Title: John Kiriakou On The CIA, Torture, And More (The Talk Spot)
Show: U Cast Studios
Date: 2024-12-19
URL: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/ucaststudios/TalkSpot_John_Kiriakou.mp3?dest-id=966392
Duration: 43:00

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[00:08] Welcome to Talkspots. Today I'm joined by John Kerriakou. John, thank you for coming on. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. So tell us a little bit about your background and how you got into CIA and kind of, I guess, your story to nutshell, if you wouldn't mind. Right. So I joined the CIA in 1990 after being recruited by my grad school professor who was actually a CIA officer undercover as a professor, and joined the CIA in January of 1990, spent the first seven and a half years of my career

[00:42] as an analyst working on Iraq. And then the second seven and a half years of my career as an operations officer doing counterterrorism operations. I did very well, ended up becoming the chief of counterterrorism operations in Pakistan after 9-11, immediately after 9-11. Then I went back to headquarters as the executive assistant to the CIA's deputy director for operations. And then left in 2005, well, formally in April of 2005, went into the

[01:19] private sector for a while. But then I blew the whistle on the CIA's torture program in a nationally televised interview on ABC News. That was controversial. In the meantime, then I went to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as the senior investigator. And then as soon as I left the Foreign Relations Committee, the Justice Department arrested me and charged me with five felonies related to my whistleblowing. They ended up dropping four of the charges. And I went to prison for 23 months,

[01:52] completely unapologetically. And since then, I've been kind of known as the anti-torture whistleblower. It's become like an identity for me. Odd as that might sound. The time is now to learn a new career at Moore Park College. Whether you want to earn a certificate or a degree right out of high school or you're returning adults who want to learn more and earn more, your new career starts now at moreparkcollege.edu slash ce. You belong here.

[02:25] That's moreparkcollege.edu slash ce. Get ready for a magical holiday adventure at Wild Lights at the teaching zoo at Moore Park College. Join us in November and December as the zoo transforms into a dazzling wonderland filled with stunning light displays, festive cheer, and unforgettable family fun. Light up your holiday spirit. Enjoy seasonal treats, music, Santa, and awesome holiday vibes. Let's kick off the holiday season together at Wild Lights,

[02:55] at the teaching zoo, and Moore Park College. It seems just from a late person's perspective, I have no law enforcement or military background whatsoever, or CIA FBI. I have nothing like that. Just from a late person's perspective, I feel like, I don't know, 15-ish years ago, 20 years ago, there was a lot of talk about torture. I feel like torture, and obviously because of your work, like you being a whistleblower, I guess the two questions I have is, one,

[03:26] does torture even work? And secondly, has the American government stopped doing torture? Are they just better at concealing it now? Well, the quick answer is torture most definitely, absolutely does not work. Now, I would get pushed back on that from the torturers at the CIA because the truth is this. Yes, eventually, the person you're torturing is going to tell you what you want to know, but he will say literally anything

[03:59] to get you to stop torturing him. And so in the end, you have to take everything he says, turn it over to a team of analysts. They have to sort through all the garbage and the lies and the trash and the obfuscations and the little white lies which are even more dangerous, and come up with what's actually true. Well, the FBI has been interrogating people since the Nuremberg trials in 1945 and 1946. They do it in a completely different way. They establish a rapport with a subject. They treat him with respect. They engage him in

[04:33] conversation. And invariably, the subject opens up. And so the CIA not only got nothing actionable by torturing its prisoners, but then everything those prisoners said was forbidden from being used against them in a court of law. And that's why we still have 34 people at Guantanamo who've not been charged with a crime and will never face a court of law. Like they're just going to be permanent, I guess, detainees. Is that what they're called?

[05:04] Yeah. At least three of them and probably as many as six of them will be permanent detainees, which is also a war crime to detain people like that forever with no criminal charges ever having been filed against them. So you have to decide if you want to be known as the good guys, as the country that respects human rights, like you tell everybody else in the world to do, or if you want to do the same kind of things to the terrorists that the terrorists do to you. Well, in your opinion, I mean, do you feel like that terrorism,

[05:41] torture, do you feel like that's still going on today? Like has it taken on different forms or something like that? Well, that's a great question actually. And honestly, the answer depends on your definition of terrorism, or I'm sorry, of torture. So with passage of the McCain-Feinstein amendment in 2015, which John McCain credited me for, thank God, it was generous of him, with passage of that amendment, it outlawed torture. It outlawed exactly those techniques

