Title: John Kiriakou Addresses the 2016 NHLA Liberty Dinner
Show: Adventures in the Free State
Date: 2016-07-11
URL: https://youtu.be/_1Un-IY3vlc
Duration: 1:00:00

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[00:03] the moment you've all been waiting for John kyaku worked for the CIA he um he was uh instrumental uh in the capture in Pakistan in 2002 of Abu Zaba how' I do Zaba Zaba sorry doing my best here um who they believed to be the third ranking official in al-Qaeda at the time there was lots of twos and threes back remember them in uh 2007 however kako

[00:33] blew the whistle on the cia's torture program telling ABC news that the CIA tortured Prisoners the torture was official US government policy and that the policy had been approved by then President George W bush he became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama Administration under the Espionage Act a law designed to punish spies he served 23 months in prison as a result of this Revelation he's a hero it's not every day you come to a political event and have a uh ex-convict introducing an ex-convict John kak

[01:10] please thank you everybody thank you um for having me I'm really thrilled to be here because I found a home uh in the libertarian party and I know not everybody here is an actual member of the libertarian party but you know it's you pay $25 they put your name on the list and you can call yourself a member anyway thank you so much for having me Christine thank you especially I'd like to talk to you tonight about uh an odyssey that I've

[01:42] had over the last few years with our uh our federal government the theme of the story being that Ronald Reagan was right that government is the problem it's not the solution to the problem I came to that conclusion the hard way I spent uh 15 years in the CIA the first half of my career in analysis on the Middle East and the second half of my career in counterterrorism operations um I was proud of my work I loved every minute that I spent at the

[02:15] CIA um unfortunately I was the subject of two assassination attempts overseas but uh that just made me want even more to serve my country why because I believed then that uh that we're the good guys right we're supposed to be out overseas protecting Americans uh disrupting attacks and making sure that we're all safe right for our own liberty but I came to learn that we really don't have much in the way of Liberty at least not since September 11

[02:47] I'll get to that in a moment in 2002 and I'm going to make a very long story short in 2002 I was uh I was sent to Pakistan as the uh chief of C CIA counterterrorism operations there I had been in country for only about 2 weeks when we got word from CIA headquarters that Abu zua was somewhere in Pakistan and we had to catch him Abu zua we believed at the time was the number three in al-Qaeda in fact that wasn't

[03:17] true although he was a very bad man he was al-qaeda's logistician he was in charge of al-qaeda's training camps he had set up a safe house in Pasha Pakistan called the house of Martyrs where new uh jihadis were were kept uh before they were sent on to Afghanistan for training so this was a bad guy if if you were a Jihadi and and you needed a false passport or a ticket home or a safe house or money Abu zua was the man that you went to see he was certainly in contact with with all of the 911

[03:49] hijackers and helped to uh to finance their their terrorism so we had to catch him the problem is that Pakistan is the size of Texas and it has 230 million people so you get orders to catch him and what do you do you stand on the street corner and just look for somebody who you know looks to be an Arab it doesn't work so I came up with a couple of really bad ideas uh nothing worked we ended up flying in an analyst a a specialty analyst called a targeteer

[04:20] targeting analyst and he was able to pour through thousands and thousands of pages of documents and he was able to narrow down abuu beta's possible location to 14 sites again I'm going to make a very long story short and say that we decided to hit all 14 sites simultaneously One Night in March of 2002 and sure enough abua was was in one of the sites now he um tried to escape and so he climbed to the roof of

[04:52] his safe house and jumped to the roof of the next door house in order to climb down and run away away he and and two cohorts did this one was his bodyguard one was a Syrian bomb maker now there was a Pakistan policeman standing on the ground in between the two buildings and as each man jumped he shot them and um the Syrian bomb maker he killed instantly abuaba was shot in the thigh the groin and the stomach with an

[05:24] AK-47 and The Bodyguard was shot right through the center of his femur he ended up losing the leg I heard these shots from a nearby safe house where I was holed up waiting for for all 14 teams to to let me know how things were going who they were catching we ended up catching I'm not allowed to say the actual number but it's it's more than four dozen Al-Qaeda fighters in in that one night it still stands today as the as the largest CIA

[05:56] counterterrorism capture operation ever in the CIA is history abua was uh as I said severely wounded and so I rushed to the to the scene where he had been shot and I looked around and I said to the Pakistani major on site where is he he said he's here on the ground we only had a six-year-old passport photo of of AA so we really we thought we knew what he looked like we really didn't this passport photo was a was of a a young

