Torture, and it was uh Uh clearly that was a law for everybody else. Yeah, right. And so >> But, torture at the time was romanticized in in enhanced interrogation. Yeah, no, but it was uh you 24 was the aforementioned 24 was one of these iconic television shows, and you always rooted for Jack Bauer to to

[23:00] to administer pain on the bad guy until they gave the critical information and in Hollywood torture worked in Hollywood. It worked in Hollywood. Is that was was that not your experience in the CIA? >> was a big problem for us actually through through the aughts because torture had been romanticized. Americans did come to believe that torture worked. You know, I'll tell you a little side story. After I led after I left the CIA, I uh I was

[23:31] uh made an adjunct professor of intelligence studies at the Helms School of Government at Liberty University. And so I worked I worked alongside of senior professor had been there 30 years but who had also been a CIA officer early in his career. He showed me the final exam that he gave his students one day and it was such a powerful exam. It has stuck in my mind all these years. It was just a handful of questions. So he The first question he he put on the board um you have captured a bonafide

[24:05] terrorist. You know that a bomb is going to go off in a major American city. You have 2 hours to get the information and diffuse the bomb. Do you torture this man? Yes, no, explain yourself. That was 15 minutes. 15 minutes later the guy is a true believer. He didn't give you anything but you have his wife in custody. Do you beat his wife in front of him just to get him to give you the the information? Remember American lives are

[24:36] on the line. Yes, no, explain yourself. The third question is the wife's a true believer, too. But you have their children in custody. Do you beat the children or threaten to beat the children? Yes, no, explain yourself. Where do you draw the line? >> Yeah, the fourth question was you've died and you're at the gates of heaven. And Peter uh refers you to God himself. And he says, "Now, you explain yourself."

[25:06] What do you tell him? Do we do that stuff? Do we beat people's children in front of them? >> [sighs] >> We we've certainly threatened to do worse than just beat the children. Yes, we Yeah, we I I was unaware of any children being beaten, but yes, it was common to threaten to beat the children. And the children are always separated from the parents. So, the parents don't know if the kids are being beaten or not. But yeah, we would make that threat quite frequently. Ooh. There's a big gulf between threatening

[25:37] and doing, though. Yeah, oh yeah. I mean Um when you say US laws, you know, that was your that was your North Star. Um so, are do you believe today the CIA is breaking US laws abroad? And what what are the laws that you're most worried about being violated today? In all honesty, the the US laws that I'm the most worried about are are laws surrounding the weaponization of intelligence. I really truly believe that the CIA was weaponized

[26:09] during the Obama administration, especially, to go after the the CIA's enemies or the DNC's enemies. Listen, it it it wasn't I I blew the whistle on the on the George W. Bush torture program. And the Bush Justice Department investigated me for a year, from December of '07 to December of '08, and decided in the end that I had not committed a crime, and they dropped the case. It was the Obama administration, specifically John Brennan, who personally asked Eric

[26:41] Holder to reopen the case against me secretly. It was the Obama administration that prosecuted me, and not just me. Eight national security whistleblowers, which is almost three times the number of all previous presidents combined. So, you know, while the CIA's mandate is to break laws overseas, I think that they're breaking laws in the United States. Yeah, that one of the concerns I always had was when we develop these exquisite tools of deception, mind

[27:12] control, SIGINT gathering and processing, when we develop them abroad, it's human beings who'd have those skills. And those human beings end up coming and living back in the United States, and a whole lot of them end up working for contractors, where those tools that were intended to be used against America's enemies abroad are visited in these internal struggles we have we have here. What is the scale of that, do you think, John? >> think the scale is huge. The scale is huge because look at the the the

[27:42] scandals that have already come to light in places like Greece, where the United Arab Emirates, where where Israeli uh uh software, Pegasus software specifically, has been used first through a an American contractor, and then through the Israelis directly, uh where it's being used against Americans. There was a scandal what, 2 years ago, where it was like the American soccer team or something was being intercepted? In Greece, it it literally brought down the Greek

[28:13] government. So, yeah, we need to be very careful about it. >> understand Pegasus, cuz I got I got pretty concerned about this on the Judiciary Committee. It is a tool that that will give uh the holder of the Pegasus technology full access to your phone, and you don't have to take any action. So, you don't have to click a link, you don't have to mash a button. They they can use your phone, and they can exploit all the information on it. They can exploit the camera, the microphone at any time they want. And so

