Title: Mehdi Hasan Presses John Kiriakou About His Politics / The E
Show: Eb&Flow
Date: 2026-06-11
URL: https://youtu.be/uTpvKzNoaa4
Duration: 20:00

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[00:00] He said, "Listen, if you're a Republican, vote for governor of Florida, consider James Fishback, February 2026." That was you. >> Yeah, that was my assistant. >> [music] [music] >> All right, so Mehdi Hasan did an interview with this guy John Kiriakou. I covered him the other day in his conversation with Theo Von. This guy's been going viral. He's an ex-CIA officer

[00:31] who exposed the torture program, went to jail for a couple years, and then got out, and then like blew up on TikTok bizarrely, and had a career before that. He was writing books, he was doing TED Talks, etc. So, most of his advocacy since leaving the CIA and doing the whole whistleblower thing has been anti-CIA or at least like critical of the CIA. But, I think, you know, anytime you have a guy like this, there's there's cause for concern, and there's just a little bit of confusion or some things that don't quite add up about this guy's ideology. Namely, that if

[01:01] he's truly anti-CIA at this point, I don't really know where that puts him on the political spectrum, which is something that comes up in this conversation a decent amount, and that's really what I want to get into. So, in this first part, this is Kiriakou telling the story of when he originally blew the whistle, etc. And already there's some things about this that don't quite sit right with me. So, here's that. >> What made you go public after all those years of having left the CIA and taking this big step? And explain to our viewers what happened to you after that. >> Sure. I complained vociferously inside the CIA

[01:34] about the torture program. I'm I'm sorry to say that of of 14 people approached and asked if they wanted to be trained uh in in the use of these torture techniques, I was the only one of the 14 who said no. And I thought this was so clearly illegal, immoral, unethical, [music] somebody was going to come out and say something, and nobody said anything. And then in December of 2007, Brian Ross approached me from ABC News and said that he had a source who said that I had

[02:05] tortured Abu Zubaydah, Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn. I said, "Absolutely untrue. I was the only person who was ever kind to Abu Zubaydah." And he said, "Well, you're welcome to come on the show and defend yourself." I didn't know that was a reporter's trick because I'd never spoken with a reporter before. And so, I said >> 2007. >> 2007. I said, "I'll think about it." In the meantime, while I'm thinking about it, President Bush gives a press conference in which he looks directly in the camera and says, "We do not torture." >> [music] >> And I said to my wife, who was a senior

[02:36] CIA officer, I said, "He is a bald-faced liar. He's looking the American people in the eye and just lying to them." And then a couple of days later, as he's walking to the Marine One helicopter, he shouts, in response to a reporter's question, that if there is torture, it's because of a rogue CIA officer. >> Oh, wow. >> And I said to my wife, "Brian Ross's source is at the White House, and they're going to pin this on me. I'm going to go public." And I decided that I would just tell the truth and let the

[03:06] cards fall >> Okay, so this whole I've never spoken with a report I didn't know that was a reporter's trick. He just He just got me. He's saying that essentially this reporter was trying to lure him into a conversation by saying, "Well, there's a CIA source throwing you under the bus. So, if you want to come talk to me about it, you can do that." He's essentially implying that they didn't have a source like that. And he's like, "Oh, well, I just didn't know that they do that." I mean, come on, that's [ __ ] This is high-level CIA operator. He tells plenty of stories about [ __ ] with the media. So, aside from the fact that he says he

[03:37] was bothered by George Bush lying about it, he essentially says that he caught a whiff that they were going to try to throw him under the bus, which, if he was making noise behind the scenes and kind of raising attention about this, and they needed somebody to pin it on, it's not out of the question that they would choose the person who has been going against the program if they felt like they could get away with it. Although that's not exactly how he tells this story. That's not really what he said about it before. And really, in this retelling, it sounds more like he was paranoid that they were going to try to pin it on him after all, and that's

