Title: Ex-CIA Agent: We Enabled Cartels, Lied About Torture & Rigged Elections
Show: IRONCLAD
Date: 2025-04-07
URL: https://youtu.be/HfT8jrjLNiE
Duration: 58:00

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[00:00] The Americans told me in 2001 that if I told them where the Arabs were, I could grow all the poppy I wanted. And I said, 'What American told you you could grow puppy? And as soon as I said it, the military guys are like, "Meeting over. We're getting out of here." They pull me back to the jeep and we fly out. The opinions of the guests and host are their own and do not represent the opinions of Ironclad, the Border Patrol, or the Department of Homeland

[00:31] [Music] Security. Welcome to Borderland and Ironclad original presented by First Form. Our next guest is John Kerku who is a CIA whistleblower and uh he has a lot of information pertaining what happened in Afghanistan and the poppy fields to include the cartels in Mexico. You guys enjoy. Well, John, first of all, I've seen some of your interviews

[01:01] with other other podcasts and obviously this subject is slightly different than some of the other podcasts you've you've mentioned. Uh, but I thought it'd be interesting to have you on here as someone who has a wealth of information and might be able to give more insight to some of our audience on this kind of drug cartel. Uh, oh yeah, that's a great topic. Yeah, it's a fascinating topic. It is. And it's far more complicated than people realize. Well, there we go. This

[01:33] is exactly what I wanted to talk about today. So, if you don't mind, would you be able to give a a quick just um bio of who you are and your background? Sure. Uh my name is John Kuryaku. Uh I spent 15 years at the CIA. Uh first the first half of my career was in uh analysis. The second half was in counterterrorism operations. I was the chief of CIA counterterrorist operations in Pakistan after 911. And um and then I left for the private sector for a while. ended up

[02:04] at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as the uh senior investigator there under John Kerry when he was the chairman. Blew the whistle on the CIA's torture program, which I believe to be illegal, immoral, unethical. Um proudly went to prison for two years because of it. No regrets. And um and since 2015, I've been an author. I've published eight books, uh, a journalist, uh, commentator. I have a TV show on Unified

[02:36] Television called CIA Declassified, and, uh, I do fun things like this podcast. Thank you. I'm sure some of our audience is going to be like, I'm sorry, what? All right, they're gonna they're going to have to go look further into your background. Yes. You are you are publicly known as a whistleblower and spent time in prison for for uh exposing the torture program. Yeah. So that's where a lot of people might recognize the name from or might have heard your name from. But in this conversation

[03:06] today, I really feel like you'd be someone who can answer some of those hard questions that our society is very curious about. you know, for me, and I'm just going to throw some stuff at you just off the top right quick, and I'm sure it'll start the conversation, but as I've done my time as a border patrol agent, boots on ground with special operations, I've done a lot of um disrupting of cartel organizations through intel gathering and whatnot. Uh, and then as you started as I started to study cartels and human trafficking and

[03:38] everything that goes along with it, you started looking into the history of CIA's involvement in other countries and destabilization and creation like the push and pull of immigration and so on and so forth. And it starts to become like I need to find someone who could answer some of these questions. One of the big questions that happened early on that we talked about in my last podcast with another gentleman was during line 911 there's information that there was a call made by our government to the Cenoloa cartel saying hey no Middle

[04:08] Eastern's coming through the border right now kind of kind of like can you do us a solid have you ever heard of that that no that information I had not heard that but just because I hadn't heard it doesn't mean it didn't happen you know this is one of the things. I'd like to I'd like to get this out on the record at the outset here. You watch you watch TV shows like uh like Narcos for example. Narcos is one of the best examples where you know just as the DEA guys are going to move in on Pablo

[04:41] Escobar or the Cali cartel, the CIA guy screws it all up. Well, that's because that really happens in real life. And the reason is that the CIA doesn't give a [ __ ] about narcotics. Uh they care about whatever the time has to be. Uh they care about communism or terrorism or Muslims crossing the border or whatever the issue is. It's called an OD, an operating directive that the CIA happens

[05:13] to be focused on. It's not narcotics. And so if if there has to be some sort of cooperation, even unofficial informal cooperation between the CIA and a cartel, then so be it. The CIA is going to have a relationship, no matter how um how spotty or irregular it might be, with the cartel. Okay. So, let's flesh that out a little

[05:45] bit. Yeah. So you're saying that so when you had the DEA, they focus on drugs. The FBI, they focus on what the FBI focus on, but the CIA focus is primarily their primary focus is is national security. Correct. Absolutely right. So, getting back to Narcos, if if you're if you're looking at uh the uh the Cali cartel, for example, the CIA the CIA's operating directive in Colombia at the time was communist

