Title: The Cost of Telling the Truth | John Kiriakou | Ep. 446
Show: Cleared Hot Podcast
Date: 2026-05-04
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JeTlw4Zy3o
Duration: 3:20:22

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[00:00] Okay, I got the red smoke. NORTH AND SOUTH OF THE SMOKE. WEST OF THE SMOKE. >> OKAY, COPY. West of the smoke. I'm looking at danger close now. >> I'M IN CLEAR hot clear. >> It's been It's been fascinating to watch your journey over the last couple years. >> It's been kind of like that. >> Well, that's I think just life. Um, I was thinking about I was really looking forward to sitting down and talking with you. We originally obviously linked up

[00:33] over a change agents episode. They had a full page of production notes. I don't think I even asked you a single question cuz we just started talking about other stuff from like the global war on terror time. >> I remember >> and it was fantastic. And then I was like, "Oh my god, we have to get this person in person." And uh I was thinking about it. I have I have to ask a question tangential to your old job based off of my understanding of the agency based off of movies. >> I love the movie Charlie Wilson's War. >> Oh, >> and I heard you talking one time about a

[01:05] particular character in that movie and I am hoping >> that you actually got to work with this person. >> Yes. >> Who is my mentor and one of my closest friends? Did he actually break somebody's office glass with a hammer or wrench? He used his fist first of all. And I'll tell you what, they they sort of eased off in the movie because in the movie the the window that he was breaking >> Yeah. >> was the division chief,

[01:37] >> which is a career-ending >> 100%. >> In real life, it was the deputy director for operations. >> Oh boy. of the whole CIA. >> So, it was the boss's boss. >> I said, "How did they not take you out in handcuffs?" I asked him one time and he said, "Everybody's afraid of me because they think I'm crazy." And there's something to be said about that. He his nickname at the agency, we're talking about Gus Avricatus, who was played by Philip Seymour Hoffman in the film Charlie Wilson's work. >> Such a spectacular actor as well.

[02:09] >> Oh, what there? They could not have found a more perfect actor. Did he did he make it pretty well? >> Um, no. Gus Gust was far filthier than uh >> So, this is the point where the reality of it wouldn't even have been made. Was he as much of a legend as he came off to be in that movie? >> Yes. >> That is unbelievable. >> Yes. And you know, I'll tell you, well, I could tell you a lot about Gus. His nickname was Dr. Dirty. And I said to him one time, I said, "Why Dr. Dirty? I've found you to be anything but

[02:39] dirty." And he said, "Cuz I'll stab you in the back just like everybody else in this building will, but then I'm going to spin you around and stab you in the front." >> Was he just a spies spy? >> Yeah, he was a mean son of a [ __ ] >> Is that what they're looking for? Did that place turn him into that or was that just who he was? >> No, that's what that was the draw to bring him in. I'll tell you why he was so unique and he was very very proud of

[03:12] this. He came into the agency in those early days when everybody was coming from Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Brown, Princeton and he was from Pit. He had a degree in Soviet studies from Pit and he was kind of an ethnic, you know, full-blooded Greek from from Aquipa, Pennsylvania, which was another reason why we hit it off. I I went into operational training at the sort of halfway point in my career and um and he

[03:42] says to me, "Isa, are you Greek?" And I said, "Yeah, where are you from? Where's your family from?" And he said, "Oh, we're from I think it was Sparta." Which makes sense. And um so we started talking and I said, "You you speak with a Pittsburgh accent. You from Pittsburgh?" And he said, "Yeah, I'm from Aquipa, you?" And I said, "Yeah, I'm from Newcastle. Go Steelers." Right. And I pulled out my Steelers credit card that I still have in my pocket. Right. Yeah. I got my There it is. I should probably cover up the numbers.

[04:12] >> Totally. >> But uh yeah, my Steelers credit card. So we hit it off on the very first day. So he got me assigned to him um as his student, his underling. >> As you switched over to operations. >> As I switched over to operations. And the cool thing about that was I was already mid-career. Everybody in the class was mid-career. It was called the operations course accelerated OCA. And so if you are just joining the CIA and you're going into operations, you got to

[04:44] go to this desk for 6 months. Yeah. >> And learn what that desk does and then you go to this office for 6 months or 6 weeks or whatever and learn what they do. We didn't need any of that stuff cuz we had already been in for 6 8 10 years. So, we went straight into ops and um he used to say, "The job of an operations officer is to recruit spies to steal secrets. That's what you're going to learn to do here. Recruit spies to steal secrets." And um

