Title: Episode 76-John Kiriakou
Show: Red Apple Podcast Network
Date: 2025-06-06
URL: https://youtu.be/Ij3nQk7T0sY
Duration: 48:00

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[02:37] undercover as a professor there. And he recruited me into the CIA. Wow. And then uh what year was this we're talking about? That was 1988. Wow. That was what? You look too young to be around there. Thank you. I feel like a tired old man. Did you know why they asked me to be in the CIA, too? No. I did not know that. I knew this guy and all of a sudden I told him this was uh uh before 911 and I told him, you know, I'd like to help my country. I'd like to go into the CIA. So he says, "Uh, really, Bo?" I

[03:09] said, "Yeah." So he says somebody will contact you. All of a sudden I get a phone call and they tell me to meet under the uh old clock and peacock alley at the Waldorf Atoria. Someone will contact you. So I all of a sudden I'm standing there at 12:00 noon and then all of a sudden I hear Bidle. I'm looking around. It was a woman about 4 foot tall. Hey Bidle. And she flashes this this double-sided identification CIA. And how you doing? She goes my name is so and so. I said oh. And then she

[03:40] sits to me down and she goes, "You know, we looked you over. You had a great career as a New York City homicide detective. Uh, why do you want to be in the CIA?" I love my country. I just feel as though I'm not doing enough. I'm a private investigator. I travel around the world. That could be my my cover. I could go to Aba Daba do wherever I got to go and I could make believe I'm investigating something else when I'm investigating the Abaados. So all of a sudden she's there. She's listening to me. So she says, "Okay, somebody else will contact you." And I'll never forget she gave me a card and it's called

[04:11] something Fox Farms in Virginia. Fox. I remember it was like a you know when they Fox they blow the horn and that insignia was on as something Fox Farms and that must have been a CIA location there. So everything was good. The next day I used to do Immus in the morning. Remember Imus the radio guy? Sure do. Yeah. 34 years I did them and Yeah. until he retired. So, I'm a little bad in keeping secrets. That's all I can tell you. So, next day, I hit I hit the IMUS Airways and he's there and I'm

[04:43] giddy. I'm giddy cuz I'm really I can't believe that they're reaching out to me be a CIA CIA operative. So, I said, I can't tell you, Don. He said, "What, Bo?" I said, "You want me to really tell you? I've been contacted by the CIA to be an operative in the Middle East. You know, I know all these Saudi Arabian guys. I spent a lot of time there. Put it this way, after I blasted it out on the IMUS in the morning, they never freaking called me. They said, "This guy can't keep a secret for one day." So, that was my CIA operative uh

[05:15] responsibility there. Let's talk about you. I never became a CIA operative. Sorry, I can't keep the secret. All right. So, then you were, this is in the 1980s. Okay. So, you went over to the Middle East after that. I started off as an analyst. I spent the first seven and a half years of my career there as an analyst working on Iraq. A lot of that was overseas, mostly in me to the listeners working on Iraq. What's that mean? Well, you know, the CIA does two primary things. One is analysis and the other is operations. In analysis,

[05:47] usually you sit in a cubicle in headquarters, you think the big thoughts, you write papers that nobody's ever going to read, and then you send them over to the White House. And every couple of years you go overseas, maybe you stay for a year, two, three years, you become an expert, you learn to speak the language, and then you come back and transfer. Were you fluent in uh in Arabic? I was fluent in Arabic. Um I have a I have a knack for foreign languages and they recognized that early on. So they took advantage of it. Which What's that dialect? What's that dialect

[06:17] that all the uh terrorists use? What's that dialect? Fa. Oh, fuss. Okay, go ahead. Fussa. And then I learned uh Khaliji Gulf dialect as well because I spent so much time in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain. I was in Saudi Arabia in the the late uh the late 70 uh 70s and the early 80s. I used to go to the to Riad and we'd fly to uh uh what's that place called in the Red Sea? Jeda. And we and then there was supposed

[06:47] to be no alcohol in Saudi Arabia. And the palaces I was in, they had more booze than the bar downstairs. And then we used to fly to uh uh Jedha and we would bang the Middle Eastern airline student. This is with all the princes. We'd give them $1,500 and bang them over there in the hotel. This is very religious country. This is in the 19 late 70s and 80s. We were banging them. Wow. Yeah. We used to ship alcohol out and we would get these calls from the airport from uh customs and immigration. They would they would call us and say

[07:18] that our shipment of office furniture was leaking and could we come and get it, please? Yeah. The thing I didn't like when I arrived in Riad, these son of a [ __ ] when I'd come from New York, I'd take flight 24, it was a Pan-American uh uh uh it was a combination flight. When I I would I would go into uh Dharan and I would have to catch the next flight to Riad. Am I correct with that? Yeah. Yeah. And they would throw all my [ __ ] out of my suitcase. I said, "Hey, uh, Abdul, take it easy." I said, and they were looking

[07:48] for porno movies. I was I told him, "You want to find porno movies? I'm with Prince Fad bin bin Abdul Aiz. Go to his palace. He's got more porno movies than a porno Paula." Yeah. And then he became king. Yeah. No, no. This was this was Fad bin Turkey. He got blown up. He got blown up two years ago in Yemen. He became the highest ranking guy. He's the guy that broke my leg jumping out of a plane in Paris, California. He had a 100 jumps. His partner Abdul Aziz bin Nasa bin Abdul Aiz. We jumped out of a plane.