[06:15] that the CIA was using against its prisoners. And it said specifically that the only interrogation techniques that an American government employee or a private citizen working on behalf of the American government can employ in an interrogation session are those techniques outlined in the Army Field Manual. So the Army Field Manual doesn't permit any of the things that the CIA was doing to its prisoners. And if you violate that, then you're subject to the federal torture

[06:48] statutes. I say all the time that, you know, we've got a law in this country called the Federal Torture Act of 1946, which specifically outlaws exactly what we did to al-Qaeda terrorists. In 1946, we executed Japanese soldiers who had waterboarded American prisoners of war. We executed them. It was a death penalty offense to waterboard somebody. And then in January of 1968, the Washington Post ran a front page photograph of an American

[07:21] soldier waterboarding a North Vietnamese prisoner. On the day that that picture was published, the Secretary of Defense, at the time it was Robert McNamara, ordered an investigation. The soldier was arrested. He was charged with torture. He was convicted and sentenced 20 years at hard labor at Fort Leavenworth. But then, like magic, in 2002, all that torture is perfectly legal. Well, the law never changed. The law was never amended. We were the ones who

[07:53] changed. And we decided to ignore the Federal Torture Act of 1946 and the United Nations Convention Against Torture, which we were not only signatories to, we were the authors of. Was there a person who led the charge to basically implement torture? Yes. At the end of the day, it was George Tenet, who was the CIA director at the time. But George was convinced to implement this program by some real do-gooders in the CIA's counterterrorism center. Specifically, they were Jose Rodriguez,

[08:27] Cofer Black, James Pavitt, who was the deputy director for operations, John McLaughlin, who was the deputy director of the CIA, John Brennan, who was the executive director of the CIA. These are very bad people who, even to this day, well, Pavitt has passed away. But to this day, all the rest of them believe they were doing the right thing. Interesting. Something that I've noticed just from being a news junkie somewhat

[09:00] is the fact that, oh gosh, William Burns, the head of the current CIA, that he's gone over to Israel numerous times to meet with Yan Yahu and that government. I feel like he's also gone to, or to meet with the Palestinians, maybe even the Lebanese, for this whole Israeli conflict. And something that, again, maybe just, maybe I was oblivious to this, maybe it passed, heads of CIA also did this. But is that normal? Is that normal for the head of the CIA? No, absolutely not. You know, it's funny that you bring that up too, because we've talked about this on my own radio show and my podcast a number of times. I'm going to answer your

[09:35] question by talking first about Tony Blinken. So Tony Blinken is the secretary of state, of course. I knew Tony from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was the staff director. Tony owes literally every job he has had in his adult life to Joe Biden. When Tony graduated from, I think it was Harvard or Yale, I think he went to Harvard. When he graduated from Harvard, he became a junior legislative aide to Joe Biden, Senator Joe Biden. And then he became, after a number of years, the legislative director.

[10:11] And then he went to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when Biden became the chairman and Tony became the chief of staff, or staff directors, what they call it. Then when Biden was elected vice president, Tony became Biden's national security advisor. And then in the second Obama term, Tony became the deputy secretary of state. And then when Biden was elected president, Tony became secretary of state. So he has only worked for Joe Biden his entire adult life. Tony is a lovely guy, he's very smart,

[10:47] and he is in completely over his head. He's a great intellect, and he belongs at a think tank, not on the president's cabinet as the secretary of state. And so you've got Bill Burns, who also was the deputy secretary of state in Obama's first term. Well, what better place to have the consummate diplomat, right? What's called career ambassador, the highest level that a diplomat can attain. The level of career ambassador. He's been ambassador

[11:19] to like seven places, including Russia. And that way, if Tony screws things up, you have an adult in the room. So then war breaks out in the Middle East. And instead of sending your secretary of state to negotiate these ceasefires and deals between the two warring sides, you send the director of the CIA. Why do you do that? You do it because he's a better diplomat than the secretary of state is. That's, yeah, that's very fascinating.

[11:52] I mean, I, yeah, just reading about it, I was, I was just surprised because it's like, what's Anthony Blinken's job? Yeah, exactly. Like what, what is he actually doing? And he, and I've never met him or anything, but just his appearance on TV, he just seems kind of like an egghead a little bit. I don't mean any, any disrespect, but yes, totally agree. Like I say, lovely guy, but he belongs at a think tank, not as secretary of state.