[06:16] insurgency. Well, if you have to work with a drug gang or with a cartel to help stamp out communism, you're going to work with that cartel. DEA is going to be working against the cartel. And so you're going to be bumping heads with with DEA, whether it's in the halls of the embassy or the jungles of Colombia, and that's just the way it's going to be. Whoa. Okay. I've seen a couple TV shows that hinted at this, but this is why I

[06:47] wanted to talk to you about that. Look at that thing. It's rotating. On the special 4 episode change agent series, Black Project, we hear from experts, whistleblowers, and insiders to try to figure out if our government is behind these strange craft, and if so, why are they keeping the truth from the public? We're told never to talk about this. We'll look at the history of special access programs and see just how far

[07:17] ahead the most secretive elements of the military-industrial complex are and what it will take to finally get the truth. Has the government conducted secret UAP crash retrieval programs? Yes or no? Yes. Become an ironclad YouTube member to binge all four episodes of Change Agents Black Project on launch day. Otherwise, catch new episodes weekly. Join now YouTube at this is ironclad. So, their hypothetic could be scenarios where you have a clandestine operation or whatnot

[07:49] and two two or three of our three-letter agencies are accidentally going against each other. Do they know about each other? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. You know, again, getting back to NRCAS, and I I keep using this example because it's the clearest example available to the public that I that I can think of. Um, just as DEA is going in for the win, the CIA station chief screws it up and tells them basically, "Tough luck, guys. Tough luck. I have the ear of the

[08:21] ambassador. You don't. We have primacy on this policy. You don't. This is the way it's going to be." Is there a hierarchy to three-letter agencies on who who takes what who is the hierarchy? Does CIA have the hierarchy? CIA is at the top. Yeah. There are things that the CIA is dealing with overseas that are so sensitive or so compartmented that even the US ambassador is not cleared to know about

[08:51] it. That happens all the time and it's something that many State Department people don't understand. You know, State Department people, I've had State Department people tell me this right to my face that that that's nonsense. That the that the American ambassador is the chief of mission, right? His title is ambassador, extraordinary and planetentiary and personal representative of the president of the United States. That's the full formal title of an ambassador. And as an ambassador, he's the chief of mission, which means he's the chief of all of the organizations that fall under him at the

[09:24] American Embassy. Yeah, that's that looks great on paper, but it's just simply not true. There are some things that the CIA does, not in all countries, not even in most countries, but there are some countries where where there are operations that are so sensitive that the CIA station chief is reporting back to the CIA director or back to the national security adviser and the ambassador is cut out, man. And all of this is approved by the

[09:56] whoever the president is at the time. Correct. Yeah. The president knows about these obviously. Correct. Through the national security adviser. See, and this is another thing people don't realize that it's not the secretary of state who controls foreign policy. It's the national security adviser. The secretary of state is going to meet with the president for breakfast every Tuesday morning. But the the national security adviser sees the president every day all day as and is in charge of coordinating both foreign

[10:26] policy and national security policy. Who so just to help me out right now currently in our administration? Who is that? Who holds that position? That's uh uh what's his name? I'm going to have to Google it now. He just he just took the job. uh national security advisor that is Oh, of course it's Mike Walls, former

[10:59] congressman. Okay. Yeah. Oh, that's right. Okay. Interesting. Yeah. He's had the job for what, a month, right? A month and a half now. Mike Walls. So during your time in the CIA, were you ever, you know, um were you ever privy to any of the information that happens in South America? Were there certain objectives or missions happening down there that you could speak about that the CIA was involved in? Uh no, I was a Middle East uh expert and spent most most of my

[11:31] adult life in the Middle East or working on the Middle East. I did I did take a job as the uh it was my last headquarters job. I was the executive assistant to the CIA's deputy director for operations. Um and in that position I technically had access to everything that the CIA was doing but there were several executive assistants. Uh there one two three four of us. And um and so my focus was specifically the Middle East. But then, you know, I I spoke recently on a podcast about narcotics in

[12:04] Afghanistan, which did fall under my my purview. It wasn't just it wasn't just South America and Central America. And tell me more about that about because I know during well our time in Afghanistan, there was a lot of poppy fields. I spent some time in Afghanistan. There was poppy fields. We know that's a big um percentage of the heroin that goes, you know, is coming from those that fields, those fields or whatnot. So, tell me more about that. You know, I didn't pay close attention to it until I went to the Senate Foreign

[12:35] Relations Committee. Um there were a couple of DEA guys that reached out to me saying, "Hey, you got to help us on on poppy cultivation in Afghanistan. This is a real problem." And I said, "Okay, I'll I'll look into it." So, um, so I, uh, I told Carrie I was going to fly out to Afghanistan and do an investigation of poppy cultivation. I went out there. The military did not like the idea, not even a little bit.