[08:19] I broke my freaking leg in half, my ankle, and I had to retire from the police department. I don't care. Ah, terrible. But so let's talk about you, not Bo. Okay, so you went after 911, what happened? You kicked into patriotism. Well, I you know, I I I got bored in analysis. You just sit there and you just write paper after paper after paper. You know, nobody's reading these papers. And then you're telling people, well, I'm writing for the president. I'm writing for the Secretary of State. They're not reading your stupid papers. And so I I said, I got to do something different. I want to I want

[08:50] to go overseas. And it turned out that they were looking for a person to um to work in Athens against Arab terrorists. And as it turned out, I was literally the only person in the entire CIA who was fluent in both Greek and Arabic. Wow. And so they they sent me to Athens uh for two years and I liked it so much I switched over to operations. So then after 9/11 they made me the uh chief of CIA counterterrorism operations in

[09:20] Pakistan. I went out to Pakistan and started was this after the four Americans were killed in Pakistan. This was after the four Americans were killed. Right. Because my friend John O'Neal who died in World Trade Center, Johnny O'Neal was an FBI agent along with uh uh Tom Nicolleti. They were on that. That's when they called in. This is before 9/11. And they wanted a strike on this uh Bin Laden [ __ ] And they had him in there and shake and bake areno wouldn't let him send a hellfire missile and blow this guy up. And this

[09:50] is this is the truth of what happened. If they would have killed him, maybe 9/11 wouldn't have occurred. Yeah, guys. That's true. That's true. And they had a second opportunity to get him as well, Bo. Uh bin Laden like a tourist was transiting Doha airport one time and the gutteries um stopped him there and President Clinton called the Amir gutter and said you've got to turn him over to us. But the problem was the justice department have never bothered to indict the guy and because he hadn't been indicted the couldn't turn him over and

[10:22] so they let him go and he went on to Sudan. Wow. And then from Sudan to Afghanistan. So we missed him several times. Man, I'm talking to John. I used to hang out with John at Lanes. Was a bar up on 88th Street. Oh yeah. On Second Avenue. And John used to tell me about this Bin Laden guy. And with the Cole, he was in back of that. And then with the two embassy bombings. I mean, the son of a [ __ ] We knew what he was. And we didn't have the balls because of Reno. She shake and bake Reno. The same one that handled that very good over there in Waco. She did a good job over

[10:54] there too with all those kids getting killed. There was no there was no need for that and this woman is a disgrace and she died. So happy days for her. I don't care. But you know what? We could have maybe saved 9/11. So now you're over there after 9/11 and then you get involved with uh investigating al-Qaeda. One more footnote. When I was in uh uh two years ago I was in Athens and this is when the first wave of Syrians were coming over probably one quarter of them terrorists. Who the hell knows? And I'm

[11:25] walking around with my gold watch and a couple of the cops grab me and go, "No, no good. Do not wear your watch here. Everybody's getting robbed." People don't understand the crime wave that has occurred across Europe with the advent and the of the Syrians. I mean, some of them are good people, but you got scumbags in there and they're robbing people and all that. Okay. So, now all of a sudden, you're in you're in Pakistan. How did you What was your cover in Pakistan? Uh, I had very very light cover in Pakistan because I I was declared to the

[11:57] Pakistani intelligence service. So my job they declared you as as an operative. Yeah, they declared me as an You weren't like selling [ __ ] magic excuse my language. You weren't selling magic carpets and [ __ ] No, I was I tried to buy a lot of magic carpets, but no, I I was pretty well out there. And so uh my job was to work with them to try to capture as many al-Qaeda fighters as we possibly could. And then we a lot of them a lot of them were in Pakistan. Oh boy. Were they and and I'm I'm proud to say that one of the ideas that I came

[12:28] up with is you know we had officers all the way up and down the border. And I said this is ridiculous trying to catch these guys one at a time in in the most formidable uh forbidding landscape in the world. I said let's just let them in. Let them into the country. Yeah. We'll get them in their safe houses. So instead of catching one at a time on the border, we catch 10 to 20. Instead of going into to instead of going into to Bora with all that [ __ ] terrain, let them come on in. Give them a little let them have lamb

[13:00] balls or whatever they eat. Right. And that's exactly what we did. And you know they're stupid. So they're all on their cell phones. They're all checking their emails watching porno watching porno. Jerking off that they all watch porno. You know, the night that, as an aside, the night that Bin Laden was killed, um, a buddy of mine from the CIA called me and he said, "How much porn you think is on that computer?" And I said, "Are you kidding? That computer's going to be completely porn?" And it was it was all porn. We got my friend is the guy that whacked him there, Rob O'Neal. And they