[05:14] you know, one of the things that I remember about him in training was that the other trainers didn't like him >> and some of them were like openly rude to him and he just took it. And I said I said why are these [ __ ] so mean to you? He's like mean? That doesn't even the word doesn't even register in my brain. You want to see mean? You get to know me. He says and I thought that's kind of cool. I'll tell you another thing about Gust. Gus was incredibly generous to me with his time and his expertise. So I

[05:46] finished the class. I go out to Athens in counterterrorism and this is going to sound kind of silly. We had just gotten this new fangled thing called electronic mail, right? E mail. So, I remember this when this occurred as well, too. Something I have to tell my children, but they're like, "What are you talking about? That existed forever." >> We were all like gathered around the computer like, and I remember the station chief says, "Wait a minute. Wait a minute. are you saying that my people can just write one of these emails and

[06:19] it goes back to somebody at headquarters and then that person can respond and the tech guy says yeah and he goes I don't like it I don't like it one bit like don't worry sir one day the agency will develop the ability to read everybody so it's going to be fine >> imagine >> so which came like a year later I can only imagine yeah >> so Gust and I he was the very first email I sent. So I said, "Gus, just arrived in Athens. Just wanted you to know I'm in place." And he was like,

[06:49] "Great. Let's talk every day." Great. So we would do things like I got to be Look, I got to be careful. So I'm going to tell you one thing. I said, "Gus, I emailed him one day. I said, "Gus, there's there's a guy just arrived here, and this guy's got to be like target number one for me, but he's from this outcast country, so he's not showing up at the diplomatic cocktail parties. How do I get this guy? I just got to get in front of him. I know he's

[07:20] not going to accept a pitch, but I want to scare the [ __ ] out of him is what I want to do." And he's like, "You know what? I did something in the Middle East once back in 68 or what whatever the year was. Here's what you do. And I even say in my first book, I wish I had thought of it because it was so brilliant. It was so simple, so brilliant what I did. I looked much younger then. I was 35 years old, didn't have any gray hair.

[07:51] And um and I loaded a a book bag, like a gym bag full of books, and I went to this guy's house. He lived in a very closein suburb. And uh I knew what car uh was his. And so I took my book bag and I broke the side view mirror off of his car. Just broke it. Snapped it right off. Then I picked it up and I went to his next door neighbor's house, a Greek lady. >> Grab that thing. >> Sorry. No worries. >> Greek lady. And um and I said to her,

[08:22] "Is this your car? I I broke this off by accident." And she says, "No, no, it's not my car. It's the guy next door." Um and she says to me, then he's not Greek. I was like, "Okay, sorry. Thank you. Sorry to bother you." So I go next door, knock on the guy's door, he answers the door, and I said, he's like, "Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I don't speak Greek." I said, "Oh, you speak English?" He said, "Yeah." I said, "Oh, I speak English, too." I said, "Sir, I was walking down the street and my bag accidentally got

[08:53] caught on the mirror and I broke the mirror off and the lady next door told me it was your car and I wanted to say how sorry I was and I I wanted to uh I want to pay for it." He's like, "A man, now now I got to take it to the shop and nothing but trouble." I said, "I am so sorry. Please allow me to pay for it. May I have a glass of water?" in his culture, you can't decline a request for hospitality.

[09:24] >> And he goes, "Wait right here." Well, I could see inside the house his little girl was playing on the on the carpet. She looked to be about four. So, I I walked inside the house and I get down on my knees and I said to her, "Uh, Shuism, what is your name in Arabic?" She was Mick and she said, "My name is Miriam." And I said, 'How old are you, Miriam? I'm four. He comes back in with the water and uh and he says to me,

[09:57] "What exactly do you want?" And I said, "I'm not going to insult you. I'm from the CIA in Washington. I know who you are. I know what you do here. And I'm here to tell you that your leader, he's gonna die. You can die with him or you can come on the side of the good guys. And I'm not going to ask twice. You have until 10:00 tomorrow morning to make your decision. I said,

[10:29] "This is my business card. It's my true name. 10:00." And I set it down and I'm looking at him and he says, "I admire your courage in approaching me. Very creative, but I'm offended that you would do it in my own home in front of my child." And I said, "My apologies." And I walked out. Today's episode is brought to you by Black Rifle Coffee. Spring is a reset. Longer days, more

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[12:01] roasted. Stay deliberate. Keep the standard high. The next morning, everybody's gathered around my phone. We're all just sitting there looking at the phone like 1 minute to 10. It rings. And I was like, I knew I scared him. I knew I scared him. And so he said, "I've given your uh offer some thought. When can we meet?" I said, "In two hours at such and such a hotel, the lobby had a coffee shop."