[13:06] But I arrived at Bagram Air Base, which was, you know, just outside Kabell, not too far outside Kabell. And I said that I and I had cabled in advance. I didn't just show up one day, right? So I said we need to go to Kandahar and we need to go to Lashkar which is the capital of Helman province. They said absolutely not. I said oh absolutely yes. And you know this is one thing that I never ever did in my career is I never pulled rank on somebody. But if you're a senior staff member of a

[13:39] congressional committee, you have the rank of of a brigadier general. So this was the only time I ever pulled that car and I said, "No, I'm telling you, we're going to Kandahar and Lashar." So we got in a helicopter and we went went to Kandahar, had some meetings, went to Lashar. Lashar was a lot tougher than Kandahar. So you're you're in this it's called a PRT. Um a provisional uh reconstruction team is what it stands for. So, it's technically

[14:10] headed by the State Department, but they've got like a State Department guy, uh, two uh, Pentagon guys, a DEA guy, maybe CIA, maybe not CIA, depending on the PRT, but it's very small. It's hard to protect, and it's in the middle of the most hostile territory in the country. So, we helicopter and you have to you have to go in a corkcrew to land so that you don't get hit by a, you know, somebody firing a a shoulder fired rocket. So, we land in and uh I get out and I I had a I had

[14:44] a translator with me. I don't speak Pashtu. So, um I said that I was there to do uh to do a study on poppy cultivation. I want to go into the poppy fields. They said, "Absolutely not. It's too dangerous. We don't have the ability to protect you." I said, "Nope. Let's go." So, we got in couple of jeeps, security, my translator. We go out into the poppy fields. Sure enough, we see a poppy farmer. So, I go up to him. We drive up and I said to him through the

[15:15] translator, it was a very stupid question that I asked him. I said, "Uh, why do you grow poppy when instead you can grow things with two uh two uh ripening cycles, right? You can grow tomatoes, onions, pomegranates." And he goes like this. He goes, The Americans told me in 2001 that if I told them where the Arabs were, I could grow all the poppy I wanted. And I said,

[15:46] "What American told you you broke puppy?" And as soon as I said it, the military guys are like, "Meeting over. We're getting out of here." They pull me back to the jeep and we fly out. So, I write this up when I get back to to Capitol Hill and I send it to these two guys, whistleblowers I would call them, because they did this unofficially from DEA. And one of them called me and said, um, you're never going to get this

[16:17] published. And I said, why not? And he said, "Because Afghanistan produces 93% of the world's heroin, and almost all of that heroin goes to Russia and Iran. Our heroin comes from Mexico, from Colombia, from Ecuador." He said, "All of that, 93% of the world's heroin goes to Russia and Iran. And we want them to be addicted to heroin. It makes their societies weaker.

[16:50] And he was right. I never got it published. Carrie wouldn't approve it. The agency was furious that I went out there and pulled rank on those guys. So, never was published. But because it was never published, I was never able to classify it. And so, it's unclassified. You know, John going to Afghanistan and asking a poppy farmer a question, that's not classified. So, there it is. And you know, I I said this to a to an agency

[17:22] friend of mine one time, and it's it's apples and oranges, but it's a good point that he brought it up, and I I'll raise it with you. Um I was saying, you know, this this is terrible that that we would go to the to the extreme of wanting entire societies to be addicted to opiates or or opioids just to get a leg up. And he said, "Yeah, but don't you think that's what the Chinese do to us with fentanyl?" You know, it's it's I was just about to say the same question.

[17:52] And the answer is absolutely yes. He's right. He's right. This is what the Chinese do to us. They send fentinel to the United States or they manufacture it in in Mexico and have it smuggled to us because it makes us weaker as a society. It's exactly the same thing that we were doing to the Russians and the Iranians. My goodness. Yeah, that's that's an interesting and and is is that just from your observation in the Middle East, we allow it to continue because of that?

[18:24] Yes. If it makes the CIA's job easier for Russians to have a heroin problem, God bless. Good luck to that. It's pretty harsh. It's harsh. I hate to say it, but it's a reality. Have you ever watched the TV show called Lioness? No. I recommend you do because they touch on a lot of this and it is a CIA kind of story but there's I the only way

[18:56] I can kind of explain to the audience is like that show explains this in a way and I was trying to explain to my wife the decisions that are made sometime in our government to us the the you know the person just living it uh who is oblivious to the decisions that have to be made right uh we would be judgmental on like, oh, that sounds terrible. But at the higher, you know, at the higher echelon, uh, they make those decisions that would be for us,

[19:26] uh, unjustified almost. Oh my god, you're exactly right. You're exactly right. And see, now you're pulling me into a direction I wasn't intending to go to. You're exactly right. And I will tell you that at the CIA, and this is just an example, the CIA actively seeks to hire people who have sociopathic tendencies. Okay? Not sociopaths. Sociopaths have no conscience. They're impossible to control and they blow right through a polygraph exam because they don't feel guilt. Their brains will

[19:57] not allow them to feel guilt. People who have sociopathic tendencies do feel guilt. They do express remorse. They do get tripped up on a polygraph, but they're willing, in many cases, happy to break the law because we're the good guys. They're willing to work in these legal and ethical gray areas. Well, then take that to the next step. The next step is that of course sociopaths are going to slip through the

[20:28] cracks for the very reason that they don't register on polygraphs. If you look at Fortune 500 CEOs, many, if not most of them are sociopaths. They climbed to the top of the corporate ladder on the backs of the people around them. Well, how do you think people like the director of the CIA, the national security adviser, the president of the United States, no matter who it happens to be, how do you think they got to where they are?