[06:28] man thin handsome closely cropped bearded mustache this guy on the ground was fat clean shaven crazy Albert Einstein hair going all over the place I said this doesn't look anything like him I didn't know what to do so I called the office in Islamabad and I said to the analyst we have somebody here but it this doesn't look like him at all he said give me a picture of his eye we'll

[07:00] do a retinal scan so I leaned down over him and I said open your eyes he was dying his eyes were rolled back in his head and I said to the analyst I think he's he's almost dead he can't open his eyes and when I open them it's just the whites so he said take a picture of his ear I didn't know until that night that no two people on earth have the same ears they're like fingerprints so I took a picture of his ear plugged into my phone

[07:30] because in those days in the ancient times of 2002 cameras weren't in phones yet and I sent it to Islam Abad the analyst sent it to headquarters headquarters called back and said it's him so we threw him into the back of this filthy Toyota pickup truck by now it's about 3:15 a.m. and we rushed him to the most horrible place on Earth faisalabad Hospital in fisel laad Pakistan windows and doors are open dogs

[08:01] and cats are walking up and down the Halls swarms of mosquitoes are just feeding on people's open wounds one thing that struck me and I say this in my book there was a bar of Irish Springs soap and it had about a dozen syringes sticking out of it and if you needed a shot they would take one of the syringes out put medicine in it give you the shot and then stick it back in the bar of soap and that was as clean as it was going to get yeah so we barged in half a dozen

[08:32] Americans dressed as pakistanis and an Arab who's bleeding to death and I told the doctor you've got to patch this guy up our orders were to take him alive I said the doctor just kind of stood there and looked at me so I told him start sewing so anyway they took him into uh into surgery but word had gotten around the al-Qaeda Community obviously we hadn't caught all of them word had gotten around that that we had him and so Al-Qaeda Fighters began driving by

[09:04] the hospital and just opening fire on it and I said to one of the pakistanis if they realize we're unarmed we're dead can you get a helicopter in here and he said he could 15 20 minutes later a helicopter landed in the parking lot and um I just barged into the operating room and I told the doctor let's wrap it up we have to go and so he sewed him closed as quickly as he could we wheeled him onto a helicopter and we flew to a nearby

[09:35] Pakistani military base abua was in a coma for the next 24 hours and in the meantime my orders which had come from George tenant who was the director at the time my orders were 247 CIA eyes on he said do not leave his side I was exhausted I had been up something like 28 hours already and I was afraid I would fall asleep so so I took a sheet and I tore it up and I tied him to the bed even though he was comos I was afraid I don't know maybe the

[10:06] doctors and Alida sympathizer he's going to break him out while I'm sleeping or the nurse or I didn't know what to expect after about 24 hours um he opened his eyes and um It's Kind of a Funny Story it wasn't funny at the time it was pathetic at the time it's funny in retrospect uh I was very uh dirty and I called a colleague of mine uh who was at the safe house and I said Hey listen can you do me a favor I smell really bad and I haven't had a

[10:38] shower in days but I've got a clean pair of underwear and a t-shirt that I sleep in at the safe house can you bring it to me he said sure So he brought my underwear and a pair of socks and a and this t-shirt it's a t-shirt that was a gift from my children I sleep in it uh but it's a red t-shirt with SpongeBob SquarePants in the middle and so I got changed and I was sitting at the foot of his bed and he finally started to stir and he opened one eye and you could

[11:10] tell the exact instant that he realized oh my God the Americans have me because he looked at SpongeBob and his heart rate went from 120 to 220 and then the machine started going and then you hear code blue Code Blue Bay one and then they come in with a crash card and they shock him and they give him demoral and then he's out again so a couple of hours later he woke up again and as I said he was tied to the

[11:42] bed so he motioned for me like this to to come over and I I moved his oxygen mask and I said uh Shu Isme what is your name and he shook his head so I repeated it shme and he said to me in beautiful English he said I will not speak speak to you in God's language and I said that's okay abua we know who you are and um and he started crying and he said kill me brother take the pillow and kill me and I said no nobody's going to kill you I said we've been looking for you

[12:13] for a long time in fact if I make you one promise it's that you're going to get the best medical care that the American government can provide and indeed he did uh the the executive director of the CIA at the time um also sat on the board of directors of John's Hopkins University Medical Center and so he asked the chief of trauma surgery to fly out on a CIA Jet and um and nurse up was Obed back to health so uh he was very upset he would sort of go

[12:46] out of it and then wake up again and he said he would never know the touch of a woman he would never know the joy of fatherhood I said listen you're not the victim here there were 50,000 people in those Towers what did you think was going to happen did you think that we wouldn't come after you did you think that we wouldn't try to kill you and Bin Laden and everybody else and everybody who reminded us of you and Bin L I said there are 3,000 people whose souls are on your head so don't tell me