[13:33] they they got a lot it was a lot of porn there, Carl. You didn't know. He was that religious about Abu Dhabi. What's the guy? Muhammad, that he was jerking off with porn all the time. He's just same as the other guy from Iraq. The Saddam Hussein and his two brothers brothers sons Dwey and Guy there. What was their names? Call him UD. Yeah. Douchebag and Douchebag. Yeah. Yeah. Hey John, a quick question. Um, did you get a lot of cooperation from the ISI or were they kind of That's a great question. Um, the the short answer is

[14:04] yes. But but the the ISI people that I was dealing with, they were specifically the counterterrorism people and they were all educated and trained in the US and the UK. But then when I would go over to ISI headquarters, you see a lot of people with long bushy beards, short uh Shawar Kamis giving you the stink eye. Those are the guys that created the Taliban. Those are the guys that trained and armed the Kashmir separatists. So in my mind, there were two separate ISIS. There was the group of good guys working

[14:35] with us and the group of bad guys working against us. The ones that went through British intelligence, American intelligence and we all know the ISI knew exactly that big bird there uh the bin Laden they knew where he was all the time and I mean he was being he was being protected by them if anything. And I think the line was drawn in the sand. I got to say one thing about uh President uh what was his name? Obama. Obama and I'll praise him for one thing. I praise him for taking this prick out because it was a very dangerous mission

[15:06] and if they took out our helicopters, it could have been rather embarrassing. God bless Obama for doing that and he's he's good in my eyes. He did one thing good. That was one thing good. So, let's talk about the actual operation that you were in charge of to capture Abu Zuba. Yep. Well, who's Abdul Zuba? Tell tell the people listening. We we thought at the time that Abu Zuba was the number three in al-Qaeda and that turned out to be unt untrue or incorrect, but he was a a very bad man. This is a guy who had created both of al-Qaeda's training uh

[15:37] camps in southern Afghanistan. And he was the founder of al-Qaeda's safe house in Pashaw, Pakistan called the House of Martyrs. So if you were a a young jihadi and you wanted to go make jihad against the Americans, you got in touch with Abu Zuba. He got you there. or if you were already in the fight and you were retired, you wanted to go home, you went to Abu Zuba, he got you a fake passport, he got you a ticket, and you went home. So, he was kind of al-Qaeda's logistics guy. He was the guy that made the trains run on time. Well, in March of um

[16:10] February of 2002, we got word from uh from the fort that Abu Zabeda was somewhere in the country and we had to catch him. He was in Pakistan. He was somewhere in Pakistan, which was ridiculous because Pakistan is the size of Texas and it has 180 million people in it and you can't just say he's somewhere in Pakistan, go catch him. Yeah. So, we set out to to hunt him and that's what we did. Now, he knew that we were on his trail and we were actually closer than we realized we were. We were

[16:42] about a day, sometimes two days behind him, but he was constantly changing locations. Finally, I called um headquarters and I said, "Listen, we're just not going to be able to find him like this. I need a targeting analyst out here." The next day, they sent out a guy who's a friend of mine. Targeting analyst, different from the kind of analysis I used to do. A targeting analyst pours through reams, thousands, millions of pieces of data to try to locate a target so we can kill him. So, this uh targeting analyst flew out. He

[17:15] spent about two weeks trying to figure out how we could geollocate a beta and then finally he came to me and said,"I just can't get it down to any 15 sites." I said, "My god, we never hit more than two sites simultaneously in a single night. We can't hit 14 sites, you know, all at the same time." But I realized we we had to. And so, um, I cabled headquarters and I said, "We need a big team, 36 people, half CIA, half FBI. We

[17:46] need weapons, ammunition, battering rams, night vision, goggles, secure communications, bulletproof vests. They chartered a 737. They put everything on with pallets, 36 guys. They flew out to Pakistan the next day. What was your support guys? Were there military support guys? with you like seals with you or was just CIA guys? No, this was actually before the SEALs started getting involved. The SEAL the SEALs got involved after Khaled Shake Muhammad. So, this was about uh seven months

[18:16] before the SEALs got called in. So, it was just us. I mean, we were dopes. We didn't really know what we were doing. And what do I know about busting down doors and grabbing people? I I had never done that before. This was a CIA CIA complete operation without support of the military guys. Yeah. Yeah. We had the support of of a group called the Punjab elite force which was the SWAT team from Lahore Pakistan. These guys were fearless and the funny but they were really good guys. Good guys. And they were the only ones who didn't wear

