Title: Full Audiobook
Show: Full Audiobook
Date: 2025-10-30
URL: https://youtu.be/uz06eViSJdo
Duration: 30:00

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[00:02] Hybrbridge, a division of recorded books, presents Doing Time Like a Spy: How the CIA Taught Me to Survive and Thrive in Prison by John Kuryaku. Read by Jonathan Yen. Every current and former CIA officer must submit his book manuscript to the CIA's notorious and politicized publications review board PRB for

[00:33] clearance to ensure that the book does not contain classified information. Well, every current and former CIA officer is supposed to submit the manuscript. Many don't. The ones who are famous or are friends with the president get away with it. The little guy who doesn't ends up getting crushed in a court of law. I submitted my manuscript and despite the fact that the federal courts have

[01:04] mandated that the CIA has 30 days to review it, my book took more than 8 months. Still, I played by the rules, even if the CIA didn't. In the end, the CIA necessitated the following disclaimer. This does not constitute an official release of CIA information. All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed are those of the author and do

[01:36] not reflect the official positions or views of the Central Intelligence Agency. CIA or any other US government agency. Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying US government authentication of information or CIA endorsement of the author's views. This material has been reviewed solely for classification.

[02:06] Introduction. I like to think that I'm a pretty nice guy. In fact, people tell me all the time that I'm friendly, and easy to get along with. I consider myself a good father, a good husband, a hard worker, and a patriot. But in prison, I had a reputation for being an [ __ ] I was comfortable in prison plotting against people, cutting off those who crossed me, and trying constantly to stay one step ahead of the

[02:39] corrections officers, CEOs, and the prison administration. I am an experienced, highly trained former CIA operations officer. It was my job to recruit spies to steal secrets and to run counterterrorist operations, to break up and foil terrorist plots. I'm very proud of my CIA career. I spent nearly 15 years there and I played a role in the country's response to the

[03:10] September 11th, 2001 attacks. I spent the first eight years of my CIA career working in analysis and specializing on Iraq. My final seven years were spent on the ground in counterterrorism. I resigned from the CIA in 2004. Despite my career, which included a later stint as the senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and nearly a half ccentury of

[03:42] being a law-abiding citizen, I eventually found myself as the target of a federal investigation. At the end of the ordeal, I was sentenced to 30 months in prison. I was determined to get through my prison experience unscathed, and I thought the best way to do that would be to rely on what the CIA had taught me over the years. After all, prison couldn't possibly be tougher than Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, or any of the

[04:14] other dumps in which I'd served over the years. I resolved to make the best of a bad situation, to stay safe, and to make sure that I remained at the top of the social heap. When I came to prison, I didn't know what to expect. Nobody among my friends had ever been to prison, and I had nothing to go on other than what I had seen on TV. What I did not expect, however, was that the training and

[04:44] experience that I had amassed in my CIA career would prepare me to survive and thrive in prison. As you will see, I wasn't the typical federal prisoner. A CIA psychiatrist once told me that the agency looks to hire people who exhibit sociopathic tendencies. CIA recruiters are not interested in sociopaths who have no consciences or

[05:15] empathy and who can easily pass a polygraph exam. Sociopaths are too hard to control. Instead, they are interested in people who are comfortable working in ethical, moral, and legal gray areas. I had no problem bending some rules if it was in the interest of national security. Some researchers have gone further in their analysis of the typical CIA officer than the CIA psychiatrist who

[05:46] told me about sociopathic tendencies. New Mexico State University professor Peter Jonison published a paper entitled Who is James Bond? Which found that successful intelligence officers have a specific triumvirant of personality traits? the stratospheric self-esteem of narcissism, the fearlessness, ruthlessness, impulsivity, and thrillseeking of psychopathy, and the deceitfulness and exploitiveness of

[06:18] Machavevelianism. That's a little harsh. An actual psychopath or sociopath, according to Dutton, seeks reward at any cost, flouting consequence and elbowing risk aside. That's not at all what a CIA officer does. He tries to get the job done while not making waves or attracting undue attention. That's exactly what I did in prison.