[13:18] you're never going to know the touch of a woman and you're never going to know the joy of fatherhood you did this on purpose he said he didn't want to attack the United States on sep member 11th he wanted to attack Israel he said he just wanted to kill Jews and I said well there's nothing I can do about that I said you've committed a crime you're going to have to pay a price for it and then as the days passed it was another day and a half or so um he wanted to talk about

[13:49] the differences between Christianity and Islam I have a degree in Islamic Theology of all things um he wanted to uh he wanted wanted to recite poetry he would write really bad poetry and tell me his poems and then at the end of it um the jet landed from uh from Baltimore and um I told him we're going to wheel you out and put you on a jet he was very frightened he asked me to hold his hand as a matter of fact three FBI agents and

[14:19] I carried him out on a gurnie and I held his hand we we went onto the plane we had to stand him up in the gurnie and maneuver him to get onto the plane and then we laid him across the back uh luggage rack and and tied him to the luggage rack and he took off and I never saw him again 2 months later I returned to headquarters from Pakistan and uh I was in the cafeteria one day I had been home I guess about a week or a week at a half and I was in the cafeteria and a senior officer in the cia's counterterrorism center

[14:49] approached me and he said hey I'm glad I ran into you do you want to be certified in the use of enhanced interrogation techniques those were his exact words I had never heard the term before I said what's that mean and very excitedly he said we're going to start getting rough with these guys I said what's that mean and he outlined to me these 10 different techniques that um were in the process of presidential approval and I said that

[15:19] sounds like a torture program and I said but you know what let me think about it for an hour so I went upstairs to the seventh floor of the CIA the executive floor I had a I won't call him a friend but there was a man for whom I had worked a decade earlier in the Middle East who was in an extraordinarily senior position in the CIA by then and I went in and I said hey let me ask you a question they just asked me if I wanted to be certified in the use of these enhanced interrogation techniques what do you think of this and he said first

[15:51] let's call it what it is it's a torture program they can use whatever euphemism they want but it's torture program he said second torture is a slippery slope and you know how some of these guys are 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 and then there's going to be a Justice Department investigation and then somebody's going to go to prison do you want to go to prison I said no I don't want to go to prison I'm the only one who went to prison at the end of the day I said no no I don't want to go to prison I went

[16:22] back downstairs I said this is a torture program I don't want anything to do with it they had approached 14 people two of us had said no and one of the two changed his mind and said yes so I was the only person who said no because I said no I was cut out of the compartment meaning that I was not uh allowed to see any of the reporting cables coming back and forth between headquarters and the secret site uh where abuzu Beta had been sent but then I got promoted because of

[16:54] the abis of beta capture right and I became executive assistant to the deputy director dor of the CIA and in that capacity I had access to what I thought was all reporting traffic what happened was on August 1st 2002 the day that President Bush signed the executive order allowing for this program to be implemented two contract psychi psychologists uh Mitchell and jessen

[17:24] began torturing up his AA now in the in the beginning of lot was made of of some of the I'm going to call them introductory techniques that were used against him uh one was called the uh the belly slap right you smack somebody in the belly it makes kind of a cracking sound it's humiliating that's not torture it's humiliating but I mean many of us got worse than that at home when we were little kids um but but that's not really what we're talking about here what we're talking about to me it comes down to three different

[17:56] techniques water boarding has gotten almost all of the press for those of you who don't know what water boarding is a person is strapped down to a board or to a gurnie with his uh feet slightly elevated some sort of material it could be burlap a cloth even even cellophane is wrapped around the head at the mouth to cover the mouth and then water is poured on the person's face it it gives you the sense of of drowning and in addition to being very psychologically

[18:27] uh difficult stressful uh because you are actually taking in a little bit of water it makes you clench your abdominal muscles and so the the real pain comes a day later most people don't last more than 20 or 30 seconds on the water board but there were other techniques that were used that were worse one was sleep deprivation the Secretary of Defense at the time uh don Rumsfeld famously said that he didn't believe that there was such a thing as sleep deprivation as a punishment he said that he had a standup

[18:59] desk he didn't even have a chair in his office and he would work for two or three days straight that wasn't really true I'm sure he believed that he was working for 2 or three days straight and never sat down but we're not talking about two or three days we know from uh from the Senate torture report and and from independent psychologists and psychiatrists that people begin losing their minds at day nine we know that people begin dying day 12 but the CIA was authorized to keep