[12:22] How much control does the president actually have over the CIA abroad? Like does the CIA, do they work with the Department of Defense on these different? Almost never, you know, tasks almost. No, the CIA works completely independently. The CIA is the only, the only independent agency, like technically sub cabinet level agency that actually is included as a member of the cabinet. And that changes president to president. For example, Reagan made

[12:53] his CIA director a cabinet member. Senior Bush did. Clinton did not. Junior Bush did. Obama did not. It just depends on the president. But there are no other, like for example, the FBI director has never been a member of the cabinet or the head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has never been a member of the cabinet. Everybody else is the secretary of something plus the CIA director. So how much oversight is there actually of the CIA?

[13:26] Well, that's a very important issue. There is supposed to be very heavy oversight of the CIA. You know, until 1975, there was no oversight of the CIA. And then in 1975, the CIA had gone so completely hog wild, crazy overthrowing governments and killing people that the House and the Senate created two oversight committees. Well, first they had the church committee

[13:57] in the Senate and the Pike committee in the House. And then they decided to make those committees permanent and call them the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. And they're supposed to provide oversight. Now, through the 1970s and into the early 1980s, they did exactly that. It was all about oversight. But then, you know, into the Reagan administration, the authority of the of the oversight

[14:31] committees began to slip to the point where since George W. Bush was president, the oversight committees are really no more than cheerleaders for the CIA. You know, they were in up to their necks in the torture program. There was nobody to stop them. Interesting. I mean, so do you feel like even with the new administration like Trump coming back, I mean, what can he actually do to, I don't want to say reign of men, but I

[15:05] guess a little bit reign of men. Like, is there even anything that can be done? Not really, to tell you the truth. Not really. You know, so many presidents are elected and say they're going to shake everything up. And they don't. They can't. Because the bureaucracy is so heavy. It's so onerous. And so they just can't really make any changes. Trump is actually at a disadvantage because because he's a lame duck. From the moment he puts his right hand up in the

[15:40] air on January the 20th, he can't run for reelection and he's a lame duck. And so that's kind of the end of it. Yeah. And I guess I hadn't thought of that element that you're right. He, I mean, because probably almost assuredly, they'll lose the house in 26 because the margin so thin and the president's party always loses seats in the midterm elections anyways. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And it got closer. I mean, sure, the Republicans took the Senate and that's going to make things like

[16:13] judicial appointments easier for the Republicans in the Senate because the Democrats blew up the judicial, the rules for judicial nominees and confirmation. But in the house, I mean, with two resignations right now for other office, the Republicans have a majority of two. And they're not going to be able to get anything done with that. And, you know, there's been a lot of role reversal here too, where now it's the Republicans who are in opposition to the CIA and the FBI as part of the deep state, the so-called deep state.

[16:45] And it's the Democrats that support the CIA and the FBI. Would you say that there is such a thing as a deep state? Well, you know, sure, but sure, there's a deep state, but you can you can call it something else. You can call it the federal bureaucracy, or you can call it the state. But, you know, it's not like there's anything new about there being a deep state. There's been a deep state since the creation of the CIA in 1947 and the creation of the FBI in 1920.

[17:20] Is it actually true that the CIA can't or it doesn't do missions like domestically? Or does the CIA actually, I mean, can they or legally can they do things domestically? No. Like spying on somebody or something like that? No, they're absolutely forbidden from spying domestically. Although they do have domestic offices. They are not allowed to do anything clandestine. What they have domestic offices for is to meet with U.S. business leaders who travel to what are

[17:51] called denied areas. So if an American businessman goes to do business in Russia, China, Cuba, North Korea, and that's not going to happen, but, you know, were it to happen, the CIA is able to collect that overtly by saying, hi, my name is Joe Blow from the CIA. And we would love to talk to you about your trip. So in a situation like that, would that business like businessman, would he be

[18:26] like an asset? Is that what that would be considered? No, they wouldn't. They wouldn't formally recruit somebody like that because he's an American. But what they rely on is just the patriotism of American business leaders to do the right thing and say, I met with, you know, this Chinese businessman. And this was what he said. And I met with this Chinese government official. And that's what he said. It's, you know, they're just hoping people do the right thing. Okay. But there's not an actual like monetary transaction. Oh, no, no, no, no. Nothing like that. It's just based on patriotism.