[06:48] The CIA recruited me in graduate school in the late 1980s for a reason. I was and remain very patriotic and I was very interested in public service. I also had a bachelor's degree in Middle Eastern studies and a master's degree in legislative affairs as well as a facility for foreign languages. A retired CIA officer teaching at my alma mater, George Washington University, spotted me, made a few introductions,

[07:20] and after a battery of tests and a comprehensive background investigation, I found myself at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. I'm glad I joined the CIA. The CIA taught me great survival skills. I'm not just talking about how to break into houses, how to surreptitiously gather information, or even how to use weapons in dangerous situations. I'm talking about how to survive and

[07:50] even thrive when surrounded by idiots, dangerous criminals, crooked cops, corrupt administrators, sexual perverts, and the scum of society. You see, this is prison. How could this happen? I began working at the CIA in January 1990. After a week of orientation, I was assigned to an office in the Directorate

[08:21] of Intelligence, DI, the AY's analytic arm that focused on doing long-term psychological profiles of foreign leaders. My assignment was to cover Iraq and Kuwait, which I was told were training accounts. As a senior analyst explained to me, nothing ever happens in Iraq or Kuwait. They've had the same leadership since the 1960s. The same cabinets are still in place.

[08:52] Learn your analytic trade craft and you can move on to something interesting like Romania. That was 8 months before Iraq invaded Kuwait and started the Gulf War. The Gulf War made me a star in the DI. I became one of the AY's goto analysts on Iraq. I was Saddam Hussein's biographer for the intelligence community and I was called on to brief presidents, cabinet

[09:23] secretaries, members of Congress, and foreign leaders. I traveled to more than 60 countries and wrote analyses that helped to form the basis for US policy in the Middle East. But I got bored. By 1997, it was clear that Saddam Hussein wasn't going anywhere. I wanted to go back overseas where I had served in the early 1990s. I spoke both Greek and Arabic, which was unique in the agency,

[09:56] and I decided that I wanted to switch to counterterrorism operations. A move from analysis to operations was highly unusual at the time. There was normally a Chinese wall between the CIA's two most important functions, but the counterterrorism center thought that I showed promise, and my language skills were unique, and they allowed me to make the switch. I didn't have to do interim one-month

[10:27] assignments around headquarters, what people call CIA 101, because my colleagues and I in the special operations training course, SOTC, were all mid-career officers. Instead, I dove right into operations. First at a secret facility in Northern Virginia and then in the CIA's famous training facility known as the farm. SOTC was a deep, involved, and difficult

[10:57] course. It was also the most fun I've ever had. Besides learning the fundamentals of operational writing, clandestine meetings, disguises, and other espionage basics, there were other components. These included crash and bang, a course on how to avoid kidnappings and carborne terrorist attacks, weapons training with a variety of handguns, long guns, and even some heavy weaponry, surveillance, counter

[11:28] surveillance, and surveillance detection, and parachute jump school. But it was the other courses that I really took, too. The most interesting and professionally important one was how to spot, assess, develop, and recruit spies. Unless you plan to make your career as an ass kicker in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, or Pakistan, recruitment skills would be the most valuable for a career in CIA operations.

[12:01] These skills proved to be the most valuable to me in prison. Operational meetings could be held anywhere. In a restaurant, in a hotel, in a car, literally anywhere. I've even done operational meetings in a men's restroom, and behind a garbage dumpster. The idea at first is to spot a target and to assess his access to protected information. Once you find the right person, you cultivate and develop a

[12:32] friendship so that over time the target becomes more and more comfortable speaking openly with you. The final phase in the relationship is recruitment. Here you establish a formal relationship between the CIA and the target. There are lots of reasons people would consent to being recruited. These are called vulnerabilities. Maybe the target needs money. He can't afford his lifestyle. He can't afford to send his kids to college or he has large

[13:04] medical bills. Revenge is a good motivator. Maybe the target has been passed over for promotion or has a beef against his bosses. Another motivator may be patriotism. The target loves the US and wants to help. Whatever the motivation though, every recruitment comes down to the relationship. In this kind of clandestine relationship, trust and a personal connection are paramount. After all, the

[13:37] goal is to convince someone to commit espionage, treason even for you. Why? Because he likes you. He believes he can work with you and he gets something that he needs out of the relationship. money, revenge, even just a shoulder to cry on. This is the very foundation of CIA operational work. I had no idea at the time, of course, but it was these skills that would allow me to protect myself and my interests in

[14:09] prison. I learned in my CIA training that almost everybody has a vulnerability. Almost everybody or every situation can be manipulated. I honed these skills in the Middle East and Europe virtually as soon as I finished training. I had to live by my wits while serving overseas. There were two assassination attempts made against me abroad. one in Greece where a terrorist group called Revolutionary Organization 17 November

[14:42] set out to kill me but murdered my neighbor, the British Defense Ataché, instead. The second was in a Middle Eastern country where I was handling a double agent. The enemy country he was working for ordered him to kill me in our final meeting. We were tipped off. We grabbed and disarmed him and we cracked his organization. Then the September 11th attacks occurred. Like everybody else at CIA headquarters, I volunteered to go to