[19:31] prisoners awake for 14 days 14 days and I don't mean somebody just comes in and shakes you to make sure you're not sleeping I mean you are chained to an eyebolt in the ceiling with lights on 24 hours a day and hard rock music being blasted into your cell you're not going to sleep and like I say you start going crazy at day nine we killed somebody using that technique another one that I thought was worse than water boarding was called the cold

[20:02] cell where the prisoner was stripped naked chained to that same eyebolt in the ceiling the cell was chilled to 50° and then every hour a CIA officer would go into the cell and throw a bucket of ice water on it we killed another prisoner with that technique too so I'm seeing this reporting coming in and I'm thinking this is not what I signed up for I signed up to defend my country one of the one of the criticisms that I've faced over the years since I went

[20:33] public with this was that I had promised not to reveal classified information that is not true I took an oath to uphold and to defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies domestic and foreign and I took that oath very very seriously one of the reasons why I objected and really my objection I'm I'm ashamed to tell you my objection came later I kept my mouth shut for a long time I kept my mouth shut for almost 5

[21:04] years but one of the reasons why this was so upsetting to me was that we weren't getting anything out of it you know Mitchell and Jess kept reporting from the field that they were gathering actionable intelligence that allowed them to disrupt attacks and that was saving American lives what information I mean had access to everything I'm not seeing any information coming from these people all I see is a reporting cable saying I was

[21:35] a beta I was waterboarded again this morning I should add he was water boarded 83 times not once or twice 83 times KH shik Muhammad as bad a guy as KH shik Muhammad is The Mastermind of the 911 attacks was waterboarded 147 times and and gave us almost nothing so you get these cables that we waterboarded him you know six times the this morning and first he cried and then he vomited and then he had a seizure and passed out okay first of all that's

[22:07] torture second of all so what did we get out of it it doesn't work it didn't help us gather anything now we all we know all this now because of the Senate torture report and because of the release of the CIA inspector General's report on the program the program was flawed from the very beginning but again I kept my m shut I left the CIA in 2004 and I went to work in the private sector in 2007 December of 2007 I got a call from Brian Ross at

[22:39] ABC News and he said that he had a source who said that I had tortured Abu Zeda I said that was absolutely untrue I was the only person who was kind to Abu Zea I said I have never laid a hand on Abu zua or on any other prisoner and God knows I had the opportunity to lay my hands on a lot of people and he said old reporter's trick which I didn't know at the time because I didn't know anything about journalism he said well you're welcome to come on the show and defend

[23:11] yourself I said I'll think about it later that week President Bush gave a press conference in which he looked directly into the camera and he said we do not torture my wife was also a CIA officer and she and I looked at each other and I said he is a bald-faced liar but again it's not up to me up to John kyaku to go tell people that the president's a liar I waited a couple days to do

[23:43] that a couple of days later in response to a reporter's question he said we don't torture but if there is torture it's the result of a rogue CIA officer and I said to my wife Brian Ross's source is at the the White House and they're going to try to pin this on me so I called Brian Ross and I said I'll come on your show and I decided that no matter what he asked me I was going to tell the truth so I went on his show in the middle of December 2007 and I said three

[24:16] things I said that the CIA was torturing its prisoners I said that torture was official US government policy it was not the result of a rogue and I said that the torture program had been personally approved by and signed by the president himself within 24 hours the FBI began a a criminal investigation of me and they investigated me for 13 months until January of 2009 and they

[24:49] closed the case they said that I had not committed a crime Human Rights Watch had said in 2006 that we were torturing our prisoners nobody paid any attention uh the ACLU said it in 2007 Amnesty International on the Red Cross said it in 2007 so the FBI said the information's out there he didn't commit a crime they closed the case and then Barack Obama the most transparent president in history is inated and he immediately ordered that the case be reopened I didn't know it

[25:21] had been reopened the FBI investigated me for four more years now I should have been tipped off because the IR the IRS began uh auditing my taxes every year since 2007 still but I was oblivious by that time I was working on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as the uh Chief

[25:52] investigator and uh I got a call from a from a reporter and he wanted to have lunch with me um I tried to stay away from reporters as you might imagine and so I just deleted the email but this guy was persistent and so finally I said to my boss this guy keeps asking me to go to lunch he must have a message for me or something he's been very persistent my boss said go ahead and uh go ahead and uh accept the lunch he said I I'll

[26:23] cover you so I went to lunch and uh delightful lunch talked about you know events in the Middle East and the Arab Spring and whatever and at the end I said wow this was really a de a delightful lunch thanks very much for inviting me and I stood up and he said no no no that's not why I invited you you're under surveillance I said by whom he said the FBI I my heart began racing I said why they think you're the source for the