[18:59] Does the FBI do things like that? Do they recruit people to actually spy on people or give information to America? Yes, absolutely. Yes. The FBI, that's how FBI agents get promoted, is to infiltrate your organization and to spy on you and your friends and see what it is that you're doing or talking about or planning. See, the CIA has primacy overseas. The FBI can't do anything overseas unless it's an open criminal investigation in the United States.

[19:29] And the CIA can't do anything domestically. They have to let it, let it go to the FBI. I heard you list in the, or I heard you mentioned in an interview, you did a handful of months or so ago, about 9-11. And oh gosh, you said his name earlier. Is it Cofer? Oh, Cofer Black, right. Yeah, that he was the one really, or he was a person trying to scream saying, hey,

[19:59] like something can happen with. Yeah, he was. So with 9-11, would you say that was more of a failure? Who do you think actually takes the blame? If there was a blame pie, who gets the biggest piece of pie for that? I really believe that this was not only the greatest intelligence failure in American history. It was an American failure, a governmental failure, because the State Department issued the visas to the terrorists. They were all in the country legally. The FBI didn't tell the CIA

[20:31] that they were tracking terrorists. The CIA didn't tell the FBI that they knew there were terrorists in the United States, but they were trying to recruit them. The White House repeatedly told Cofer Black and Dick Clark, who was the senior director at the National Security Council for Counterterrorism, that there was no threat from Al Qaeda. The threat was from China, not Al Qaeda. So everybody failed. Everybody did.

[21:03] I mean, I'm sure obviously people over the years have told you, oh well, they'll ask you, hey, off the record, was it an inside job? Do you feel like it was just, there were so many errors that maybe the average person can't really comprehend the fact there were so many mistakes made, but it wasn't even ill intentional? Oh, sure. A lot of people think that it was an incident. Listen, I've heard everything from the Saudi royal family did it, to the Bush family did it, to the Israelis did it, to the Jews did it, to the American Jews, I mean, to space aliens and like seriously,

[21:36] and nanothermite paint and controlled demolitions and all kinds of crazy nonsense. The truth is this was carried out by Al Qaeda and the US government was asleep at the switch. And I think you mentioned in that same interview, you said something about the fact that the United States government that they looked at the people ended up committing 9-11 as I wouldn't want to say friends, but just people that they could use. Am I misremembering how you

[22:10] said that? Yeah, I mean, yeah, no, you're not misremembering it. They believed that these guys were recruitable. They didn't believe that they were going to carry out the gravest terrorist attack in American history. They thought, all right, these are true believers, but we may be able to work with these guys. And there was never any hope ever that we could work with these guys. Interesting. I mean, that kind of jumps to today as the concept of,

[22:40] I mean, is the war on terror, is that technically still going? Technically, yeah, it is. Yeah, there is for all intents and purposes, there is no such thing anymore as Al Qaeda. Not really. I mean, there are offshoots of it. There's Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, which is in the Sahel area of Africa. There's Al Qaeda in the Islamic Crescent, which is, in part it became ISIS, in part it became the Nusratar Front, and now in part it

[23:13] actually controls Syria, another one of our many screw-ups. But the Al Qaeda that we fought in Afghanistan and Pakistan, it just simply doesn't exist anymore. So what makes these groups today, I mean, are they really that much different than Al Qaeda of, you know, 20, whatever, 23 years ago? I would say they are more radical than Al Qaeda was. At least in Syria, you know, ISIS went to war with Al Qaeda because Al Qaeda wasn't radical enough. That was their position.

[23:49] So it's something that we have to continue fighting, like never, never stop fighting. Otherwise, they'll be the death of us. Because, I mean, you look at a country like Syria and I don't even understand fully what happened. I mean, obviously, we supplied some weapons to the people that ended up overthrowing Assad. And, you know, you hear these are radicals and then, you know, you hear, well, the American government wasn't really behind these guys. There's other people. But, I mean, the idea of there being fluidity between

[24:21] the different groups you're involved with, I mean, that exists, right? Where, you know, maybe two years you're part of whatever ISIS K and then you're part of whatever other group, right? Like, is there kind of movement between these groups? There is some movement between them. You know, Syria is very, very complicated. And you've got different countries supporting different groups, as well as having the United States supporting different groups. The CIA supported what used to be Al Qaeda