[18:47] bulletproof vest. They only wore these black t-shirts with a with a 45 a stencil of a 45 on them and it said Punjab Elite Force. They weren't afraid of anybody. Well, they're a little psychopathic to me. That's kind of stupid to me because those bullets will take you right out. I'd have a I would have a plate right up there. You ain't gonna get my nuts. I would have another plate around them. Okay, so now you you're you're zeroing in on Abu there, Zakadaka, whatever his name is. And what happens? How do you catch him? He made a

[19:18] mistake, Bo. He made a stupid mistake. And and we had counted on him making a mistake. He uh he accessed his Hotmail account with a landline. Wow. And as soon as he did, I mean, within 5 minutes, we had Don't tell too much technology cuz there might be some aba daba dudes listening. We have we have great technology, believe it or not. Great technology. This is 18y old information, so it's all different now. But uh but sure enough, that address was one of the 14 on our list. And um and

[19:48] that night at 0200, we we busted down 14 doors simultaneously as the clock struck uh struck two. And uh you have to kill anybody. Grabbed everybody. No, my orders very specifically were to take him alive. But this idiot Pakistani cop uh shot him three times with an AK-47. Shot him in the thigh, the groin, and the stomach. Oh, he got rid of his ball bag, so they can't be no more of them. That's good. Was a bloody mess, let me tell you. Yeah. Uh and and so

[20:20] uh so I I uh we th bunch of us threw him into the back of a filthy Toyota pickup truck. We took him to Fisa Labad hospital middle of the night, 3:30 in the morning. Uh we shocked the doctor, you know, all these Americans walking in at 3:30 in the morning dressed as Pakistanis with an Arab who's bleeding to death. And I told the doctor, "Listen, my orders were to take him alive. You need to sew him up." And I mean right now. So they took him into the operating room. They're But you had

[20:50] Pakistani guys with you. Yeah, we had Pakistani guys with us. Squat guys. Yeah, but there were a bunch of blondhaired, blue-eyed CIA guys wearing shawar kamis that looked ridiculous. All right. So now you soda the guy up. Where did you bring him then? Well, the the problem that we had is while he was in surgery, word got around the al-Qaeda community that we had gotten him and they started driving past the hospital and just opening fire on the hospital. Wow. So I told I told this Pakistani major that I was with. I said, "Look, if they realize we're so lightly armed,

[21:21] we're dead. Can you get a helicopter in here?" He said, "Yeah." 20 minutes later, a helicopter lands in the parking lot. I walk right into the operating room kind of like this. I told the doctor, "Wrap it up. We got to go." They sewed him up as fast as they could. We wheeled him onto the helicopter. We flew to a military base about 50 miles away. And then I got a call from the uh from the station and they said that uh George Tennant, the CIA director, had ordered, these were his exact words, 247 CIA eyes

[21:53] on, do not leave his bedside. And I ended up sitting there for the next 56 hours. I tore up his sheet. I tied him to the bed because I was afraid I was going to fall asleep. Yeah. And um and I just sat there at the foot of the bed and stared at him for the next 56 hours. Wow. Okay. So then then what happens? Where you go next? Well, 24 hours into this, um, he starts to, uh, he starts to stir. And in the meantime, I I had called one of the guys over at our safe house, and I said, "Buddy," I said, "I I

[22:23] smell so bad I'm grossing myself out." I said, "Can you send over some clean clothes?" The only clean clothes I had, I had a pair of underwear, a pair of socks, and a red t-shirt that my kids had bought me that I slept in. It would had it had a Spongebob square pants in the middle of it. So I put that on with my big poofy Pakistani balloon pants and um 24 hours later he starts to stir. Remember he's tied to the bed. So he's tied like this and um and I stood up at the foot of the bed and he opened one

[22:53] eye and you could see the exact instant that he realized, "Oh my god, the Americans have me." Because he looked at Spongebob and his heart rate went from 110 to 220 and he coded. And so they call the code blue. They rush into the room. They shock him with the paddles. They give him a shot of demorall. And then he's out again for another six hours. So 6 hours after that, he wakes up. He's terrified. And he motions for

[23:23] me to come next to him. So I move his oxygen mask off to the side and I said to him in Arabic, "Shmeck, what is your name?" And he shakes his head. So I repeated it, "Shumech." And he he says to me in English, "I will not speak to you in God's language." And I said, "That's okay, Abu Zuba. We know who you are." He starts crying and he says, "Please, brother, kill me. Take the pillow and kill me." And I said, "Nobody's going to kill you. We've been looking for you for a long time." And I said, "I don't know much, but I know

[23:55] that you're going to get the best medical care that the American government can provide." So, he relaxed finally. Uh, he wanted to know what happened. He couldn't really remember what happened. I said, "You trying to escape?" He had climbed to the roof of the of his safe house to jump to the roof of the next nextdoor house and the Pakistani guy shot him. And um and he we talked a lot uh we talked about Christianity versus Islam. He recited poetry. He cried a lot. He said he would never know the