[26:54] John Adams project I said what's the John Adams it's this ACLU uh thing they're defending the terrorists and I said oh my God you scared me for a second I said I never heard of the John Adams project I've never met anybody from the ACLU and the last people on earth I would want to defend are the terrorists I said my goodness I kind of laughed I walked out in the meantime part of my job was to have

[27:25] lunch with a foreign uh diplomats right two three four times a week you just trade information what's your government's position on this what's my government's position on that what do you think of the Turkish elections what do you think the Israelis are going to do in Gaza that kind of thing and then you write a little memo you send it to the members of the Foreign Relations Committee so I get invited to lunch by um by the number three in the Japanese Embassy and uh we go to lunch completely

[27:56] pro-or a lunch and and finally he says to me so what's next for you and I saidwell actually I think I might resign from the committee I promised Senator Carrie I'd give him two years it's been two and a half I'm ready to move on and he says no no no no don't do that if you give me information I can give you money and I said do you know how many times I've made that pitch I said shame on you what's the matter with you cold pitching me like that I'm going to have to report this to the Senate

[28:28] uh security officer what are you thinking so I thank him for lunch I go back to I went directly as a matter of fact to the office of the Senate security officer I said I was just pitched by a foreign intelligence officer he said is it that damn Russian again I said no it's Japanese of all things Japanese he said well you the Japanese sometimes they they want to know what we're doing uh uh with regard to trade I said I don't know he said I'm going to call the FBI so he calls the FBI and then he called me and he said uh

[28:59] the FBI is going to send uh two guys up to come and talk to you I said Okay teric a couple days later two young FBI agents come up uh to talk to me and they said look here's what we want you to do we want you to call him back and we want you to invite him to lunch and try to get him to tell you exactly what information he wants and how much he's willing to pay for it I said okay so I duck called him let's have lunch oh let's have lunch great okay uh I said you want me to wear a wire they said no no we'll be at the next table l and everything I said okay great then they

[29:30] called that morning said something else came up just do the lunch and write us a memo I said all right so I did the lunch I write a memo I got answers to their questions and then they asked me to do it a third time a fourth time a fifth time each time I would write a memo send it to the FBI it wasn't until a year later after my arrest that I learned in Discovery that there never was any Japanese diplomat he was an FBI agent undercover trying to get me to commit

[30:02] real Espionage trying to get me to accept cash for classified information but I foiled them because I kept reporting the contact so they just dropped it and he told me one day I'm being transferred to Cairo I said oh that's nice yeah tomorrow I'm leaving tomorrow I said okay safe travels who do I know but it was the FBI all along I said to my attorneys I said why would they do that excuse my language my lead attorney

[30:33] said because they have a [ __ ] case and they know it but that didn't stop President Obama's justice department from charging me with uh five felonies including three counts of Espionage let me tell you about those Espionage counts first of all Espionage it's one of the gravest crimes with which an American can be charged in many cases it's a death penalty to charge so you know you get charged with Espionage your first thought is you know where's the nearest bridge

[31:04] right so we looked at these Espionage charges um I had met with a reporter from The New York Times to talk about the torture program well after everything had been made public And the reporter said to me he wanted to do a story about uh a former colleague of mine who had never ever been undercover he was an over at employees on LinkedIn CIA you know went back to his Alma moer

[31:35] to give a speech about why you should join the CIA so never ever undercover he had resigned from the CIA and he was working for uh for these torturers Mitchell and jessen and I said to the reporter boy I haven't seen him in years I I have no idea where he is but you know what I think I have an old business card so I scanned the business card and I sent it to uh to the reporter and then a colleague of his said hey can you send that business card to me too I said sure I send it to him two felony counts of Espionage for

[32:06] sending that business card in court my lawyer finally got up and said your honor we'd like to talk to you about these ESPN charges this is a result of Mr kiraku sending a business card an unclassified business card given to him by a former colleague who had never been Undercover the judge says I find that very hard to believe so she says to the prosecutor what say you and he says well

[32:36] your honor you know technically it was unclassified but Mr kiraki should have known better not to talk to the Press I have a constitutional right to freedom of speech I can speak with whomever I please so she said she would would entertain a motion to dismiss the other Espionage charge was uh was another conversation with the

[33:07] journalist um the justice department said that they had Declassified the information solely for the purpose of Prosecuting me and the information was top secret code word information was that I had told the New York Times that in the aftermath of the member 11th attacks the CIA had a program to kill or capture members of