[24:57] in Syria. And the Defense Department supported an independent rebel group. And oftentimes, the Pentagon's group was fighting the CIA's group. Like, what do you hope to accomplish with something like that? Like, what kind of stupid, terrible policy is that? Do you feel like, overall, with American foreign policy, is it just sometimes, is it just totally

[25:27] erratic and nonsensical? Like, I look at Syria, and again, I'm no expert, but how does this even serve our interests? Well, to have Assad gone. It doesn't. It doesn't. Listen, Assad was a bad guy, right? He was a genocidal maniac against his own people. But he was a secularist. There are working cathedrals, Christian cathedrals in Syria. There are working synagogues in Syria. Everybody was

[25:59] free to practice their own religion. There were women in the cabinet and women in the parliament. And now the place is controlled by Al Qaeda. You know, I always believe that the devil you know is better than the devil you don't. And this group now is the devil we don't. So I fear for what's happening in Syria, and I fear for what likely will happen to the Christian community in Syria. It's an extremely dangerous situation. You know, there's another thing,

[26:29] too. I think I should probably mention. There's a famous quote by Gamal Abdel Nasser, the former president of Egypt. I actually had it hanging over my desk at the CIA. He said, the thing about you Americans is that you never make clear cut stupid decisions. You only make complicated stupid decisions, which makes us wonder if there is something to them which we are missing. And that's absolutely true. I think that that's a very interesting quote. I

[27:02] mean, yeah, just as a person just observing the news, I don't really understand what our policies are. I don't understand our aims, especially in the Middle East. I completely understand the aims of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. America just wants to bleed out Russia. If you want to just boil it down to that, I can get that. Do they have to do it? Probably not. I mean, Russia's, they have a way smaller economy, way fewer people. But if you want to do that, okay, at least I can understand that. But in the Middle East,

[27:36] I don't really understand. What's the objective? Right, exactly. At one time, the objective was to ward off war as well and as long as possible. And I think that's changed now. I think that the goal now is to support Israel, period, regardless of who happens to be the prime minister and what those policies of that prime minister happen to be. And no matter how right-wing the prime minister becomes,

[28:09] no matter how right-wing the government becomes, and we see that now with people like Inamar Ben-Kavir and Bezala Smotrich, both members of the cabinet, who have been convicted of hate crimes, by the way, felony convictions for hate crimes against Arabs. And then what you do to make Israel safer, in addition to just feeding them with all the weapons and weapons systems that they could possibly use, is you get the Saudis,

[28:42] the Bahrainis, the Emiratis, the Kuwaitis, the Sudanese, the Moroccans, the Tunisians to open diplomatic relations with Israel. And there's really nothing in it for them. It only benefits Israel. Yeah. I mean, it certainly makes you wonder with American foreign policy that, I mean, how are the actual average Americans, how are they benefiting off of this? Yeah. Exactly. I mean, you look at the Arab Spring all these years late, or even if you go back further,

[29:14] from this century to today right now, so 2000s to right now, we've spent how much money? Trillions, by at least two trillion, if not more. Oh, yeah. And I would say the Middle East, well, I mean, obviously you were an expert in the field. I mean, how much would you say the Middle East is a better place today or a worse place and more dangerous to a world like peace? Oh, I think it's far more dangerous today than it was even five years ago, far more dangerous. You know, Lebanon is a failed state. Yemen is a failed state.

[29:47] We're practically in a state of war with Iran. Israel, I'm sorry, Syria has collapsed. And it's just in a state of chaos. The Israelis are occupying Syrian territory. The Americans are occupying Syrian territory. The Russians are bugging out. They're abandoning their bases. It's just chaos. I mean, who's to blame for what's going on today? Oh, there's like in America. There's a lot of blame to go around.

[30:17] Donald Trump's much-vaunted Abraham Accords, I think, were a disaster for peace. When Donald Trump said that he could solve the Middle East process or Middle East problem in a day, that meant by just screwing the Palestinians. I know, you know, you just, you give the Israelis everything they want and in exchange, they open relations with Saudi Arabia, the Emirates and Bahrain, and a couple of others. What would you do for the Palestinians?