[04:08] why he took it public rather than it being some kind of like moralistic thing. So, in this next part, he talks about recounts kind of what's happened over the last few months where he has become super well-known, famous on Tik Tok, went super viral in all these different places, and now is like a well-known commentator cavorting with people like Tucker Carlson and outsiders from, you know, various parts of the political spectrum. So, again, this is a part that's a little bit sketchy to me, and there's some particularly sketchy parts about this. So, I just want to play that real quick. >> You've become an online personality,

[04:39] don't you, John? In fact, I interviewed you a few years ago, and even then you weren't as big as you are now. Complex magazine describes you as a Tik Tok sensation with a skill for narrative mastery. What was the moment you realized, "Oh, I'm a bit of an online celebrity"? >> Well, it was about 11 weeks ago. >> Okay. >> I happened to be in Dubai during a business trip, and my niece called me, and she said, "Uncle John, you're exploding on Tik Tok." [music] And I said, "Why?" And she said, "I don't know, but you're everywhere." I said, [music] "Okay." I thought some one-day thing, something

[05:11] happened, something in the algorithm. >> [music] >> And I went to bed. The next day, CAA calls me, the Creative Artists Agency. >> They want to rep you. >> And they said, "Tell us you're not represented." I said, "No, I'm not represented." >> You are now. >> everything just seems to happen for this guy. He just gets swept into all these crazy things, and he's always just like, "Well, yes, I would like to get involved with that." And so, he says he was on a business trip in the Middle East in in Dubai when he got this phone call about the fact that he was blowing up on Tik Tok, and he's like, "Ah, I thought it was nothing." So, I mean, I don't know

[05:41] what business trip he would have been doing in Dubai. That's a little odd, right? This guy does speeches, he writes books. I don't know what business he would be doing there, really. It's not out of the question, little strange, notable that one of his friends, Tucker Carlson, somebody that he has been involved in this sort of like anti-government operation type of thing, also seems to have some business ties in the Middle East in places like Qatar and that becoming more public, more well-known about him seems to also follow with his advocacy against Israel and even for Islam or Islamic people,

[06:13] Muslim people in some cases which is never something he used to advocate for before. So, you know, not enough details there to really draw the connection, just a little odd. But, I think that there is like a lack of scrutiny this guy has about the fact that he has exploded so much. Even Professor Jang, he said in his exact words when talking to Mehdi Hasan, "I don't think it's completely organic." Kiryakou hasn't shown any type of scrutiny of that which makes me a little bit more skeptical of him. In this next part, Mehdi asked him about the things that he's not allowed to say and he explains why he's able to

[06:44] say certain things which is a relevant question surrounding his commentary, certainly. So, here's that. >> When you talk about your experience in the CIA, I'm sure people want to hear stories. What did you see? What did you hear? >> What are you restricted by? Obviously, you don't want to go back to prison. >> No, I don't want to go back to prison, but over the years because I've written so many books, I've written now nine books, I've gotten all my stories cleared. Plus, the the CIA is subject to something called the mandatory declassification. Information has to be declassified when it gets [clears throat] to the 30-year or 35-year mark. And besides, my opinion

[07:18] is not classified so long as it's not based on specifically classified information. >> assume that there are things that you know that you still can't say. >> Absolutely. >> How bad are they? >> Yeah, it's it's pretty ugly. >> So, as I said in the last episode that I did about him, it's clear that anything he's saying on the record here is is sanctioned speech. It's things he's allowed to say. There's no way he would be running around saying things the CIA doesn't want him to say. Now, that's not the same as expressing his opinion that he thinks the CIA should be abolished or whatever, which they talk about in a

[07:48] second here. Whether or not he truly believes that or whatever, him expressing that opinion is not the same as him saying things the CIA wouldn't want him to about their procedures. The idea that he got these things cleared, he says, "All my stories are cleared because of the books I've written over the years." That's interesting. It raises questions about what exactly the process is there because based on his narrative, the CIA hates him and they hounded his wife at the time out of the CIA as well. And, you know, so based on his version of events, the CIA, I don't