[33:37] ala I'm serious top secret so we went to court with a copy of Vanity Fair from 3 years earlier saying your honor it's Vanity Fair like you have to live in a under a stone to not know the CIA is trying to kill Laden right I hadn't committed Espionage and those charges were dropped they charged me with making a false statement I've never really been clear as to exactly

[34:08] what the false statement was supposed to have been they threw that out too um but the the point though is not necessarily to send a person to jail although that's a little cherry on top of the case the point is especially where it comes to whistleblowers and especially whistleblowers in National Security the point is to ruin you personally financially professionally what they do and it's really well calculated and well thought

[34:38] out is they they do this thing called charge stacking where they charge you with as many felonies as they can possibly come up with and they'll let you try to defend yourself for a year and then you go broke and so they come up to you and they say listen we'll dismiss all all the charges if you just plead to one okay so they're going to dismiss four of the five counts so instead of 45 years in prison which is what they asked for at first 45 years in prison I I

[35:10] couldn't have survived I'm I'm 51 years old I couldn't survive 45 years in prison I had five children at home or 23 months what do you want to do you want to roll the dice I had given my attorneys everything I had Lally we even sold our furniture at home I gave them $150,000 forgive me for flacking a book in the back but I still owe my lawyers $880,000 and the FEDS took my pension which is

[35:42] just standard you know in any national security case they take your pension 19 years of proud Federal service anyway so this is the this is the choice well I turned it down I said they can keep their 23 months I'm going to go to trial it was shortlived my lawyer called me and his his exact words were you stupid son of a [ __ ] take the deal his exact

[36:16] words another of my 11 attorneys um the one who I liked and trusted the most came over to the house that morning and he said listen if you were my brother I would beg you to take this deal he said this can be a blip in your life or it can be the defining event of your life make it the blip and so reluctantly I said I'll take the deal went into court for sentencing in

[36:46] October uh of 201 12 right 2012 and I stood up at the Lecter and the judge said how do you plead I said I'll change my plea to guilty and she said uh did you commit this crime on purpose and I said no I did not and she said to my attorney I think you need to have a word with your client so my attorney says you have to say you did it on

[37:17] purpose I said but I didn't do it on purpose but if you don't say that you did it on purpose you don't get the deal and I said said all right I did it on purpose and she says I find you guilty sentencing is scheduled for January the 28th so I went in January 28th and she said uh you are not a whistleblower there are no National Security um how did she say it it was something about in National Security there's no such thing as a whistleblower

[37:48] there are only leakers you're a leaker and she said you know it was funny when I took the plea she said um that she thought that the 23 months was her words fair and appropriate and then at the formal sentencing hearing where the court is jammed with every National Security reporter in Washington she said if I could give you 10 years I would give you 10 years and I thought well that's not what you said when the courtroom was empty three months ago but all right you can't give me 10 years so

[38:20] so I went to prison um I'm going to tell you one other quick thing about prison one of my lawyers warned me that the FBI was quite upset that I only ended up with 23 months quite upset indeed and he said what the FBI does and they do this in Mafia cases all the time is they're going to try to put a rat close to you so don't trust anybody I was in prison 6 weeks and I lived down the hall from an

[38:52] Afghan pharmacist who had an oxycoton problem and was doing 5 years nice guy he came up to me and he said hey John there's a new guy uh he wants to meet you he's the spokesman for the Taliban I said I don't want to meet any spokesman for the Taliban and we said he knows you I said are you talking about that idiot from New Jersey who was running around telling all the newspapers he was the spokesman for the T yeah yeah he's from

[39:22] New Jersey I said I don't want to talk to this guy he said okay I'll home day or two later I was out on the yard walking around the big track and this obviously Afghan guy with a beard down to here is walking toward me like this with his hand out and I put my hands up instinctively because I thought the FBI is out here in the woods somewhere with their long-distance cameras to say look at kiraku he's conspiring with the Taliban so I put my hands up and I said don't touch me and he said oh come on

[39:53] man we have so much in common and I said we have nothing in common I spent my half my adult life trying to kill people like you I said I don't want to talk to you come on don't be like that I said get away from me if you have any idea any clue what is good for you you're going to back off and he sort of backed off and two days later he wasn't in prison anymore so after 23 months I went home I

[40:25] wrote a series of blogs from prison that I called letters from Loretto that somehow hit the mainstream and I got millions of of hits in fact um Tina how many how many letters did I get 7,000 something letters I promised myself my first week in prison that if if somebody took the time to write me out of their busy days nobody writes letters anymore but if somebody took the time to write me a letter I was going to answer it dog on it I mean there were some days I was getting 60 70 80 letters