[28:43] so this was technology that was developed in Israel, the major commercial user is the cartels. The The They are the major commercial commercial user, okay? That's not like government. >> And then we found that the FBI had paid $5 million for this to to to Pegasus. So we we bring Christopher Wray in and and and some of these guys and say, "Why Why is the FBI doing this?" And their answer was, "We paid $5 million just to test what its capabilities were um in in the

[29:16] event that we had to defend against it. In the event that we had to defend against it." Which I thought was totally bogus at the time. Um do you think that this is going to be Pega Do you think Pegasus will be used to to topple other governments? And do you think that there's a there's a political node to it? Or is it just like a a mercenary-ized technology? Yeah, I think it's I think it's more sophisticated and more broadly spread uh than than what we know right now. And

[29:46] one of the one of the terrible things is that First of all, it's so good. And like you said, Congressman, you're exactly right. You don't have to take any action to activate it on your phone. You don't have to click a link. You don't have to respond to a text message or anything like that. It [clears throat] just works just like that. And you have no idea. We wouldn't have known that similar uh similar software programs were being used by NSA against American citizens. It's illegal for NSA to spy on Americans. It's a part of NSA's charter,

[30:18] its founding charter, that it can't spy on Americans. And thanks to Ed Snowden, we know that, you know, easily 50% of what NSA does is to spy on Americans. Well, now, when Pegasus or systems akin to Pegasus are available commercially, I mean, how how do you protect yourself? Somebody asked me the other day if there were any um chat apps that were truly secure. And I I I wanted to give a an intelligent answer. So, I called my friend Tom Drake, the NSA whistleblower,

[30:50] and I asked him. And he said, "No. The easy answer is no. Nothing's secure. Even Signal, even if it's not true that the US intelligence community has a backdoor into Signal. Signal is only encrypted when you hit the send button. That's when it encrypts. They can intercept your message as you're typing it before you hit send. >> Right. And so, it doesn't matter if they can't break the encryption. So, that I kind of speaking of Pegasus and what you just said about Signal, um cuz I use

[31:21] Signal and I picked it up after I did a documentary in 2018 about the NSA and Obama's spying and surveillance and stuff, and that terrified me. So, I got Signal cuz Edward Snowden recommended it. But, is there any such thing as privacy anymore? Is there any private communications or any privacy in your life that you would reasonably expect? President Trump signed the order to end the loony left's war on crypto. And with the genius act now law, America is officially the crypto capital of the world. I'm not just talking about this. I'm a client of BlockTrust IRA. They're

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[32:54] There's no such thing. >> No, I'm I'm just not I'll tell you I'll tell you what. WikiLeaks, an offshoot of WikiLeaks, was working 10 years ago on on a new chat app that was not just encrypted, but where the where the chat would disappear like after I think it was 30 seconds of of disuse, right? So, you finish your chat, you've exchanged your messages, and then poof, 30 seconds later it just disappear. But, they couldn't get past

[33:25] this notion that it can be intercepted before it's encrypted. Nobody can figure out how to get around that. >> One of the things that um what was frequently debated in in the back rooms in in Congress was this blend of investment into signals intelligence exploitation versus human intelligence exploitation. And uh you know, you'd get the the the wizards of of tech to say, "Look, all this human stuff is all like the stuff of the Cold War '80s. Everything we're going to need, we're

[33:56] going to be able to exploit with signals intelligence." What do you think is the right blend, and is there any is there any experience you've had that might be a cautionary tale to those who would deplete some of the human capabilities in service of of these uh SIGINT ambitions? That's a great question. That's a that's a not just an important question, but I think it's the most important question for any incoming new CIA director. Uh SIGINT is not going to save the day. Yes, SIGINT is great. You can grab every

[34:27] every phone call, every text message, every email out of the air and put it in your giant Cray computers in the Utah desert and have it sit there for 500 years until you need it. That's great. But SIGINT isn't going to be inside the room when Saddam Hussein makes a decision to invade Kuwait or when, >> [clears throat] >> you know, the Chinese decide to go to war with India over their border or Vladimir Putin makes the decision to invade Ukraine. You have to get that information from a human source. And