[24:26] touch of a woman. He would never know the joy of fatherhood. And I said, "Listen, you're not the victim here." I said, "There were 50,000 people in those towers. What did you think was going to happen? Did you think we wouldn't try to find you, to kill you, to kill Bin Laden? You're lucky you're alive. We could have killed you the other night." And he said, "No, I only wanted to kill Jews." He said, "I I was I was overruled." And I said, "Well, be that as it may, you're not the victim here." And then finally, I said to him, he he

[24:56] was really worried about what was going to happen to him. And the honest to God's truth was, I didn't know what was going to happen to him. I didn't have a need to know. And so I said to him, I'm being honest with you. I said, I don't know what's going to happen, but I'll tell you one thing. I am the nicest guy that you're going to meet in this experience. My colleagues, they're all downhill after this. All downhill. I said, if I could give you one piece of advice, it's that you have to cooperate. and he said, "You seem like a nice man,

[25:28] but you're the enemy, and I'll never cooperate." I said, "Suit yourself." So, a couple of hours after that, again, at at about uh 5 in the morning, an unmarked CIA jet landed on the tarmac right outside the the hospital room. The hospital was right on the tarmac on this base. And um he asked me if I would hold his hand. He cried all the way to the plane. three FBI agents and I carried his gurnie out to the out to the plane. It was hard to get him on because he was strapped to the gurnie. So, we sort of

[25:59] maneuvered him onto the plane. We strapped him on the uh on the luggage rack at the back and I leaned over and I said, "Remember, you have to cooperate and he squeezed my hand and I never saw him again." That was it. Yeah, that was it. You should have given him a BLT, bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich. What's the name of those pants that you said? The Salwamse. That's the that singer Can't Stop this. What was that? MC Hammer. MC Hamm used to wear those pants, right? Yeah. Okay.

[26:30] So, now you don't see him again after this, right? No, I don't see him again. So, when does this whole thing come out about the allegations against you? Yeah. Well, because of the strength of this capture, this was the senior most al-Qaeda person. Was it the other guy under Bin Laden? The guy that looks like a professor there with the glasses. What's his day? He's still at large. The al-Qaeda number two guy. Oh, yeah. I was We never whacked him yet. No, can't find the guy. Can't find it. Unbelievable. You know, I and I wonder too and and I

[27:02] don't have any inside information here, Bo, but I'm I'm as an educated uh observer, I wonder if we're just not looking for him because al-Qaeda's pretty much irrelevant now. And I wonder if we just walked away. You know, we're focusing on ISIS and maybe other groups. We just don't care about al-Qaeda anymore. Yeah. If I saw him, I'd whack him. Yeah. Yeah, I would too. Okay. So, now let's go. How do you get in trouble? Cuz as far as I'm concerned, you're a great American right now. What happened? Thank you. I I'm a patriot. I want that to be clear. I'm an I am an absolute patriot. So I go home to headquarters

[27:34] and because of the capture I got promoted and they made me deputy assist I'm sorry I was executive assistant to the deputy director of the CIA for operations and u in that position you have access to literally everything around the world that's happening and August 1st well before before I before I even started in that job I get back to headquarters and uh I'm in the cafeteria one day and a buddy of mine from the counterterrorism center comes up to me and he says hey I'm glad I ran into you. You want to be uh certified in

[28:04] the use of enhanced interrogation techniques. What year are we talking about now? Yeah. Uh this is uh this is a senior uh counterterrorism officer. What year? This is uh May of 2002. Go ahead. So I had never heard the term enhanced interrogation techniques. I said, "What is that?" And so he explains it to me and I said, "Man, that sounds like a torture program. Are you kidding me?" And he said, "No, no, it's not torture. uh the president signed off on it and DOJ said that we could do it and I said,

[28:35] "Let me think about it for an hour." So, I went up to the seventh floor. It's the executive uh floor of the CIA. There was a very very senior CIA officer up there who I had worked for about a decade earlier. So, I knocked on his door and I said, "Hey, I need some advice." They just asked me if I want to do these enhanced interrogation techniques. And he says to me, "Listen, first of all, let's call a spade a spade. This is a torture program. They can call it whatever they want. They can use whatever euphemism they want. This is a torture program and torture is a

[29:06] slippery slope. And you know how these guys are. He says somebody's going to go overboard and they're going to kill a prisoner. And when that happens, there's going to be a congressional investigation, then there's going to be a Justice Department investigation and somebody's going to go to prison. Do you want to go to prison? And I said, "No, I don't want to go to prison." It turned out I was the only person who went to prison. But I went back downstairs and went back to this senior officer and I said, "This is a torture program. I'm not interested in it." And so I went about my business. Well, August 1st,

[29:37] 2002, we start torturing Abu Zuba. Oh, your friend. You start torturing him. Yeah. Oh, did you saw him again? I thought you didn't see him. No, no, no. I I I was at headquarters. They were torturing him at a secret prison overseas, but I'm reading the I'm reading the cable traffic as it's coming back. Were you there at the scene of the torture? No, I was not. Oh, so you know that they cuz you were high up, you knew they were they were interrogating him. Go ahead. Yeah. And I had to brief the director every morning about all this stuff that was going down. And who was