[40:57] but I answered every single one of them and that's when I realized that I wasn't alone there were thousands of like-minded Americans people who respect the Constitution We're a nation of laws I mean either we are or we aren't there there's nothing in the middle we're signatories to the United Nations convention Against torture indeed we are the author of the United Nations convention Against

[41:28] torture we have a we have a law in this country called the federal torture act which specifically bans exactly the techniques that we were using against al-Qaeda in 1946 we executed Japanese soldiers for waterboarding American prison in January of 1968 The Washington Post ran a front page photograph of an American Soldier waterboarding a North Vietnamese prisoner the day that that photograph was published Secretary of Defense mum ordered an investigation the soldier was

[41:59] arrested he was convicted of torture and he was sentenced to 20 years in prison the law didn't change the the law is the same it's the same law we've had on the book since 1946 so why was torture illegal in 1946 and in 1968 but then all of a sudden in 2002 it's not illegal anymore that's a problem with government that's a problem when we have leaders who don't respect the Constitution and that's a problem

[42:30] frankly for an organization that has no training whatsoever in ethics before I I close I want to I want to pose to you a question and I'm serious about it I'd like to see a show of hands this is something I ask um students when I speak at universities let's say that you are a CIA case officer and you have recruited a penetration of a major foreign in uh foreign terrorist group Al-Qaeda Isis whatever it doesn't matter and you're

[43:01] meeting with this Source in a hotel somewhere in the Middle East and this guy has given you gold since you first recruited him right he's given you actionable information you've saved American lives you go to the meeting and he says to you I've given you everything you wanted today you're going to give me something I'm not going to give you any more information unless you get me a prostitute right now do you get him prostitute how many say yes yeah sure you would he's a scumbag

[43:32] your job is to deal with scumbags you're going to keep the guy happy you get him a prostitute what if he asks you for a child prostitute absolutely not absolutely not not under any circumstances but there are no rules at the CIA look your job is to violate the rules of the country in which you're assigned and they don't teach you right from wrong there's just no such training and there are some people at

[44:02] the CIA there are many people at the CIA who are so gung-ho to accomplish the mission that they just you think that was killed yeah I I do believe Bin Laden was killed but you know the CIA is such a such a such a ridiculously over secretive organization um and this President is so not trans trans parent in any possible way that I they it's like they just couldn't

[44:34] see the idea that people wouldn't believe the official story I knowing knowing the people that were involved yeah I think they killed him I think they wrapped him up I think they said a prayer over him and they threw him off the side of the ship uh but your first question uh why was the bin Laden family allowed to leave on September 12th uh that was very very controversial inside the building um in fact most of the members of the bin Laden family that were in the United States were at Disney world that day uh in Orlando and

[45:05] President Bush was the one who made the ultimate decision he said that he didn't want um the bin Laden family members to be physically attacked that the bin Laden family was an honorable uh family they had one uh one Rogue Member One Black Sheep and that it was better to just load them all onto a private jet and get them the hell out and that's what he did and he's never apologized for it yes sir what are your thoughts on whistleblowers Edward Snowden and

[45:36] private man yeah that's a that's a little bit of a tough one for me well it it's not not on Snowden I Snowden there there's a legal definition of whistleblowing it's bringing to light any evidence of waste fraud abuse illegality or threats to the public health or Public Safety both of them did exactly that um I think Ed Snowden has done the country a great national service and we would have no idea we would have no idea that our

[46:09] government is spying on us uh if Ed Snowden hadn't told us now it's even not only is it illegal for NSA to spy on Americans or us persons that's anybody in the United States on a green card it's even a part of nsa's Charter um one of my attorneys is a constitutional attorney uh and a big muckety muck in the libertarian party Bruce Fine one of our finest constitutional Scholars and um Bruce says it's also a violation of uh posy comatus there's some very serious

[46:39] constitutional issues here that like I say we wouldn't have had any idea about if Ed Snowden hadn't told us uh Bradley Manning meets the legal definition of whistleblower um I think that she went about it in kind of a roundabout way but but what she revealed uh was war crimes that's really what it comes down to is is war crimes that weren't prosecuted and so you know if if I had been Bradley Manning I wouldn't have leaked every you know diplomatic cable

[47:10] for the last 18 years but that's Hillary's job that's right that's right yes sir so I I just want you to be a little bit more precise on one point you made okay as you were talking about the the two water boarding of victims um the second one uh I forget the name exactly oh KH sh Muhammad yes and you said that we got almost nothing from that and so that would imply we got