[30:48] You've just screwed them. And now the Israelis are starting to annex more land. When you first started on the CIA back in the 90s, was that really a belief amongst analysts and people in the agency that there would be a Palestinian state? Like, was that something that people thought was actually going to happen? Oh my gosh, yes. And I'll tell you a story. My first boss at the CIA became the senior advisor to the president for the Middle East.

[31:20] And in January of 2001, just the final, final days of Bill Clinton's presidency, my friend was with Vice President Gore at Camp David with the Prime Minister of Israel and with Yasser Arafat, the head of the Palestine Liberation Organization. They had agreed on almost everything related to a peace deal. And they had an enormous map of Jerusalem on a conference room table. And they were literally dividing Jerusalem block by block.

[31:54] And when they finished, Gore said, my God, we have peace. And Arafat said, I can never sell this to the Palestinian people. And he walked out the door and Gore ran out after him. And he said, wait a minute, you can't just walk out after all these months, these years of negotiation. If there's something you don't like, tell us and we'll negotiate it. And he said, I can never sell a peace deal to the Palestinian people. And that was the death of the peace process.

[32:25] Well, now in retrospect, anything would have been better than nothing. And what the Palestinians have today is nothing. Why couldn't he sell it to the Palestinian people? Because at the time, the Palestinian mantra was to push the Jews into the sea. That was the goal, that all of Israel must be Palestine. And all Palestinian refugees had to have the right of return.

[32:56] The Jews would be pushed into the sea. And that's just not realistic anymore. What's the stance today? Do the Palestinians still say that same thing? Or is it just like, we'll literally take anything? Yeah, now there's no real consensus. So you've probably heard about the so-called two-state solution. The official US government policy is that we support a two-state solution. An independent Israel and an independent Palestine.

[33:29] That will never happen, period. It will never happen. Now, everybody says, well, the best anybody can hope for is a one-state solution where there's equality for Palestinians and they just live in Israel. That also will never happen, ever. I have a friend who spent 35 years in the Middle East as an American diplomat with the State Department. And he opines, and I know he does it kind of tongue in cheek,

[34:03] but I think he's onto something. You've got to have a three-state solution. The PLO, or what is now called the PA, the Palestinian Authority, controls the West Bank. Hamas controls Gaza for all intents and purposes. And never the two shall meet. And so if there is going to be a Palestinian state, it really has to be two Palestinian states. That's the best they're going to get. And do you feel like that's actually even possible?

[34:34] No, it's not possible. I think the only thing that's possible is the status quo, where Israel runs the equivalent of an apartheid state. Palestinians will always be at best second-class citizens, and they will never have a homeland. And the Israelis will continue to occupy and to annex Palestinian land.

[35:04] I mean, just from an American foreign policy perspective, I mean, would we be better off served if there were two states? Absolutely. To me, I don't really fully understand, again, when it comes to our policy in the Middle East, that I feel like we created enemies in places that we didn't really need to make it. Oh yeah, you're exactly right. You're exactly right. Richard Nixon made a decision in 1969 to back Israel 100% with no questions asked.

[35:35] That changed American foreign policy permanently, and we'll never go back. We'll never be seen by Arabs as an honest broker in Israel and Palestine. Never. We picked a side, and we've stuck with it. Because I think from the media's perspective, maybe with the average person, I think, they'll say something like, well, radical Muslims don't like America because of our freedom, or maybe they go a little deeper and they say,

[36:06] well, there's too many Christians in this country, and they hate us because of those things. In reality, I mean, let's just take World War II, America was way, the percentage of people that said they were Christians was way higher than today. Yes. I feel like in a lot of ways you can say we actually had more individual freedoms than now. I mean, every phone call you ever make can be listened to or email or text or whatever. And these Middle Eastern countries didn't hate us then, at least not to this same vitriolic level. Yes. Yeah, I think that's right.

[36:38] I think we're becoming far more divided in this country. And it's funny to me too, because my own view is that there's really not much difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. I mean, you can sort of tinker around the edges, but they're both capitalist parties. They both agree on 90% of everything. And the Democrats have moved decisively to the right since 1972. I don't know why we're so divided. We shouldn't be.