[08:18] see why they would clear his ability to write these books in the first place. I mean, some of it is probably covered by the mandatory disclosure that he's talking about, but some of it isn't. And, you know, the fact that all of the stories he would be telling in a public sphere have been cleared behind the scenes raises some skepticism in me, again. But, in this next part, this is really where I find him to be a little bit slippery. Something that I've noticed he does is if somebody challenges him, or especially about something that he like he got wrong or you said this at one point or something,

[08:49] his tactic is to just completely give up. You're right. You're totally right. And, he clearly does this kind of people-pleasing thing where he's sort of agreeing with whoever's in front of him. And, you'll see an example of him doing that with Mehdi Hasan here. So, this is him saying this thing about how he believes the CIA should be abolished, which credit to him, he has made that case multiple times. >> agree with people who say the CIA is a rogue agency that needs to be shut down? >> Yes. I'm I'm on record as saying that I think the CIA should be shut down. And, you know, we've got >> Not enough people say that, though. >> No, not enough people >> I mean, Democrats are too scared to say

[09:20] abolish ICE. I've never >> [laughter] >> I've never heard the slogan abolish CIA. Maybe we're coining it here today on Mehdi Unfiltered. Abolish CIA. Maybe a Democratic presidential candidate in 2028 could run on that. >> Most countries have one intelligence service. Some have two. The United States has 18. >> 18, which is currently being managed by Tulsi Gabbard. >> Tulsi Gabbard has >> Okay, so two things come up here that he instinctually agrees with Medhi about that I'm not actually sure he really agrees with him on because the whole thing about abolish ICE he goes, "Yeah."

[09:51] >> [laughter] >> When Medhi brings up Democrats won't even say abolish ICE. And I don't know that John Kiriakou agrees with abolishing ICE. I think if he was talking to somebody like Tucker Carlson, he would probably make the argument for why some kind of immigration enforcement or deportation is necessary or some kind of policy that was happening under Obama or Biden that was facilitating immigration. He doesn't always make right-wing points, but I have a feeling he would kind of play the middle if that issue were to come up with a right-winger. Same with Tulsi Gabbard.

[10:22] He has praised Tulsi Gabbard. He thinks Tulsi Gabbard is great. So, you know, he's just kind of automatically agreeing with Medhi here and moving on from the Tulsi Gabbard issue rather than making it clear that he doesn't agree with him on that. So, just interesting. He does that at a couple points here. But to be fair, he also makes this great point about how the work of the CIA could be and is already done by other agencies. It's redundant and that's why there's a case for uh abolishing it totally, which is actually something I don't hear very much. You do hear cases like that in regards to ICE and maybe because of his

[10:53] supposedly anti-government positions, he [music] would fall in that camp on ICE. I just haven't heard him say that. And here would be another example of not only Medhi calling him out about, you know, sort of shaping his opinions [music] at the time to fit who he was talking to, but also mirroring Medhi's opinions and viewpoint on this perspective and immediately doing the thing where he backs off, "You're right." Soon as somebody challenges on something, "You're completely right. You're absolutely right. I was wrong." He does that every time. Check it out. >> So, here's what's interesting. You told

[11:24] Joe Rogan last October, quote, "Call me crazy, [music] but I think that if there's going to be peace with Iran, Donald Trump is going to make that peace with Iran." Can I call you crazy now? >> Yeah, yeah, call me crazy. >> [music] >> I I >> You got it wrong. >> I was I was totally wrong. >> And it wasn't just you. A lot of people thought Trump was going to be anti-war. I met Muslim friends of mine who said, "Trump's going to be anti-war. Kamala Harris is a neocon. Joe Biden's a Zionist. Trump's going to be anti-war." And it's turned out that the guy has attacked what, seven countries last year? He did Venezuela at the start of this year. He's done Iran, and now apparently Cuba any day now.