[47:44] something yes what KH shik Muhammad gave us was um the command structure of al-Qaeda cells in Europe and that allowed us to um to pass the information to Liaison services but again you know the FBI has been has been interrogating prisoners for generations and they haven't been waterboarding anybody and they get quality information by establishing a rapport with a prisoner uh and uh and having a a civil conversation with him

[48:14] so so that last part you just said implies that you believe that we would have gotten that Intel anyways absolutely yes absolutely yeah I'm I'm glad you brought that up cuz I I'll make I want to make a a black and white statement here torture is wrong under any circumstances it's not it's not legal it's not Christian and it has no no uh place in American policy I feel very strongly about it yeser um one of the things that

[48:47] alarmed me when U Barack Obama Was preparing to take the oath of office was an interview he gave to George Stephanopoulos and Stephanopoulos in it asked him a question about Renditions and he said uh make no mistake about this under no circumstances will the Army be conducting enhanced interrogations and I anybody who watch say what are you talking about wasn't the Army at all was the CIA through proxies that's right from your knowledge what sort of

[49:19] my impression was this going to continue can you perhaps elaborate on that with any information you might have about Obama's administration proxies yeah I I'm on record as saying that that I've always believed that the Obama um intelligence and national security policy is really nothing more than than a more violent extension of the Bush intelligence and national security policy uh the only difference is that Obama has killed way way more people with drones than Bush ever

[49:50] did yeah Nobel Peace Prize that's right that's right um it's my understanding that absolutely nothing has changed with regard to Renditions and not just Renditions but extraordinary Renditions and there's a difference if if you're an Egyptian let's say and I catch you in Pakistan and you have no passport and no plausible explanation for what in the world you're doing in an Al-Qaeda Safe House in Pakistan you're going to be sent back to

[50:21] Egypt okay you're an Egyptian um that's aend but if you're an Egyptian and I catch you and I send you to Morocco or Syria or Libya and don't tell anybody that's just not legal it's just not you there's a kind of a famous Case Case of Mahar arar Dr Mahar arar a Canadian citizen right

[50:53] Mahar had flown back to the United States after visiting family in the Middle East he was at Kennedy Airport the FBI pulled him off the plane at Kennedy Airport at the gate turned him over to the CIA and the CIA sent him to Syria and he was tortured mercilessly for 18 months and finally the syrians came back and said we think this is the wrong guy and and I can tell you and I've said

[51:24] this on Canadian television too there were many of us in the CIA who were telling our superiors this is the wrong guy this guy has a similar name but this Mahar he's just a professor at some University in Toronto he sued both the US government and the Canadian government like any national security suit against the CIA it was thrown out on National Security grounds because to defend themselves the CIA would have to reveal classified information and oh my God they can't do that

[51:56] he did win $6 million from the Canadian government and he said in April all he really wanted from the American government was an apology but it's policy that we don't apologize to anybody we did the same thing to a to a a green grosser in Germany khed Al masi talk about bad luck khed Al masi uh was a naturalized German of Egyptian origin he had an argument with his wife wife one night and he decided he needed to

[57:06] number I call him oh his secretary says he's out of the country I said well I'm a former client I just wanted to say hello and I have a question for him five minutes later my phone rings John I said Lanny how are you John he says I want you to know as soon as I heard they were going after you I recused myself I said [ __ ] Lanny I saw the press conference you're standing right next to the attorney general well that's

[57:41] Washington the last thing I'm going to say and I as God is my witness this is the truth and you can ask my sister I live in Arlington Virginia my Nextdoor neighbors two uh Harvard Law School graduates he is an assistant us attorney in the Justice Department's National Security division he was on the prosecution team my nextdoor neighbor is Prosecuting me right his wife works for Aken Gump and Strauss and was on my defense team so the night of the the night of

[58:12] the day of my arrest the doorbell rings I open the doorbell or I open the door rather and he says John I'm sorry no hard feelings I said No it's it's all right Matt I said I get it we live in Washington and his wife is standing behind him and she says this is [ __ ] John we're going to fight this thing we're going to fight it said all right and we did we fought it but that's Washington it's ugly it's

[58:42] mean-spirited it's House of Cards come to life I can't watch House of Cards no I can't because that's Washington that's Washington anyway thank you so much I'm going back thank you don't say the nhla never gave you anything look underneath the uh the

[59:15] potted plant in the middle of your table there's an arrow the arrow points the winner of the plant don't if all of you win one of the envelopes that's on the table you can take it and uh make sure you mark nhla pack put your information on like members this is your this is your last

[59:47] opportunity to get this low price for life membership you need your donations to spread Liberty in New Hampshire Drive safe thank you so much folks