[34:57] every new incoming CIA director says, "It's time to get back to basics. We're going to rely on human intelligence. Our job is to recruit spies to steal secrets." Everybody says that. And then, you know, they they get distracted by these, you know, shiny objects called uh signals intelligence and uh and they walk away from human intelligence. And and what do you think is the cost of that, ultimately? Oh, ultimately, we don't know that the

[35:28] Berlin Wall is coming down, that Israel is on the verge of attacking uh Iran and they've made the decision to do so, that Saddam is going to invade uh Kuwait. Any of these these momentous global events were missed by the CIA for the most part. I mean, analytically, yeah, we made the the judgment that Saddam was going to invade Kuwait. Yes, we made the analytic judgment that that Putin was going to uh invade Ukraine. But you got to have somebody in the room who can

[35:58] report back to you so you know exactly what the the thought process is. And that helps the president to create his own policy to counter whatever the decision was. It always surprised me how how many foreign officials the CIA really did control. Um either through I mean, and sometimes like payment, sometimes um just uh foreign officials' admiration for the United States. And they would love to know who the station chief was. They would love to be, you know, having meetings with the embassy

[36:28] and and and talking about stuff. What How would you describe to our audience um the scale, scope, and meaning of the United States government basically having foreign officials doing our bidding by hook or by crook? I was at a cocktail party once. A diplomatic cocktail party. And uh and I met a guy who I immediately recognized as a former prime minister. And I thought, "Oh my god, he's a former

[36:59] prime minister. Now he's a member of not just a member, he's a founder of a of a less populist, less popular party. He's probably not going to be prime minister again, but maybe he will be, who knows." So, I rush back to the embassy. I fill out a uh uh template for this cable, and I say, "Hey, I met this I met the former prime minister. Give me a name trace on him looking for any vulnerabilities. I'm going to invite him to dinner. I'm going to try to get him."

[37:29] And then they send me a cable back the next day, and they said, "Cease and desist. He's been ours since the '70s." >> [laughter] >> And and and is that is that uh largely maintained through through financial distributions? Like what what what is the what is the waterfall of of uh choices that you make when you're when you're turning someone like that? Well, blackmail, let me let me address blackmail cuz that's important. People raise this with me literally every single day. The CIA doesn't blackmail. Um we used to, but they they haven't

[38:01] done that since the '70s uh because it's not effective. In order to really squeeze great information out of a source, the source has to love you. The source has to think that you're his best friend. That sure, you know, you're doing it you guys are doing this because you're paying him, but but really it's because you're in a bromance, and he loves hanging out with you, and he's going to give you the plans to the the new generation Russian tank just because he loves you. Um Studies have been done about this

[38:31] internally at the CIA. 95% of these relationships are based on cash exchanges. Simple as that. We have money, you need the money, I'm happy to give you whatever money you want so long as you give me the information I want and we shake hands, you sign this ridiculous little contract that I made up in MS Word and uh and everybody's happy. The other 5% is interesting. The other 5% is ideology. Sometimes they just love love love the

[39:02] United States. Sometimes it's excitement because they've seen all the James Bond movies and the Jack Reacher movies and all these others and they just want to experience the excitement of the clandestinity of these operations. Sometimes it's revenge. They got passed over for promotion, they're angry [clears throat] at their bosses and they just want to screw the boss and so by God they're going to they're going to reach out to the CIA and they're going to volunteer. But 95% of it is money. It's a cash transaction. And if you, you know, let's

[39:35] say you have access to the local Communist Party, that might be good for two three thousand dollars a month. But if you're going to give me Osama bin Laden, I'm going to give you 25 million, 50 million dollars and I'll give it to you in cash, in gold, in diamonds, in Bitcoin. I'll give it to you any way you want to receive it. If you want it in land, I'll give it to you in land and just because I'm a nice guy and I like your face, I'm willing to resettle you in any country in the world where you

[40:06] would like to live. How do we get access to those uh to to those different asset classes to redistribute in exchange for information? Yeah, that's also a great question. And you know, early on in my career uh the instructors told all of us that the best agents that you will ever recruit are going to be people you had never heard of who are just going to walk into the American Embassy and say, "I want to speak to a CIA officer." Like for example, I can't name