[12:32] We we had every table. We took every table. Every table had an armed CIA officer there. And I said, "Come alone and come unarmed." >> And he came alone. And I got up. I gave him a big bear hug to make it look normal. And I patted him down for weapons. He was unarmed. And he sat down and uh asked me what I wanted. I was very specific with what I wanted. And I said, "What do you want?" He said, "What are you offering?" I said, "Relocation

[13:03] if you want it. I mean, not not tomorrow. We're going to have some work to do, but if you want to move to the United States, he didn't. He wanted to move to another Arab country." Uh, which was fine. We gave him a more money than one person can carry at a time. >> And uh and even my station chief came up to me and he said, >> "I've been here for 25 years. This was the most creative operation I've ever seen." And this was my first tour. And I said, "You know, I wish I could take

[13:34] credit for it." Well, what do you mean? He says, I said, "Gus told me to do this. It was his idea." And he's like, "Fucking Gust." He hated him. He hated him. And then poor Gus, the the older he got, the sicker he got. He, as you might imagine, he had a blood pressure problem. >> Yeah. >> And that led to a series of minstrokes. And every time he would have a minstroke, he would get meaner to the point one time, >> an actual personality shift. >> It was a personality change. It got to

[14:06] the point where he somehow got it into his head that I told somebody that I had seen him escorted out of the building with the cops. I said, "What are you talking about? >> 3 weeks ago, you told Allan that." I said, "Gustin, I've been in Pakistan for 6 months. I don't know what you're talking about. I just got back from Pakistan a couple days ago. I haven't seen Allan in years. I don't know what you're talking about." But someone actually called security because the way he was screaming at me in the hallway.

[14:38] And a mutual friend of ours was like, "Look, he keeps having these many strokes. He's not himself." And then it got to the point, and this is kind of a sad sort of ignaminious way to end such a proud career. He got it into his head that George Tennant, who was the CIA director at the time, had denied him a good parking space. And he started emailing George. >> Yeah. Directly. cuz everybody in the agency knows George's email address. I mean, it's, you know, George tenant CIA.

[15:08] >> Say George CIA. George. Tenant. >> Exactly. It's not hard to figure out. >> It's not like he's an alias or something. And so he was like, you know, why'd you take away my parking space? And of course, nobody ever responded to him, but it got to the point where Tenant finally said, >> it's time for Gus to go. >> And that's how his career ended. >> Yeah. The worst part about that is I've been around some people now um stroke and also the early onset of dementia. They don't real to them what they are

[15:38] experiencing is real. >> They're their own worst enemy because they don't see the personality shift and everybody they think that everybody else has gone crazy. >> Yes. >> Good luck having that conversation. >> You're absolutely right. My dad, God rest his soul. My I I had the best dad anybody could ever hope to have in life. He was a very gentle soul. PhD in music education. 44 years as an elementary school principal in the public school system. Just a an all-around good guy and he got uh Parkinson's disease and

[16:09] sometimes Parkinson's is also associated with Parkinsonian dementia. So I used to I was working at the United Nations at the time. My kids were living in Ohio with my ex-wife. So I used to drive either from Washington or from New York every other weekend, pick up the kids, go to my mom and dad's house. So my dad had to have back surgery and he came out of the surgery with something called hospital psychosis, which is an actual thing where if you're already prone to dementia,

[16:40] >> it's the um the stuff that they give you to knock you out for the surgery. Yeah. The anesthesia, it it makes you crazy. >> That doesn't sound awesome. >> No. And sometimes you can finally come out of it over a period of weeks or months. Sometimes you never come out of it. So he calls me. I'm in New York. He calls me at like midnight one night and he said, "Um, I need for you to call the congressman." I said, "Which congressman?" "My congressman." I said, "Why?" He said, "Alqaeda was in my my

[17:14] hospital room and they tried to recruit me and I got a tip off the congressman." But I knew what he was talking about because that day on the news we had disrupted the FBI disrupted uh what was the name of that attack uh for something attack in New Jersey. >> Mhm. >> Before it took place. They grabbed these six al-Qaeda guys. So their pictures were on the news all day that day. And he imagined that they were in the room, the hospital room. >> Yeah. >> So he said, "If you don't call the

[17:44] congressman, I'm calling the sheriff." I said, "Dad, we're all over these guys. It's all part of the operation." I said, "Don't worry about it." He goes, "Oh, you're out. You're on it." And I said, "I'm I'm on it like white on rice, Dad." And then he backed off. >> You should have told him, "We need you, though. We need you to be a trip. We need you to go undercover." >> Yes. Just be totally silent. >> Yeah. Listen, take notes. Tell me everything. You are the lynch pin to this operation. >> Yeah. I went to see him at the hospital

[18:14] that next weekend and I was with my mom and my mom and dad, I say this all the time, they were deeply in love with each other like all my life. And so it was time to leave. It was like, you know, 9:00 and visiting hours were over. So he walked with us to the uh elevator and then he tried to get into the elevator and my mom said, "Honey, you can't go home with us." and he got mad and he says, "Stella, that girl at the hotel told me I could go home anytime I wanted."