[15:13] Afghanistan and fight. That wasn't really my thing. I have no military experience, but patriotism dictated that I do my part. I volunteered repeatedly, and finally, after making enough of a pest of myself, I was sent to Pakistan to run counterterrorist operations. I spent most of 2002 there. The highlight of my time in Pakistan was the late March 2002 capture of Abu Zuba

[15:45] and dozens of al-Qaeda fighters at a string of safe houses in Fisal Ababad. This was a major catch. Our government thought at the time that Abu Zubeda was the third ranking official in Alqaeda, but that turned out to be untrue. While Abu Zabeda had certainly done a lot of logistical work for Al-Qaeda, and he created and ran the group's training camps in southern Afghanistan, he had never actually joined al-Qaeda. He had

[16:18] never pledged loyalty to Osama bin Laden, and he knew less about al-Qaeda's leadership than we thought he did. I didn't have any idea at the time how important Abu Zubeda would be to my life over the next decade. Frankly, I wish I had never been in Pakistan that night. You can keep the medals and awards. In the end, as you'll see, it wasn't worth it to me. When I got back to CIA headquarters in

[16:49] the summer of 2002, a senior officer in the AY's counterterrorism center asked me if I wanted to be certified in the use of what he called enhanced interrogation techniques. I didn't know what that meant, so I asked. He told me, "We're going to start getting rough with these guys." and he explained the various torture techniques that had recently been approved by President George W. Bush. I told this officer that

[17:20] this sounds like torture to me. And I said that I had a visceral opposition to it. Count me out. But just to make sure I was thinking correctly, I went to a very senior CIA officer and asked for his guidance. He said, "First, let's call it what it is. It's torture. Second, somebody is going to go too far and they're going to kill a prisoner. Third, there's going to be a congressional investigation and

[17:52] somebody's going to go to prison. Do you want to go to prison?" I said, "No." and I went back to the counterterrorism center and said in no uncertain terms that I didn't want to be involved. In the end, I was the only person with any connection to the CIA's torture program that went to prison. Not because I tortured anybody, but because I blew the whistle on the CIA's torture program. I aired the AY's dirty laundry

[18:25] in public. On August 1st, 2002, CIA interrogators began torturing Abu Zubeda. At first, he was slapped, punched, kicked, stripped naked, and humiliated. Later, he was chained to an eyebolt in the ceiling and kept awake for weeks at a time while ice water was thrown on him. Abu Zuba exhibited an irrational fear of insects. So he was put in a dog

[18:56] cage with cockroaches to see how crazy he could become. Most famously or infamously, he was waterboarded 83 times. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence said in its torture report in 2014 that none of these techniques resulted in Abu Zuba ever giving the CIA any actionable intelligence that disrupted terrorist attacks or saved a single

[19:26] American life. While all of this was going on, CIA officers speaking out of school were telling me and others that Abu Zubeda had been waterboarded once, that he had cracked, and that he had provided actionable intelligence that foiled terrorist plots and saved lives. This was a lie, but it was what was being circulated around CIA headquarters. It was a lie that helped

[19:57] to perpetuate the torture program. I resigned from the CIA in 2004. I was divorced and I had remarried this time to a CIA officer and I wanted to be able to spend quality time with my two sons from my first marriage. I was tired of going overseas and my boys were young at the time, 11 and 8. They needed me in their lives and I needed them. So I left

[20:28] the CIA and went into the private sector. Things were going gang busters for me until December 2007. At the beginning of that month, I received a call from Brian Ross, the senior investigative reporter for ABC News. Ross said that he had a source who had told him that I had tortured Abu Zubeda. Absolutely untrue, I said. I was the only person who was kind to Abu Zuba.

[21:00] Indeed, after we had captured him, I sat at Abu Zubeta's side for 56 consecutive hours. We talked about religion, poetry, our families, even the September 11th attacks. At one point, in tears, he asked me to smother him with his pillow. I told Ross that his source was dead wrong. Well, you're welcome to come on the show and defend yourself," he answered. I had

[21:31] no idea that this was an old reporter's trick. I should have hung up on him. Instead, I went to my boss and my boss's boss and asked what to do. "Go on the show, but don't mention the firm or any of the firm's clients," was the answer. So, I went on the show. I had honestly stopped following news about al-Qaeda after I left the CIA. I was burned out and I was excited to

[22:02] start a new life. I was vaguely aware that the non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch had issued a report saying that Abu Zubeda had been tortured and that Amnesty International had issued a report saying the same thing. So, in my mind, the news was out there. Everybody knew we were torturing prisoners, right? Wrong. Brian Ross asked me directly during the course of the interview whether the CIA had