[40:38] an Iranian nuclear scientist, and I follow the issue. I can't name a single one of them. But if one of them walks into the American Embassy in Vienna, Austria, because he happens to be in town to attend some seminar I'm going to grab him, and that recruitment is going to make my career. I'm going to send him back with some sort of listening device that he can use to issue burst transmissions and send me classified reports on the Iranian nuclear program. Wow. Uh But >> Does that happen the other way, John? Cuz you did you did counterintelligence

[41:09] work, too. Uh talk to talk to the uh frequency, scope, and concern about other countries using these exact tools you've described, bribes, um ideology, whatever, to to get our our our countrymen to to do their bidding good? >> Well, there was that story that just came out about I think it was the Air Force pilot who was giving our information over. Well, no, he was training the Chinese. >> the Chinese on on on uh on Yeah, he was training the Chinese. My guess is he wasn't a volunteer. Right now, I I don't think he was a volunteer.

[41:40] Can't get my glasses straight. No, I don't think he was a volunteer. Um But you're right. You know, other countries aren't stupid. These are not secret techniques that we're using. We're just trying to exploit human nature. And so, certainly there are there are other intelligence services that are actively trying to recruit Americans. Rate them. Rate them. Rate them. CIA? Well, hold on. Yeah. Rate the ones that are the best at getting our people to flip. Is it MI6?

[42:11] >> Israel. Israel. Yeah. Well, hold No, in order. Okay, go ahead. Okay, in order in order I would say the Israelis. A number one. They're our greatest ally. Why would why would why would they be trying to get our people to flip? Right. You know, the thing about the Israelis Um and and I'm not talking just about Jonathan Pollard. That's that's ancient history. My very first day at the CIA, my very first day the first thing we did is we stood up, we put our hands in the air and we swore to uphold the Constitution and to protect it against all enemies domestic

[42:42] and foreign. And then we got a briefing by the director of security for the whole CIA. Now granted, this is 36 years ago. But but it it is, you know, still current. And he said our greatest challenge as individual officers was going to be counterintelligence because there going to be temptations out there. And our friends and our enemies are going to try to exploit our own vulnerabilities. Do you drink? Maybe too excess a little

[43:13] bit? Do you like to gamble? You know, whatever the problem is tell us now so we can help you work your way through it. But he said that day that the Israelis have two declared intelligence officers at the Israeli Embassy in Washington. One from Mossad and one from Shin Bet. Shin Bet being the domestic intelligence service akin to the FBI. And he said the FBI has been able to identify 187 undeclared Israeli intelligence officers

[43:44] spread all across the United States actively trying to recruit employees of our defense contractors. And I'll give you an example why. We developed the F-35 and the Israelis were the first ones. They said, "We want the F-35." We said, "Sure, we'll give you the F-35. We're going to slightly degrade the avionics just slightly just so that God forbid if one gets shot down the Russians or the Chinese can't take it and reverse engineer it. We're going to call it the F-35 I for Israel. They said, "No, no, we want the F-35. We

[44:15] want the same one you have." We said, "No, we'll give you the F-35 I." In the meantime, the Emirates came to us and they said, "We want this F-35." We said, "Great, we're going to slightly degrade the avionics. We'll call it the F-35 E for Emirates and we'll sell you that." They said, "Great, we'll take it." The Israelis have been out there trying to steal the F-35 avionics ever since we said the word F-35. Because they really believe that at the end of the day they stand alone against the rest of the world. And if we're not

[44:46] going to give them literally everything that they say they want then by God they're going to recruit spies and they're going to steal it from us. Mhm. And this is worse than what China does? The Chinese are very, very laser-focused, no pun intended, on technology. The thing is is the Chinese don't really have a a a true understanding and appreciation of American culture. So, the Chinese will walk up to you and say, "I will give you money. You give me technology." And you know, there's no

[45:16] like there's no you know, at least buy me a drink first. Yeah. Right? >> Yeah. There's none of that. The Russians have a long view. They're they're quite good at it, too. Um are they the second best? Yeah, the Russians I I would put the Russians at second best than the Chinese. >> are third best? The Cubans Really? I would think you can Cubans are good. Cubans are very, very good. In fact, um the the CIA has never recruited a Cuban who didn't turn out to be a double agent.