[18:45] And she said, "You're not in a hotel. You're in a hospital." He got out and he he looks at me and he says he says, "Good night, buddy." And I said, "Good night, Dad." And then he looks at my mom and he says, I can't even say it with a straight face. He goes, "As for you, I'm done with you." She cried all the way home. And I was like, "Mom, he's not in his right mind. He can't help it." But then he would have a good day. >> Yeah. >> Then he would have two good days. And then finally after a while, he snapped

[19:17] out of it and he was his normal self again. And then couldn't believe the stuff that we were telling him he had said. Couldn't believe it. I If I hadn't been around people now who have experienced that, I wouldn't believe it either. But now having seen it, >> what a how can you win a battle against your own brain? Oh my god. I've got a friend, a very dear friend whose dad just passed away in his 90s and he had a stroke and so his short-term memory was just gone. Well, my buddy's brother died

[19:49] in 1991. He was young. He was in his 20s. Died in 1991. And every single day his dad would say, "Where's Billy? I haven't seen Billy. Why hasn't he come to visit me?" And every day they had to say, "Billy died 35 years ago." And then he would just burst into tears. So finally they just said, "Billy, Billy was just here two hours ago. You don't remember?" Oh, okay. Okay. When's he coming again? He's coming tomorrow. Don't worry about it. >> I think that's the move.

[20:20] >> Mhm. >> Yeah. >> But getting back to Gust. Gust was like one of the most one of the manliest men. I'll tell you what, then this is what a dear friend he was. I'll tell you two more Gus things. what a dear friend he was. I was going through a divorce coming out of Athens and I was just just wrecked. >> I've been through one myself. I know what you're talking about. >> It's bad. I've been through two. The second one was worse. >> Yeah. >> But the first one I'm like, "My life is over at 36." I couldn't believe it.

[20:52] >> And he said to me, >> "This is going to sound so crude, but this is just the way this is just the way Gus used to talk. He says, "Don't worry about that. you're going to get more [ __ ] than you've ever had in your entire life. You're going to have more [ __ ] than you're going to know what to do with. I'm like, Gus, I feel old and broken and and I'm 20 lbs overweight and and he said, "My wife left me when I was stationed in Athens." He said, "I was 44 years old. Next thing

[21:24] I know, I'm on top of a 20-year-old." And I said, I said, "How the heck did you do that?" like, you know, share, right? So I can try to make a comeback. >> And he says, he said, I said to her one time, "Why are you with an old man like me?" And she said, "Because guys my age want to talk about their stereos and you want to talk about how beautiful my tits are." >> I mean, that's not a bad sound. >> I said, "Lesson learned, Gust. Thank you.

[21:55] Write that down in the notebook of life." And then one time, this is my last Gus story unless you have questions. He he emailed me and he said, "Listen, I'm going to be out of touch for 10 days, so keep on keeping on. I'll drop you a line when I'm back." I'm like, "Okay." Figuring vacation, family, something. I'm going to meet with a particularly sensitive source one day and I'm doing a three-hour surveillance detection route and I'm way down south of Athens and I

[22:26] make this turn and as I turn, I happen to turn and look and there's Gus. He's standing on the street corner and I was like, "No, no, no. It's my imagination." Because I've been thinking about him, right? and I carry on with the SDR. And then he emails me like four or five days later, hey, I'm back. So I said, I go, Gus, by any chance 4 days ago, did I

[22:57] see you standing in front of the the steakhouse in Anoglya? And he writes back, tell anybody and I'll [ __ ] kill you. So afterwards when I got home from the tour I was like way back what in the world were you doing in Glyifada that day? Why didn't you tell me you were in Athens? We could have you know met up or had dinner. And he says he loved the huna the military dictatorship fascist dictatorship that just terrorized Greece for seven years, murdered thousands of