[11:55] How did you get it wrong? >> I really believed that that >> [music] >> I really believed that he really believed he had a chance of winning the Nobel Peace Prize. >> [music] >> Yeah, so he says that at the time he thought that Trump would, you know, facilitate peace with Iran because he wanted the Peace Prize. I mean, maybe. I don't know if that's the case that he made on Joe Rogan, but uh that seems a little different from saying that like this is a guy who has an anti-war plan because he knows, Kiriakou knows just as well as anybody that any president is

[12:27] going to walk in there and face the same pressures. He talks about that in this interview [music] that the CIA is going to try to sweeten you up and get you on their side in terms of what they're doing so that they can manipulate you essentially. So, of course they're going to do that to Trump. And after a full Trump administration, we could see that they had already done that the first time and that his actions were aligning with what they would have wanted by the end of his first presidency much more than at the beginning. So, that's where this thing he says, you know, I essentially bought that Trump really meant it when he said he was anti-war.

[12:57] And I just don't buy that. I don't see how a person who has has the experience that he has from the inside and has the political beliefs that he says he has would have bought into that. Although, he wouldn't be the only person that's in government or somewhere in like the scientific institutions that kind of came to the same conclusion, got sort of sci-op'd the same way. But, there's something about it that just seems, again, a little bit overly agreeable. And [music] here is where he says what his political beliefs are supposedly, and this is where I kind of believe him,

[13:27] but also am struggling to see the consistency a little bit. >> yourself as a third generation Democrat who left the party ages ago. I think you were once [music] vice president of the college Dems at GW prior to being recruited. What made you leave the Democratic Party and where do you stand on the political spectrum? Now, how would you classify your politics now to your new online followers? You say you're conservative, you're liberal, you're a socialist. What are you? >> I call myself a leftist libertarian. >> Okay. >> I also am a firm believer in the fact

[13:57] that the ideological spectrum is not a straight line from [music] left to right, that it's a circle. And it meets >> often used as a pejorative, that the horseshoe, the far right and far left meet. >> [music] >> Well, I but I think that's a good thing. >> Okay. >> I I'm perfectly happy to cooperate [music] with somebody like Marjorie Taylor Greene, for example, on an issue like [music] Jeffrey Epstein or Israel-Palestine, Gaza, Iran, whatever. Perfectly happy to take support from wherever I can find it. >> So, he does the horseshoe theory thing. He also I kind of wish Manny had allowed

[14:28] him to finish that cuz I've never heard somebody describe it as a circle. I kind of wonder what he was getting at. But it's essentially the same thing where you kind of meet back up with the far left and the far right, blah, blah, blah. I don't subscribe to that. Manny correctly says that that's kind of a pejorative used to discredit [music] any type of actual anti-government action and ideology that comes from the left. So, that's why a guy like this should be concerned and would well know after being in the CIA taking part in sabotage campaigns of all kinds of left-wing projects. That's a big part of what the CIA does, for sure. It's not part that

[15:00] he talks about much, although sometimes, but he should know that the, you know, the sneaking in of right-wing ideology into left-wing movements is one of the ways that you destroy them. Whereas coming from the right, you almost never get any real reform of power. You never get any actual critique of power because all the right wants is to just take and utilize power. They don't scale back government, and certainly not the right wing dictators that were installed by the CIA. They didn't deliver on any anti-corruption policy or anything like that. [music] So, this idea that he's just kind of affable to the idea of the

[15:31] American right is the biggest pill that I can't swallow with this guy. Like, there's zero skepticism of people like Tucker Carlson and this like fake right wing populist movement in America. And if anybody knows what that sort of thing smells like, it's a [ __ ] CIA guy. So, if he was really being honest, he would be calling that out. Instead, he's encouraging us to ally with people like Tucker Carlson, right wingers, etc. And here in this last part, Medhi calls him out about his previously having endorsed James Fishback, who is a Republican candidate, I think, for governor in

[16:03] Florida. Just virulently racist groper, Nazi type this guy is, but disguised with anti-Israel, anti-Zionist policies. So, here's Medhi confronting him about that. >> I need to talk about someone else, because I was looking forward to this interview. My team and I did some research, and then I got very upset. >> Uh-oh. >> So, I've got a bone to pick with you. >> Okay. >> You endorsed in Florida the far right Republican candidate James [music] Fishback, who is very anti-Israel, very anti-establishment, claims to be a libertarian. He's also a brazen racist. >> Yeah, I didn't endorse him.