[45:47] That's how something. Yeah. >> Wow. believers Well, well, the Cubans don't operationalize the intelligence. They're just a marketplace for >> That's right. They they have commoditized it. Up here's and I promised that you would get some questions about current events. I could talk for hours about the intelligence community, John, but but but please go ahead. >> So, heading heading into this interview, I was doing some research and um I was reading about some former CIA operations. Uh you obviously know about Operation Ajax uh in 1953 in Iran, where we overthrew the government. Um well, then we have also Operation PBSuccess in 1954 in

[46:20] Guatemala, where we overthrew the government. Operation Incomgro, uh where we overthrew Patrice Lumumba, uh 1965. Uh Operation in Chile, where we overthrew the president uh Salvador Allende. Um and now we're seeing a lot of things happening in Iran um that well, in Operation Ajax, we had um the CIA-funded anti-government protests. Mhm. We had paid journalists to publish propaganda. We had CIA-backed street

[46:50] mobs rioting in the streets. And all this is just seeming very familiar, and I'm just wondering from your perspective if you think that what we're seeing right now is another CIA operation. Yeah, I think it is. I think it's more um a joint Mossad-CIA operation. And the only reason I say that is because the Mossad has bragged about it in the Israeli press that they were working with the MEK, the Mujahedin-e-Khalq, formerly a a terrorist group. And uh they were able to lightly arm the MEK.

[47:23] Uh they were able to get MEK operatives in Iran to set fire to mosques and then to burn 38 fire trucks, so there was no way to put out the the fires at the mosques. So, the Israelis were they couldn't help themselves but to brag about it in um in the Israeli media what, two, three weeks ago? I think that look, history has proven that it is it's easier, it's cheaper, and it's safer for

[47:54] Americans if you let controlled mobs do your dirty work rather than putting your own operatives on the ground and you know carrying out close in assassinations and things like that, the risk is just too high for something like that. And so to answer your question, yeah, there's a long history as you as you correctly noted, there's a long history of the CIA doing things like this. I've got to tell you, the Guatemala operation is one of my favorite to talk about because it is so outrageous. There's a long history. There's a long history

[48:26] that went into that operation in Guatemala that started actually before there was anything called a CIA. It started in the late 19th century. There was an American railroad tycoon who bought a narrow strip of land from from Guatemala City to the coast with the idea being that he could transport goods from the coast to the Guatemala City and make money being the the sole way of transporting these goods. So, they hired, you know, local indigenous people to lay the track. And he went

[48:57] down there to uh just to take a look at his investment, watch them lay the track, and every day at lunchtime, the workers would take a break and they would pick these fruits off of the trees and they would eat the fruits. And so the tycoon said, "What are these fruits that that the workers are eating?" And he was told, "They're called bananas." He had never seen a banana before. He never heard of a banana. So, he tried one and it was delicious and sweet. And he said, "We should take the bananas and send them to America." And he did

[49:28] and got even richer than he always was. He also changed the name of the company to the United Fruit Company. Well, this went for the next three quarters of a century. And finally in 1954, uh the Guatemalan government said, "You know, we're sending all these bananas to the United States. We're not making any money on these bananas at all. The United Fruit Company owns the the train, it owns the tracks, it owns the land on the two side of the tracks where all the bananas are growing. We're not making anything on this. We should nationalize

[50:00] the bananas. Well, three of the members of the board of directors of the United of the United Fruit Company were John Foster Dulles, the Secretary of State, Allen Dulles, his brother, the CIA director, and President Eisenhower's secretary's brother. And so we overthrew the Guatemalan government. We installed a military dictatorship that brutalized the population for the next 20 plus years, and that country still hasn't gotten

[50:31] over that coup. It's still one of the most dangerous places in the world. I went to Guatemala a couple of years ago to volunteer for a couple of weeks at an orphanage. And thank God that the orphanage had a 20-ft high concrete wall all the way around it because I could barely get to sleep at night for all the gunfire outside. >> Oh, jeez. It's still a terrible place. And it's a terrible place because we made it that way. Yeah. Mhm. Yeah, we don't have a great record of overthrowing these governments and having positive outcomes. >> You know, we're we're good at overthrowing governments. I thought there would be more like United Fruit,