[20:58] Because they're sociopaths. And that's how you get to those senior positions. You're able to make these life and death decisions without having to think or to worry about what it means for other human beings. So all right. Um I'm trying to think of Okay. So on that same idea, someone who's been involved pretty heavily, there's decisions that have to be made

[21:29] uh in a government that are not uh you know that some people won't can't stomach. Do you agree? Wow, that's that's actually a very hard question to answer. Um I mean, I don't mean to be mealy mouth, but yes and no. Okay, imagine this. Imagine you're in a National Security Council meeting and somebody says, "Okay, what should we do about heroin poppy cultivation in

[22:00] Afghanistan?" Well, cultivating heroin poppy's bad, right? We we shouldn't we shouldn't encourage the cultivation of heroin poppy. People are going to die, right? People are going to overdose and that's bad. On the other hand, it's our enemies that are going to have to deal with with the effects of the of the epidemic um in their own countries that distracts them from us. So that's

[22:31] good. So on the one hand it's bad. On the other hand it's good. So which one's better for us? The one that's better for us is we want their people to be addicted to heroin. What's going on y'all? I'm not sure if you know this, but Borderland Narcosis is sponsored by First Form. First Form is a wellness supplement company and uh you know, I've been with them for about seven years and I've been with them for that long because I truly believe in not just the product, but the people who own the company. They are

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[23:32] link. It is the number one stph.com/borderland. And if you uh order over $75, you get free shipping. And if you're new to the site, you get a free app for 30 days. So go check it out. Again, thank you so much for all the support. See you soon. Well, I think of it almost in the same in the same kind of definition you use is that America itself, some of the some of the fathers who the leaders who

[24:06] run the country have to have sociopathic ideas almost as a country so that we could be at the top. Yeah. And so in that sense we will kind of So this is why I'm asking that question. It leads back to to drugs. Yes. Um this drug war we have now things that kind of started the addiction here in America was you know big pharma. You know on top of that then you have you see what's happening in South America right now. Now we're finally stopping or

[24:37] at least slowing down the traffic. for some reason it was wide open for for four years. Is some of that decision-m in your opinion based just on your expertise? Was some of that kind of making uh almost having to make a choice in how to kind of facilitate relationships to to either better the country or improve? Yeah, that's that's a great question and that is exactly the kind of question that is going to have to be decided in these National Security Council meetings. So listen, you're you're damned if you

[25:08] do and you're damned if you don't. So you're going to have to choose a policy that is going to be the lesser of the two evils. On the one hand, well, you sort of open the border because, oh, these poor refugees, they're searching for a better life and a hundred years of American foreign policy have completely [ __ ] up their countries and so it's our fault. So we should, you know, let them in and they can apply as refugees even if that means it's easier for

[25:40] fentinel to cross the border and and kill people across the United States. Or on the other hand, you can use a heavier hand and close the border and declare something of a war on drugs, to use Ronald Reagan's phrase, and declare the cartels to be terrorist organizations. And you know, that's not I I wanted to talk about that as well. That's not just rhetoric to to call to call the cartels

[26:11] terrorist organizations. There's a lot behind that policy-wise. So, which which one's the lesser of two evils? I think the lesser of two evils is to close the border, right? You've got to have control of your country. I'll give you another example. Um, I'm a Greek American and in 2010 I even got my Greek citizenship. So, I'm a dual US Greek citizen and um Greece has a problem with um with refugees or illegal aliens and almost all of them come uh

[26:44] either by boat from Turkey or across the land border with Turkey. Now, the Turks, the European Union has given the Turks billions of dollars to set up refugee centers in Turkey and keep the refugees in Turkey, right? The EU is paying for it. But what the Turks do is they take the money, they put it in their pockets, and then they push all those refugees across the border into Greece. I I went to Roads, the island of Roads, a year ago. My cousin's a DJ there. It's 3:00

[27:15] in the morning. We're standing outside his nightclub, which is right on the beach in the island of Roads. And as I'm standing there talking to him, this raft floats up with 12 Syrians in it. And they had just been pushed out from Turkey. So, we had to call the cops and the cops came and gave them sandwiches and took them to the police station, locked them up. Well, what the Greeks did besides putting more Coast Guard uh boats out to intercept these boats is they built a wall on the land border. The land border is not much. It's it's,