[22:33] tortured Abu Zuba. Yes, I said. Was he waterboarded? Yes. Were others? Yes. I told the whole story. Ross went on to ask me for my own feelings about waterboarding. I said that I thought it was torture and that as Americans, we shouldn't be in the business of torture. I made three major revelations during that interview. I said the CIA was torturing its

[23:05] prisoners, that torture was official US government policy, and that the policy had been approved personally by the president. By saying that, I became the first CIA officer, past or present, to confirm the torture of prisoners. The CIA was enraged. The next morning, the CIA filed a crimes report against me with the FBI, saying that my revelations were illegal and

[23:37] asking the FBI to begin a criminal investigation. I read about this filing in the newspapers and I hired an attorney. The FBI took a full year to investigate me. In the end, they elected not to charge me with a crime, finding that I had not revealed any classified information. The case against me was officially closed. But the CIA was livid. Four weeks after

[24:08] the case was closed, Barack Obama, the self-professed most transparent president in history, was inaugurated. The CIA asked him secretly to reopen the case against me. He did, and the secret investigation proceeded for another four years. I didn't know it at the time, of course, but the FBI was all over me, carrying out surveillance against me, collecting my telephone metadata, even intercepting

[24:39] and reading my emails. Again, I didn't know it at the time, so I just continued on with my life. Despite having my boss's permission to go on ABC in 2007, I was asked to resign from the private company I was working for. I hired another attorney, and after the provision of a generous severance package, I offered my resignation. Still, the timing could not have been

[25:09] worse. I left my job just as the worst recession since the Great Depression hit the country. I was out of work for all of 2008 other than a little consulting work here and there until finally in February 2009 I got an offer. A friend with ties to then senator John Kerry offered me a job as the senior investigator on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff. It was a senior position on the most prestigious

[25:41] committee on Capitol Hill and I was thrilled at the prospect. I just had to get through an interview with Carrie, who had just been elevated to the committee's chairmanship. I met with Carrie in his office in February 2009. I was immediately struck by his friendliness and informality. Carrie gets a bum rap for his reputation as a stiff patrician politician. I liked him. He was very intelligent,

[26:11] accomplished, and a bonafide war hero. I was struck by a couple of things during that meeting. First, he had his medals, a silver star and three bronze stars in a shadow box on a credenza. The press had reported in great detail in the 1970s that Carrie had thrown his medals over the White House fence to protest the Vietnam War. That was a publicity stunt. He threw copies over the fence and kept the originals.

[26:44] He also had pictures of himself with John Lennon, Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary, and a wide variety of 1960s and 1970s era celebrities. It was a fun office. Carrie and I had a great conversation about the Middle East and South Asia. He asked my opinion on the Iraq War, on the occupation of Afghanistan, and on strategies for getting out of both of those countries. The interview went exceedingly well. At the end, I got up

[27:17] and shook his hand and I thanked him for not asking me about waterboarding. I hate being the water boarding guy, I told him. Carrie smiled and said, "Nobody in this country has taken it on the chin from the press like I have. I know the truth of your story. I'm happy to have you on board." I started working two weeks later. I was blessed with great leadership for the first year of my stint at the Senate

[27:48] Foreign Relations Committee. We tackled some important issues, and I took very seriously our oversight responsibilities. I thought that hard work and tough investigations were what was expected of me. I was wrong, wrong, wrong. And all I did was stir up a hornets's nest of troubles. I didn't realize it at the time, but even before I joined the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff, I was ruffling feathers at Langley.

[28:20] First, before I joined the SFRC, I had written an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times saying that the next president, whether it was Barack Obama or John McCain, should work to improve US relations with South America because Iran already was doing that. I sent it to the CIA's publications review board, PRB, for clearance before submitting it to the Times, and it was cleared quickly. My sources for the piece were

[28:50] two reports from United Press International's Spanish Language Service and the Foreign Ministry website of one of the countries I mentioned in the piece. A couple of days after the op-ed ran, my wife was called into the CIA's Office of Security as part of an inquiry. The officer who videotaped the interview said, "I noticed that your husband had an op-ed run in the LA Times over the weekend." My wife responded that I had

[29:20] had the op-ed cleared. "Well," the officer continued, "that Oped contained highly classified information." My wife answered calmly that I did not have access to classified information. But you do, the officer retorted. My wife and I had a hard and fast rule at home. We never talked about Iran, ever. The officer told her that we could

[29:51] dispense with the entire episode if she would fax him my sources. I emailed them to her immediately and told her to. >> Sample complete. Ready to continue.