[51:02] Standard Fruit resentment over our Venezuela operation. I spent a lot of time in Latin America. I covered Latin America extensively. I I I thought that that would sort of tickle those um frustrations of yesteryear, and I'm surprised it didn't. Almost everyone I know in Latin America was thrilled that Maduro was removed. And I I did ask, you know, the question is this is this a precedent that that we're going to be excited about when Democrats are in power? Like are they Is Is like a future President AOC going to order Delta Force

[51:33] to go and like yank Javier Milei out of [laughter] Argentina if she doesn't doesn't like, you know, the fact that he fired teachers who were trying to teach pronouns? I I don't know. You're absolutely right. I I have burned my hour with a with John. Did you have any any any final questions? >> Yeah, I have one one final question. We talked about privacy before. There's the popular myth that the CIA knows all and sees all and is in your phone and in your email and watching through your TV, knows everything that you're doing, but

[52:05] we constantly see cases where there's domestic terrorism or someone goes out and kills somebody and has been texting with people and posting on forums and leaving a trail that you think would be caught. So, how really omnipotent is the CIA, are these agencies, and how much of that is just popular mythos? And and I guess how much of it is allowed to happen? Now, that's the $64,000 question right there. They're not omnipotent. Their computer systems

[52:36] are near omnipotent, but you don't have a human being that's going over all this this data. You know, it's Yes, it's all being collected. It's all being just pulled out of the ether and stored in these computers, but human beings don't actually look at it until after the fact. Look at the San Bernardino attack from whatever it was, 2017 or 2016. The the terrorists in that case, in San Bernardino, California, were communicating through the chat function

[53:07] of a game app. Well, I'll tell you who pioneered that was was the Mossad. That's how they would communicate in their anti-Hezbollah operations. Um but the FBI, it never occurred to the FBI that they should be working with NSA to to collect, you know, in-game chat apps. I mean, who would even think of such a thing? So, yeah, the information's out there. It's just not necessarily being seen by a human being. For the CIA, I mean, the CIA will tell you right off the bat um

[53:39] that they recruit spies to steal secrets and they only do that overseas. Okay, I want to believe that. I'm not sure that I do. But I would be more worried domestically, far more worried about NSA and FBI. And one other thing about FBI that I think we should be worried about. For for, you know, 250 years practically, well, not 250. Since the FBI was founded in the early 1920s, if they wanted information, personal information on an American or from an American, they had to get a warrant, right? You have to go before a judge,

[54:10] you have to have probable cause, and you have to do it with a warrant. They don't anymore. For a while, right? Right yeah, right after 9/11, they FISA, number one. Number two, right after 9/11 they started using these things called national security letters, which were just like threatening letters to the to the ISP providers saying, "We're the FBI and you're not, and we want this information and you have 48 hours to to cough it up." Okay, that's not a warrant. If you're hearing all these crazy stories about spycraft is making you

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[55:40] And so why would the FBI go before a judge and have to make a probable cause argument when they can just go to meta and just buy it? We we we we tried to pass laws to say that the that the FBI could not buy like use data brokers to get information that would otherwise require a warrant. Yes. And I mean you might you might as well have been cheerleading the fall of the twin towers making that suggestion. People would say, "Oh, we're going to have the next 9/11. The blood's going to be on

[56:11] your hands." We I pursued that along with some of the some of the folks like Darrell Issa and and we totally lost that legislative effort. But the national security letters, guess who's receiving those letters? It's the big tech companies. Former FBI leadership. >> and CIA people. Right. If you follow if you follow the revolving door between FBI, CIA, and big tech, that's where they go to cash out. And so it's a it's a CIA FBI person writing a letter to someone who months before was a CIA FBI

[56:42] person and you're just the deliverable. You you the American public. What a cheery note to end on. John Kiriakou, we always appreciate your your insights, your perspective, your expertise. It's added so much to our network and our program to introduce you to our viewers. And and we wish you Thank you so much for having me and we'll see you soon. Pleasure. I look forward to it. We'll get you next uh What what a discussion. So long story short, we are the bad guys. >> [laughter] >> We're just going to change the name of this podcast to Pearson Sharp is not

[57:13] satisfied. Like I said yesterday, are you satisfied? Never. Thanks for joining me, but we'll be back next week to be unsatisfied together. Want to see more great videos like this? Click on the link below to subscribe to OAN Live and watch Dan Ball's Real America and The Matt Walsh Show on Dish Channel 212. Tune in, subscribe, and watch today.