[27:47] you know, couple hundred miles, but they they built a wall and the wall completely stopped people from crossing the land border. then you can focus on on the sea. The Turks lost their minds. They were so angry that the Greeks had built this wall and they actually put tanks on the border as if they were going to blast the wall. They never did. But the fact of the matter is whether you like the idea of a wall or not, it worked. It closed the border. It sealed

[28:20] the border. So, you know, we can all make fun of the wall. The Mexicans are going to pay for it. You just dig a hole under the wall or whatever. Okay, fine. But make it hard. Don't make their job of sending fentanyl to the United States easy. Make it hard. Can I take a minute to talk about the the policy of declaring the uh the cartels? Yeah, I wanted to ask about that. You said you wanted to touch on that. Let's do that. Yeah. this there

[28:52] was a lot more behind this than meets the eye. You know, I saw so many op-eds and comments that when when Donald Trump said that that the State Department was declaring the cartels to be terrorist organizations, people are like, "Oh, that's so stupid. They're not really terrorist organizations." Like, he didn't he didn't do it to like scare people. He didn't do it to to act like a tough guy. He did it because from a policy perspective, it changes the playing

[29:23] field. We have laws in this country saying that if the Secretary of State deems an organization to be a terrorist group, it number one releases an untapped budget to address that terrorist group. But number two, it makes it legal under US law to work in foreign territory whether the Mexicans like it or not. It's it's legal according to US law to send troops across the border. It's not an act of

[29:55] war. And it makes the leaders of the cartel liable for arrest under US law. So it makes it legal then for the US to send in teams to kidnap members or leaders of the cartel and to bring them back to the United States for trial without having to go through the extradition process. So, there's a lot behind this. I I thought it was a good move. Yeah, that's what I was wondering. You thought

[30:25] it was a good move? I did. Yeah. Does this So, this opens up the military. Does this open up Does anyone else uh qualify for that? Is it that mean the CIA is allowed to do the work as well? Yeah. And DEA. And DEA. So they can cross border opt all they want. Whether the president likes it or not. If it if it's a justifiable mission, they're allowed to do it. Yes. Whether the Mexicans like it or not. See, be before this declaration um that that the Trump administration

[30:56] made last month, we have to we have to liaz with the Mexicans and you know and and I've heard that the the federal police are great and everybody else is corrupt, whatever. We'd have to liaz with them. We give them money. We give them weapons. We give them training. Then they try to catch somebody and then they arrest them. And then there's this year-long court process where we have to apply for extradition and maybe we get it, maybe we don't. That's all that's all moot now. Now we just go in and grab

[31:28] them. So I had a couple interviews prior to this talking about there's potential CIA um and also covert covert operations has probably happened recently uh in Mexico before the designation. Is that something you believe has happened throughout the years? Yeah, you know what? When I when I joined the CIA, um the operating directives were vastly different than they were when I left the CIA. When I joined the CIA, uh it was

[32:00] the very end of the Cold War. The president was talking about something called the um the peace dividend. The Soviet Union didn't exist anymore. They they were collapsing while I was there. And um and so what are we going to do? We're going to focus on the environment, right? So, what what's a what's a real threat to the United States? It's environmental degradation or AIDS. That was a really big deal when I first joined the agency. Like, this great threat to American

[32:32] security was the AIDS epidemic. Well, I mean, that's that stuff's laughable now. Now it's it's terrorism, proliferation, narcotics, China, to a little lesser extent, Russia, you know, Iran, stuff like that. So um so the CIA changed with administrations and it changed with public opinion. It changed with developments around the world.

[33:06] Uh we also had this thing called the at first it was called the crime and narcotics center which was like a fusion center at the agency. Then it became the counter narcotics center. And I remember one of the senior uh officers telling me early in my career if you really want to put an end to your career work on counter narcotics because nobody gives a [ __ ] about counter narcotics here. And I think now that's starting to change. How does narcotics, counter

[33:38] narcotics, how does that relate to the CIA's mission? See, that's a great question. That's a great question. And a lot of senior CIA officers are going to tell you it doesn't matter to the CIA's mission. What would make it matter is if whoever happened to be the president of the United States decided that it mattered. So if if we get a president that says counter narcotics is as important as countering China or as

[34:08] important as countering, you know, Iranian development of a delivery system, a missile delivery system, then the CIA is going to start caring about narcotics. Right now, Donald Trump has made this change, but it's an incremental change. It's not that we need to fight drugs around the world. It's that we need to fight fentinel in Mexico because that's what our real problem is. Nobody so much cares if you know weed is crossing the border, but we do with other drugs, but fentinyl is the

[34:39] one that's really grabbing people's attention. Is there anything that you think is more to do with how lucrative that market is other than just what it's doing to Americans? I know it's killing over 100,000 a year Americans. I get how that is a a problem that's more than our wars, right? But is there also the threat that the money because from from my position as someone who's been in the law enforcement capacity of it, the money is what makes the corruption which makes the