[16:34] >> Okay. >> I and and I'm not using this as an >> "Listen, if you're a Republican voting for governor of Florida, consider James Fishback." February 2026, that was you. >> Yeah, that was my assistant. And I tore him a new one for for a week. >> John, live with Ted Rall. >> Oh, no, I know what you're talking about. Oh, yes. [music] And that was a stupid thing to say. I didn't really know anything about him other than I had seen this clip. >> I thought you were going to say, "Aaron, defend James Fishback to me," and then we would have had a real falling out. >> this clip where he's yelling about AIPAC, and I said, "Hey,

[17:05] >> of people A lot of people There's a problem with the clips, though. >> Yeah, and then >> You got to be careful with the clips. >> And then my assistant endorsed him on Twitter, and I had to delete it. And I was like, "No, >> So, just to be clear, so if you ask me, he just straight-up instinctually lies here. The first thing he says is that I never endorsed him. So, he's talking about this tweet that went out that he apparently deleted, and he immediately says that was my assistant. [music] Not buying that. But, then Medhi says, "Wait, you said this on a live show." And he did. So, he is quoting John Kiriakou here saying that any Republican

[17:37] in Florida should consider voting for Fishback. Again, virulent racist, like absolutely horribly racist. He said he only saw a clip of him talking about AIPAC. Okay, fair enough. But, if the tweet went out after that because your assistant thought you were endorsing him, >> [music] >> first of all, that raises some questions on its own about who exactly your assistant is, but why wouldn't you remember that you originally said it in the first place, which was supposedly why your assistant tweeted out? Cuz if your assistant just tweeted it out of their own volition, that's a little suspicious on its own, isn't it, Mr. CIA

[18:07] officer? So, I think he kind of just like throws out a couple lies there, then remembers what Medhi's talking about, gives the answer on that. And again, I think this is just him agreeing. He's just like, "You're right, I never should have done that. I was totally wrong, totally wrong. You're right, Medhi." And he did the same thing on PBD, where PBD confronted him, ironically, about Tucker Carlson. Thought Tucker Carlson might have said something to Kiriakou about how PBD is a Zionist, which he is. But, Kiriakou didn't say, "Well, you are a Zionist, and I think this, and I think that." He just said, "You're right." He said, "I'm not going to say whose whose name it

[18:38] was, but you're right. You're right, and I was wrong. I was totally wrong for ever implying that you're a Zionist." Even though he was right about that. apparently was just, you know, saying that cuz that's what he thought of PBD at the time. Uh and then just completely backed off it. So, I'm not seeing a guy here who believes in much of anything, but to the extent that he does, I mean, he's completely bought into this brown shirt, red shirt alliance thing. And [music] to me, that just seems like an op. And, you know, I feel like him and Tucker Carlson seem like they have a similar project at the moment, which is to ingratiate themselves uh to the left,

[19:09] and also, you know, attack Israel, and defend other interests in the Middle East. So, the attacking Israel part is great, but I think, you know, the tie between the white supremacy and [music] the right-wing approach to attacking Israel is really the key here. And especially as we're seeing like pogroms happening in [ __ ] Ireland, not towards Jewish people, but towards immigrants. >> [music] >> And, you know, whatever leftism Kiriakou has, it's not geared towards justice for immigrants. I'm sure he would agree with that position if he was talking to a

[19:39] left-winger. But, that's not what he's advocating for. And instead, he's allying with Tucker Carlson and encouraging us to do the same. So, that does not lead me to think that his intentions are to see a more positive left-wing politics in America. And for now, I'll leave it at that.