[30:07] the director at that time? Yes. Uh George Tennant. Okay. Go ahead. So, um I said this is a this is a a a war crime. I mean, we're we're signitories to the United Nations Convention Against Torture, and we we have the Federal Torture Act of 1946. It specifically outlaws exactly these techniques. And to tell you the truth, I I waited for somebody to go public. I just figured somebody would because as we're torturing him, people are um they're

[30:39] objecting in in cable traffic. And some of them actually returned to headquarters from overseas because they had such serious objections. But nobody said anything. So two years later, I resigned from the CIA to go into the private sector. I've got five kids. I needed to make some money, put them through college, and still I kept waiting for somebody to uh to say something. Now, what year is this now? This was um 2004. I left the CIA. Go ahead. You left the CIA. You went to

[31:10] private practice. Go ahead. Yeah. 2004 I went into the private sector and then in December of 2007 and this is where the [ __ ] hit the fan. December of 2007 I get a call from Brian Ross of ABC News. Now I've never spoken to a reporter before. So Brian Ross tells me that he has a source who said that I had tortured Abu Zuba. I said absolutely untrue. I was kind to Abu Zuba. I was the only person who was. I said, 'Ive never tortured anybody. I never laid a hand on Abu

[31:42] Zubedo or anybody else. I said, 'Your your your source is either mistaken or he's a liar.' And Ros says to me, and I had no idea this was an old reporter's trick. He said, you're welcome to come on the show and defend yourself. I said, I'll think about it. In the meantime, a couple of days later, President Bush gives a a press conference and he looks right in the camera. boat looks right in the camera and he says, "We do not torture." Well, I was sitting with my wife, now my ex-wife, but she was also a

[32:13] senior CIA officer, and I said, "He is a bald-faced liar. He is looking the American people in the eye, and he's lying." And then a couple of days later, he's walking from the back of the White House onto the helicopter to go to Camp David and a reporter shouts a question and Bush turns around and he says, "Well, if there is torture, it's the result of a rogue CIA officer." And I said to my wife, I said, "So they knew that you were they knew that you were talking with the ABC

[32:45] guy. Go ahead." But I but I and I hadn't I hadn't even said anything. But I said, "Brian Ross's source is at the White House and they're going to pin this on me." So I decided that I was going to do Brian Ross' interview and I was going to tell the truth. This was an illegal program. It was unconstitutional and I believed it was a war crime. It was anti-American to to carry out a program like this, you know. And this is why the FBI when we started torturing Abu Zuba,

[33:16] literally every FBI agent in the country in in that foreign country where we were torturing him left the country cuz not only did they want no part of a torture program, they didn't even want to be in the same country where the torture was taking place. So I went public December of07. Yeah. Here's where it gets weird, Bo. The the FBI investigated me from December of '07 to December of '08. And in December of08, they determined that I had not committed a crime and they

[33:48] closed the case. They even sent my attorneys a declination letter declining to prosecute me. I had no idea that three weeks later when Barack Obama became president that John Brennan asked the Justice Department to secretly reopen the case against me. I had no idea that my phones were being monitored, that my emails were being intercepted, there were surveillance. Another FISA, another FISA warrant. Here we go. Yeah, exactly. And now the thing

[34:19] is under the whistleblower protection. Why aren't you protected under that? That is the best question. It's because national security whistleblowers are exempt from the protections of the whistleblower protection act. Yeah, but right now we have a whistleblower supposed to be involved with national security security ratt. Yeah. Um they amended the uh law in 2015 after I got out of prison and so now

[34:49] you're protected. Uh although let me say for the record. Let's back up again. 2012. Let's go back. So now all of a sudden Brennan comes in with Obama in '08. Now they reopen the case in what? In ' 09. Yeah. Uh in uh 09. January of09. Oh yeah. And when do you get the next call from that you have a problem? In January of 12. That many years later. Yeah. So check this out. In the interim, I start working for John Kerry on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Good

[35:20] friend of mine, John. He's he was a decent man. Yeah. We used to hang out at Mara Lago. Me and John Kerry when his wife was alive. She she couldn't handle the booze that well. But uh John's a good guy. I like him. We don't agree on a lot of things, but John's a good guy. Well, I'm working for him as the chief investigator on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. And one of the great things about that job is you get to have lunch with foreign diplomats all the time. It's a great exchange of information. So, one day in 2011, remember, I have no idea I'm under investigation. One day in 2011, I get a

[35:53] call from a Japanese diplomat and he wants to have lunch. So, we have lunch. Lovely lunch. We talked about I remember it well. We talked about Turkish elections, Israeli elections, the Middle East peace process. And at the end of the lunch, he says to me, "So, what's next for you?" And I said, "Actually, I think I'm going to resign soon. I I promised Senator Kerry I'd give him two years. It's been two and a half. I got a bunch of kids at home. I got to put through college. I'm going to go back into the private sector." And he goes, he whispers. He goes, "No, don't do that. If you give me information, I can