[35:11] corruption means that the government can be destabilized, right? And so Exactly right. You're exactly right. And you know what? Let's talk about a TV series again because they got it right in Breaking Bad. You may remember, you know, early on it was season whatever two or three where there there were corrupt local bank branch managers who were laundering money for the cartel. We've proven this. This has actually been proven currently. This is real

[35:41] life. This is what happens. And again, you know, if if you start corrupting societies, doing it one local bank branch manager at a time, eventually you're going to bring the whole society down. Yeah. It's crazy to see. I worked on a border once in the RGV sector, which would be like the Rio Grand Valley sector, a small little town called Rio and Laguya. And when we were doing operations to, you know, to

[36:13] disrupt cartel uh trafficking of drugs, I was blown away to see how many people were scouts for them. Meaning just an old man sitting on a chair in front of a house. Just I mean the everybody was spotting cars. They were calling us out. I mean, we've done some I I was able to get dropped off at like 2 am, walk it in for about an hour to a location, High Point, and still get spotted. And I thought I was pretty good at my job. But that's the level of corruption in some

[36:44] of the small towns because the money is so lucrative that they're willing to take that risk. Isn't that incredible? But that's that's reality right there. That's real. How do you even begin to fight something like that? Yeah. Well, that's the thing is that most Americans don't realize it does spill over into America. Now, there is a misconception on what you call a gang member, a drug smuggler, and a cartel member. And also those who just assist in the efforts of it, right? So, I think we kind of blurred the lines of what you call them

[37:15] all. Everyone's just like, they're all cartel. Well, that's not accurate at all, right? But the drug trade has definitely spilled into America in a way that has caused a lot of corruption and a lot of blurriness with banks and moneyaundering with purchasing of other items, things like the cattle market, things like um oil. So, so I guess real. Exactly. Exactly. And so it is interesting to for the president to call them a terrorist

[37:45] organization uh is is is definitely a good thing. But I think the American people don't understand the branches of what happens with drug trade and the financial backing that it has which gives so much more power to Mexico in in in its own but the cartel and how it reaches into America. Oh my god, you're absolutely right. And and getting back to this declaration of of uh terrorism designation, um I just reminded myself

[38:16] of it by saying real estate. Um it makes it easier if you can if you can identify if you can break through the the front companies and the shell companies um and get to the the origin of the cartel's real estate holdings. This declaration also allows you to seize those. You know how we're always announcing sanctions against the Russians and the Iranians and whomever? Um, those are mostly for show because we're so granular on our sanctions now

[38:49] that we're we're sanctioning individual people even that don't have holdings in the United States. But the Mexicans, the cartel members that is, have real estate all over the world. Yeah. And then if we can identify that real estate, we can work with other countries to seize it. So that that helps us very much in that respect. Yeah. And we could also seize their their their accounts, right? Exactly. Yeah. It's going to be it's going to be interesting to see what happens. My my

[39:20] thoughts are that there is a deep weave. Well, I think a lot of people have already kind of confirmed this. We even connection between the Mexican government and the cartel and that's why it's been so corrupt for so long. Uh I just think there's so much money it makes it too easy to just and not even that the threat of just taking someone's life as well, saying, "Hey, take the money or we'll kill you is kind of like the model of how they've worked for so long." Yes. the CIA's decabization or assisting in

[39:53] certain personnel becoming leaders of other countries has kind of caused the push and pull which also assists in the drug trade. Was that is that was that like um do you think the CIA thought of that what would happen if they continue to destabilize certain countries? They're trying certain leaders. No, generally no. That's a great question. And you know, I I did an episode of of my own uh uh TV show on uh on Guatemala. Uh so we were the the whole

[40:25] episode. It sounds kind of silly, but it's it's funny. It's um it was about Chikita Banana, right? So in in in 1898, a a businessman from Boston, a a wealthy businessman from Boston decided to uh build a railroad in uh Guatemala from the capital city to the coast. And while they were building the railroad and and he would go down there to sort of oversee the building of the

[40:55] railroad, he sees that the workers are eating these fruits off the tree. He's like, "What is that?" And they said, "It's called a banana." Well, he had never seen a banana before. No American had ever seen a banana before. And they're delicious and they're just growing along the side of the trucks. And so he decided, you know, one of the things we should do with this railroad is we should pick these fruits, these bananas, and we should send them to the coast and bring them to the United States. Americans would like this fruit.

[41:25] It's very tasty. And so the company which years 60 years later became Chaita Banana uh started importing bananas to the United States. Well, the workers were like, "Well, hey, wait a minute. We're making, you know, 10 cents a day and the Americans are taking all these bananas for free. we should organize a union and we should um get more money from the bananas for ourselves and our family.