[37:09] Yeah, that's very interesting, because even I've listened to some things about that too, that especially with Clinton just being a pro-free trader. And I wouldn't say anti-union, but you can definitely see in the parties now the idea of the worker, the working class, so to speak. I mean, both parties in a lot of ways are very much controlled by people that have a lot of money. Right, right. It's not, who's the union party today? Yeah, exactly. And this is something that unions are struggling with,

[37:40] because historically, unions have supported Democrats and most working people identified as Democrats. That started to change with the election of 1980 and Ronald Reagan's victory. And it changed decisively with Donald Trump, where almost two-thirds of union households voted for Donald Trump. The Democrats have to really take a good hard look at themselves to figure out why they have lost working people. You mentioned, or again, it's just another interview

[38:12] that you did. I heard you talked about your work with John Kerry. Right. Again, just as an observer, obviously, I remember when John Kerry ran for president in 2004 and after he lost, I just felt like he was just a senator again. He was just doing his own thing. Obviously, he was an influential person, because all senators are. But what happened that he seemed like, well, obviously, during Obama's second term becomes the Secretary of State. Like, what elevated him to that level? And it seems like since that time,

[38:43] he incorrect me if I'm wrong. It seems like he's been a person that almost got a boost or like a promotion in terms of importance to American foreign policy. Like, am I wrong about that? Or I feel like he, I mean, he lost, but after that, I feel like he's wielded a lot of power. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you know, Kerry ran for Congress first in 1972 and lost. And then he got elected Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania, I'm sorry, of Massachusetts. And then he ran for Congress, won a couple of terms there.

[39:15] And then when Paul Songus left the Senate, Kerry got himself elected to the Senate. He got onto very powerful committees, including the Finance Committee, which writes tax law and the Foreign Relations Committee. He was around long enough that he became the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. And then ran for president, as you said, in 2004. He sort of promoted himself as sort of

[39:49] you know, that, I don't know, I'm trying to be nice. The senior statesman, right? The senior statesman in government. And when I was working for him, I mean, presidents, prime ministers would call him literally every single day just to consult. He believed he was going to be Barack Obama's first secretary of state. He wasn't. He was the second for political reasons. And then even under Biden, because they were old friends,

[40:20] he replaced Biden as the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He joined as the special envoy for the environment, I think is what it was. He's an old man now. He's nearing 80. But he still wants to remain part of the game. To tell you the truth, I'm not sure that John Kerry really contributes much anymore. I think it's time to go to a younger generation. Yeah, I was literally just looking him up right now. And yeah, I mean, he's 81 now. And I think the last position he was in

[40:51] was this special presidential envoy for climate. Yeah. Like, yeah. I guess that was interesting because he compared him to someone like Al Gore and Al Gore. Obviously he did a lot of climate change things after the facts. And I'm sure people would take Al Gore's calls today. But it seems like Kerry really got elevated. Yeah, he did. Like, oh, yeah. Yeah, it's funny, right? But Al Gore also, you know, Al Gore turned to Hollywood. He moved to Santa Barbara. He won an Oscar for a documentary that he made. He really went on to do something different.

[41:22] And Kerry stayed right here in Washington. You said because of political reasons he was the secretary of state for Obama, where were those reasons? I mean, was it just that Hillary was? Yeah, Hillary, Hillary, Hillary. And she always held more, I mean, she always held more clout than even John Kerry. I mean, obviously because of her husband and the Clintons are so powerful. Yeah, yeah, it was all about Hillary. See, the Hillary Obama race was very, very close. Obama ended up with like 55% to Hillary's 45%.

[41:55] So he had to make the Hillary people happy. And doing that meant making Hillary the secretary of state. He had also promised sex state to Kerry and he had promised it to Bill Richardson and walked away from both of them. What did Bill Richardson, what did he do in the Obama administration? Was he ever something? Was he like the head of education? No, he was named secretary of commerce and he quit before it ever got any wheels.

[42:29] Oh, so he actually never served in the Obama administration? No, no. Interesting. Well, John, well, definitely. I want to thank you so much for coming on. Where can people watch your stuff or listen to your stuff? Oh, thanks for asking. I put everything I do on Substack. So if you go to Substack and just search John Kiriakou, there I am. And do you still like, you mentioned like, do you have like a YouTube channel or podcast that you like put things on regularly?

[42:59] Yeah, just starting to get it up. And because it's sort of scattered all over the internet right now, you know, I have columns at two different magazines and I just put everything on Substack. All right, John, well, thank you so much. I appreciate your time today and I'll talk to you. Thanks. Good to talk to you.