[36:25] give you money." And I said, "What the hell is wrong with you? You have any idea how many times I've made that pitch in my career? You're just going to cold pitch me? Shame on you." I said, and I and I went and I mean without stopping, I went literally directly to the office of the Senate Security Officer and I said I was just pitched by a foreign intelligence officer, which you have to do, right? You have to do. You're compelled by law. Yeah. Yes. So I reported it immediately

[36:55] and he told me to write it up and he called the FBI. Day later, two FBI agents come to see me at my office and they asked me to, you know, tell them the story again. So I did and they said, "Here's what we want you to do. We want you to call him back, invite him to lunch, try to get him to tell you exactly what information he wants and what he's willing to pay for it." Right? I said, "Okay." So, I did and I wrote them another detailed memo. They asked me to do it a third

[37:27] time and a fourth time. How much money was involved? Zero. Well, you with with him? Yeah. Yeah. He was offering me $5,000 a month. That's it. Believe it or not, that's kind of standard pay for a for a sort of run-of-the-mill uh spy. Oh, really? Yeah. real. So, that's bargain basement to me. Yeah, I'm reporting all of this in excruciating detail back to the FBI. Okay. In the

[37:58] final lunch, he says he got promoted. He's being transferred to his dream job. He's going to be the number two at the Japanese embassy in Cairo. I shake his hand and I never saw him again. A year later, December of 12, I get arrested. I'm charged with three counts of espionage, one count of making a false statement, and we were never really sure what the false statement was supposed to have been, and one count of violating the Intelligence Identities Act of 1981. So, um, we get discovery from the

[38:31] Justice Department, 15,000 pages of classified information. And in this discovery, we get a a series of memos. First of all, there's a memo from John Brennan to Eric Holder saying, "Charge him with espionage." And Holder Holder responds, "My people don't think he committed espionage." And then Brendan writes back and says, "Charge him anyway and make him defend himself." Wow. But then we get these memos that show that there

[39:03] never was any Japanese diplomat. He was an FBI agent and they were setting you up. and they were setting me up. Did you take the 5,000? I did. I didn't take one red scent and I paid for the lunches. And uh what what they ended up doing was the the Japanese American FBI agent sent a memo to his boss Peter Stro saying he's not going to take the bait. He keeps reporting the contact. Let's just end this. And so that's why they came up

[39:33] with the story that he had gotten transferred. But they tried repeatedly to set me up on an espionage charge and I kept reporting it back to the FBI. And so all the espionage charges were finally dropped. But what they do is something called charge stacking. They'll charge you with a whole bunch of felonies. They beat you to the ground. Yeah. They wait till you go bankrupt and then they come back and they say, "All right, we'll dismiss all the charges but one if you take a plea." What are you going to do? You didn't go to You didn't go to trial where this could all be exposed. You couldn't afford it. You

[40:04] couldn't afford it, right, John? I spent $1.15 million on attorneys. I still owe them $880,000 that they'll never see. Um, and I ended up instead of 45 years, I ended up with 23 months. Wow. Yeah. You have five kids. I mean, you know, I mean, just you hear these stories, you just can't believe it. But you would if you would have went to trial and got convicted, you could have gone away for a long time, right? Well, I asked my my

[40:35] attorneys because because I I turned down every deal until the very end. And even the 23 months I initially turned it down because I kept saying as soon as I get in front of a jury, they're going to realize how ridiculous this is. I'm innocent. This is a setup and I'm going to be acquitted. So, so my uh my boss, my boss, my elite attorney pulled me aside and he said he was angry and he said, "You know what your problem is? Your problem is you think this is about justice and it's not about justice. It's about mitigating damage. Take the deal."

[41:09] And so I I took the deal and I said to him, "If I if I turn the deal down and I go to trial and I lose, what am I really looking at here?" And he said, "You're looking at realistically 12 to 18 years. Take the [ __ ] deal." He said, "Wow." So I took the deal. Why Why do you think that the intelligence community came after you? Oh, they were furious that I had aired the dirty laundry. you know, there are these internal uh systems in

[41:39] in place where if you don't like something, you can you can complain. But but my chain of command created the CIA's torture program. It implemented the CIA's torture program. So, um they were furious that I had gone public. It was unforgivable. In fact, that was a word that a former colleague used with me, that what I had done was unforgivable. I went public. Yeah. But and and what we're starting to see with Brennan, what's the other guy's name? National Security Adviser there. Uh yeah, Brennan. And what's the other guy? The other clown from CNN. He's on CNN

[42:12] all the time. Oh. Uh oh. Uh uh uh not not National Security Adviser, DNI. Clapper. Clapper. Yeah. Clapper and this other jerk off Brennan. And they're exposing everything. They were the leaks on whether you like Donald Trump or not, they've been leaking like son of a [ __ ] and and they were the head of the of the intelligence organizations and they've been leaking stuff right on TV. Yeah, that's right. They're prolific