[41:58] And the CIA said, "Actually, no." Because it turned out that CIA director Alan Dulles was on the board of directors of Chaquita Banana. His brother, the Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, was on the board of Chaita Banana. And President Eisenhower's secretar's brother was on the board of Chaita Banana. So what did they do? They overthrew the government of Guatemala. They installed a military dictatorship which gave rise to the term banana

[42:29] republic and Chaita got to keep all the bananas. So the CIA doesn't think about well, you know, if we overthrow this government, what's going to happen? We're going to put in a milit military dictatorship. we get to keep the bananas, but the dictatorship's going to be corrupt and they're probably going to allow drugs to come through the country. They never give that any thought. All they think is, hey, we get to keep the bananas and we install a friendly dictatorship. We don't have to worry about unions. We don't have to worry

[42:59] about these pesky, you know, democracies and everything stays the same, just the way we like it. I don't know. How do you get that approved? Obviously, they probably got it approved by saying not mentioning the business side of things, right? And don't forget there were no congressional oversight committees at the time. Man, that's insane. It's pretty bad. Yeah. You know, there's there's a lot of like little stories. So, like when when we talk about this subject, there's

[43:29] always someone that comes into the comments and says, "Yeah, well, the CIA did this." And you're like, "Oh my god." You know, and and the idea of the CIA is so awesome. There's so many cool things that the counterterrorism side of things, the national security, you know, there's things out there that are so, in my opinion, badass about the CIA. And then there's the past of the CIA that kind of has a black eye at times because of some of the decisions. It's almost as if I'll fix this problem here and forget about what potentially happens later. We'll just get to that

[44:01] when it happens. And yeah, the CIA is bad about blowback. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it seems like a lot of blowback is happening now in this drug trade. In my opinion, it kind kind of seems like this is all part of the blowback that we're still dealing with. Agreed. Um is there is there any kind of parallels between the failures of US counterterrorism efforts and the failures on the drug war? Oh, that's a good question. Uh yeah, actually uh you know what, now that I think about it,

[44:32] Afghanistan's a prime example. Um, we essentially lost in Afghanistan. Uh, we failed to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people, as the saying goes. U, we presided over, you know, one of the one of world history's great narco states. Um, and then we ended up essentially getting thrown out. The Taliban have somewhat cracked down on poppy

[45:05] cultivation. Uh there's it's not 93% anymore of the world's heroin being produced in Afghanistan. But but you know, how should I say this without sounding crass? We presided over a narco state, but it was our narco state. And now it's not our narco state. The last time I flew I flew out of uh Kabell was uh 2011. And when you're taking off from Cabo airport, just as the plane takes

[45:39] off, you see these magnificent mansions. Now, most Afghans live in, you know, mud huts with corrugated tin roofs, but these are magnificent giant mansions. And they're all painted in pastel colors. That's why they really stick out. Pink and orange and green and pale blue. Um like like out of a cartoon. Those are the narot traffickers houses. They all live in the same neighborhood and there's nothing to

[46:11] stop them. Yeah. It's no different than some of the border towns. Some of these really small the same ones I mentioned. Same ones I mentioned. You can be driving and seeing, you know, everyone living a very very, I guess, similar lifestyle and then there's just one street or two streets of these mansions that are 2.7 something million dollar homes. You're like, that's odd, you know? Yeah, that's ridiculous. Yeah, there's some weird to that. Um, a couple more questions I have for

[46:42] you. Just this one, this one is every time we talk about this, you know, there is a hint of of comments that we have about Kiki Camarina. Yeah. There's people that believe that the CIA was involved in his murder and it and and I'd be very interested in knowing what you what your thoughts are on that subject. I never saw any evidence that the that the CIA was involved, but the CIA certainly exploited the murder of Kiki Camarina. Explain that. Well, Ronald Reagan took Camarina's murder

[47:12] personally, and that was the very first time that a president signed executive um executive orders allowing crossborder uh law enforcement actions. Um it also allowed the CIA to go cross border. And so I I don't I don't think I I I can't say definitively no, the CIA was not involved in any way. I never saw any evidence that the CIA was involved, but they sure took advantage of it. It

[47:42] opened a lot of doors for the CIA cross border that just were closed to them before he was killed. Interesting. Yeah. You know, from our earlier conversation, it kind of beg the question whether there was a CIA op that had to, you know, the the the weirdness of potential operations that kind of butted heads at, you know, that came to a point of butting heads. You're seeing what we have right now with uh the new president administration. I'm really I'm I'm really excited about them right now. I'm

[48:13] really excited about the direction they're going with the borders and you see what's happening on our borders on in the Mexican side with the cartel. What are some thoughts on some some opportunities that the CIA can use to really benefit the national security effort in protecting our country? One of the things that the CIA does I have to I have to be careful the I I'm going to carefully word my response. Understood.

[48:44] There are there are certain cover jobs for the CIA overseas that allow them access to people approaching an American embassy to whom they otherwise would never have access. Okay? If I were the CIA director today, because we're taking border security so much more seriously than we were, you know, over the last four years, I would

[49:14] actually put CIA officers on the borders, do the same kind of job on the borders that they do in American embassies overseas. that is identifying people of intelligence interest or of operational interest that they otherwise would not have access to. Look, we all know that there are bad guys trying to cross the border to do bad things and they're pretending to be intending refugees. Yeah, we need to be able to sort those people

[49:45] out. Um, and certainly block the ones you can block, arrest the ones you can arrest, but then recruit and double back the ones that are recruitable. I don't think we're doing that. I don't think there are CIA officers on the borders. I don't think ever have been. I I I've never met anyone that told me they were, but I don't I don't I don't believe there is. Yeah. I I I don't think so either. I I think you're right.

[50:16] Is Is there something that you It's tough, man, cuz like, you know, I respect our government and the three-letter agencies and and the efforts they make. I know it's it's sometimes it's hard times. I know some of the decisions they make obviously have blowback, but you know, I do support the efforts of what we do as a country. Um I you know I didn't mention it earlier but there is conversations that say that we RCIA has worked with some cartels because it's almost like

[50:47] you know having a closer relationship with one enemy that's better than the other enemies. Right. And so that's kind of the the situation that's happened in the past. Yeah. So, I'm I'm very curious to see in the future if we hear more about that because you have still certain cartel organizations who who kind of take lead whether it be uh just by notoriety uh or it be by by just pure just harsh threat. Um, and I think the Cenoloa cartel is one that has always

[51:17] seemed to have been on more of the wavelength of what our government is needing in a sense if I if I say or some kind of partnership. I don't know if there is there's nothing official. I'm just saying right you see things and you're like that's odd. Uh, and and just recently Elmo's capture kind of felt like a very odd like oh that's that's an interesting conversation to continue to be had. So I'm curious to see what happens in the near future. And I and I really hope that whatever our government does, it is in the best effort of

[51:48] protecting our nation. And right now, protecting our nation means closing those borders and stopping as much fentanyl from ever coming into this country. There's an old saying in the Middle East that's that's applicable everywhere. It's the enemy of my enemy is my friend. And uh I think that uh often times the CIA takes that saying far too seriously. Explain that. Well, the enemy of my enemy sometimes should be my enemy, not my friend. You

[52:18] know, if uh if the if the Cali cartel is working against communist insurgents and I'm working against communist insurgents, that shouldn't necessarily mean that I ally myself with the Cali cartel. You can have two enemies at the same time. you know, if the if the Russians and the Chinese decide to fight each other uh over something, that doesn't mean we have to ally ourselves with either the Russians or the Chinese. And we made that mistake in the Iran Iraq war where Iran and Iraq were

[52:50] both our enemies in the late 1970s. Iraq invades Iran and we armed both sides. It's all fascinating, you know. It's all fascinating. And and it's funny when we we've talked about television shows multiple times here and I think it's I am someone who spends a lot of time in the film and television space, right? Uh and somehow some of these shows get it almost too close to actors. Oh yeah. Oh, I'll tell you what. There

[53:23] was a there was a guy I happened to be and I apologize. I only have five minutes left, but No, same same. I just happened to be sitting next to a guy on a plane and I generally never talk to people on planes. I just sit there and mind my own business. Uh, and this guy was talkative, very talkative. And he said, "What do you do for a living?" And I said, "I work for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee." "Oh, that sounds fascinating." I said, "No, it's actually really boring. It's it's not what I thought it was going to be, but my previous job was fascinating. You know, I told him what I did at the agency." And uh I said, "What do you

[53:54] do?" He said, "Oh, I I created a TV a TV series." I said, "Really? Is it something I I might have heard of?" He said, "Maybe. I'm the number one show on basic cable. It's called Burn Notice. And I said, "Burn Notice? I love that show. I've watched every single episode of that show. In fact," I said, "Your Trade Craft is so good. I actually watched the credits in slow motion to see who your intelligence advisor was." And he said, "I don't have one. I've been fascinated by the CIA since I was a

[54:26] little kid. I've read every book." By the time we landed in Los Angeles, I was the script consultant for the burn burn notice. He's been a friend of mine ever since. Then he he recreated True Lies and I was the script consultant on True Lies for the the one season it was on, it got cancelled. But sometimes, man, in Hollywood, they get it exactly right. I know. I know. It's fascinating. Either way, John, man, thank you so much for your time. Honestly, I hope we get to go

[54:57] back and do it again. Absolutely. This was a lot of fun. Thanks for having me. Thank you for watching Borderland Narcosis in Ironclad Original presented by First Form. You guys go check out First Form, our incredible sponsor, but also like, share, tell your friends. Until next time, take care. [Music]

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