[42:43] leakers and they're both liars. I mean, we all saw the footage of of Clapper lying under oath to the Senate Intelligence Committee saying that NSA doesn't intercept the communications of American citizens. Yeah, they lie, they leak, and they get away with it. John, so what are you doing now, John? Well, I'm I've got a radio show here in Washington uh every day from 4 to 6, the afternoon drive, and um I write uh a weekly syndicated newspaper column. I write books, I give speeches, you know,

[43:14] little here, a little there. I patched together a living. Was he friends with our friend from the Swiss bank? U yeah, Brad Burkenfeld. I think that's how we got in touch. In fact, uh I'm having dinner with Brad tonight. Brad B will be with me tomorrow. And uh he has some interesting story, but that has like a kind of a similar thing. This guy was opening up and nothing ever was done with all these son of a [ __ ] not paying taxes and it pisses me off. And you know what? They should have went after him and all these highutin people with these accounts. It's unbelievable.

[43:46] But you know what? I I just I I you know, we got to wrap it up because we're all time constraint here. But let me tell you something, John. You're quite an American patriot and guys like you whether you agree with the water board or not. I have my own personal opinions about water boarding and I have my own my personal opinions about torture and when uh you know I was down 9/11 I'll never forget what the site I saw. I'll never forget what the what I observed with these terrorists and my own feelings on something. If I had someone that was going to explode a nuclear bomb

[44:17] in New York City. Yeah. I I may have done it a different way. Not waterboarding. You know what I would have done? I would have bought a pig, a live pig, gut the son of a [ __ ] open, put it on the yaba daba doo's head, shoot him in the kneecap and say, "Unless you tell me you're not going to get to your 72 virgin." I may have done that. I may have done that, Carlo. Yeah. You know, I I've been known when I was a New York City detective back in the 70s, I used to be able to hold guys off the roof by their ankles and after the guy shot a cop and I I lost grip. I never lost a prisoner, never killed anybody.

[44:49] Also, I did I was the advent of waterboarding, but it was called toilet pulling. What they would do, they would have these apartments that they haven't flushed the toilet two years. Poo poo in there, and I used to be able to put the guy's head in there and then I pull it out and I'd have poo poo all over my arm, but he would tell me what I want to know. He shot a cop. Sorry, but you know what? Things have changed. And you want to know something? In reality, they've tortured our soldiers and they've tortured our military. So that's my own personal opinion, but I do respect your opinion, John, the same as my opinion.

[45:21] And I mean that with all my heart. And you have a real important point of what you feel. And I respect it. I totally respect it. John, we do something on our show every week. We do our punk of the week. Punk of the week means something or somebody that's really pissing you off. Who's your punk of the week, John? You know, my my punk of the week, I think, has to be the same person it is every week, and that's John Brennan. Uh because John Brennan is a liar. John Brennan is the the opposite of a of a patriot. Uh John Brennan needs to be

[45:52] dealt with. What about you, Cara? What's your Well, I'd have to go with the bail reform in New York. There was recent news that there were three guys busted in Washington Heights. They were dog fighting. They had heroin. They had loaded guns. Uh, one one guy got bail. The two guys are other guys no bail. They're out in the streets. Well, my punk of the week is this ugly two guys. I got two punks. One my fat friend Jerry Natala. The one that got his stomach staple. He used to weigh about 400 pound. I can't even look at him. And then the other bug is there. Adam

[46:23] Schiff. I can't look at this guy. I would take in the rest and slap him right in his face and straighten his eyes out. I got two punks in a week. Those two. As far as the lady goes, uh, speak of the house, she's just an old lady there just crackling away. And in reality, what we should be doing is doing jobs and getting things done in Washington instead of all this bull crap. Censure him. Censure the president. You shouldn't have made that phone call. Let's move on. Let's move on. He didn't do something that was so criminal. He didn't take a bribe. Let's

[46:53] go on with this. Let's get things done in this country. We have a great economy. I love this country. Let's bring everybody together instead of this as division. That's my punk of the week. Amen. Amen. John, where can people find you? Where where's your website? Where's your radio show? Thank you. I'm at johnkuryaku.com. John Hnyaku. K I R I A Ko. I'm on Facebook and Twitter and I look forward to hearing from everybody. All right, John, thanks very much for being here. Uh really, really great

[47:23] stories, very interesting stuff. Uh we'll probably want to do a follow-up at some point and you know get your opinion on some current events. Uh we're just a little short of time this week. Uh thanks for all our listeners. You can follow us on social media. We're at onetough podcast on Twitter and Bo is at Bo Dedel on Twitter. You can email us any questions, comments, guest suggestions. OnetuPodcast@gmail.com and we'll see you next week. Hey John, thank you very much. God bless you. Merry Christmas to you kids. God bless you. Happy uh Merry Christmas and happy new year. All right, my friend. Thank you.

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