[23:29] people. He was like this with those guys. So he said um and and the dictator, the head of the hunter was a guy named uh Colonel Papadopoulos, George Papadopoulos. And he said, "You know, I'm I'm godfather to Papadopoulos's son." I was like, "What? It's like being godfather to Hitler's son." >> Yeah. >> Right. >> And not a good look. >> No. And he says, "HE'S MY GODFATHER. I take our religion seriously." I'm like, "Okay, okay." He said, "Well, that's why I didn't tell anybody." They wouldn't

[23:59] understand. I go, "Gus, I love you." What? I don't understand. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. He He made no excuses. >> The old SDR. >> Yeah. >> My wife um has no natural sense of direction. >> Oh my gosh. >> I we we share life 360, >> right? I do too. >> I will find her. We'll talk on the phone and she train coaches at a jiu-jitsu gym. Literally blown literally one block away down the alley by the police station. I know roughly how long it

[24:31] takes to get from there to where we live and we'll have 20 minute conversations on the phone and I'll ask her where the [ __ ] are you and she's like oh I missed the turn just and so I've taught her the term SDR. I'm like are you on another SDR? She goes yes I definitely am. I actually think that if she was being observed by an intelligence agency that they would think she is actually got an exceptional level of fieldcraft, >> she just has no sense of direction

[25:02] whatsoever. She would accidentally be confused with somebody with a high level of tradecraftraft. >> I I >> I'll find her miles on life. I'm like, >> you're you're four miles from where we live and the gym is three. She's like, I just took a wrong turn. I'm just going to see where this goes. What the >> Oh my god. GPS. >> They've invented and and they do great work. >> John, it's it's it's less than a dozen turns to get to our house. I And now I

[25:32] think it's fantastic because she at first I'm like, "Oh, you're on an SDR." She's like, "What does that mean?" I'm like, "Well, it's a, you know, surveillance detection route, this, that, or the other." And she's just like, "Yeah, that's what I'm doing." So now she just goes with this. She's like, "Oh, hey, I'm on a SDR. I'll be home in a little bit." When Gus was training me and we were doing SDRs, you know, the final phase in an SDR is called the provocative phase. >> Yeah. Where you start making the aggressive left and right. >> Yeah. Just crazy. No. No. It's more provocative than the aggressive. >> You're talking like throwing a U-turn. >> U-turns. Pull into somebody's driveway.

[26:04] Go the wrong way down a oneway street. That's to be just 1,000% sure that you're clean. But usually, you know, if you're clean before you get to that final phase. And the final phase can it could be two blocks. You know, you don't have to drive the wrong way down the oneway street for very long. But um uh if you realize you're being followed, you just abort the meeting. I I never met anybody that ever had to go into a

[26:35] provocative phase. I don't know because it's so provocative that the conclusion you could draw attention to yourself. >> Exactly. And the conclusion would be like, "Oh, he's doing a an SDR. We got to put a double team on him." I worked with this woman in Bahrain. She was a State Department officer. She was so freaking arrogant. >> She had no reason or right to be arrogant. She was just arrogant. She had come from Romania, had never served in the Middle East before. I had

[27:05] already been there a year when she arrived. She replaced a friend of mine who went on to be a young ambassador and um she came to the office one day and she said, "Have you had surveillance here?" And I said, "No, not a single time." She said, "I had surveillance last night." I said, "It's cuz you're the political officer. They just assume that everybody who's the political officer is a CIA officer." And she wasn't. I said, "What'd you do?" And she said,"I took them on a high-speed chase from the top of this island to the bottom." And I was

[27:37] like, "Good for you." Which of course is exactly the opposite of what you're supposed to do. Just go about your normal business. Maybe act normal >> because then they're going to say, "Oh, she's just acting normal. She's she went to the grocery store and she went to the dry cleaners and then she went home. She must not be CIA." And then they move on to the next guy. She was so provocative that literally every meeting she went to for the next two years she dragged surveillance to and as a result she pulled surveillance off of me. I never

[28:09] had it. Never. >> Yeah. I worry about an intelligence agency seeing my wife's driving. They're like she is definitely a sleeper cell. She's constantly looking for It's like no she's not. John, did you ever think that your life was going to look like what it does right now? >> Oh, no. No. I can tell you exactly what I thought my life would look like. My wife and I used to talk, my second wife and I used to talk about it. She was a senior CI officer as well. Um, I believed very firmly that I would do my

[28:40] my 25 years because I had 5 years overseas. you can get 30 years pension after 25 >> and then I would um retire on a Friday, start up the following Monday with a contractor, do another five years and live happily ever after. You know, we had a I I won a big award um at um after the Abaza operation. Big award. And I used it to buy a piece of land in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. I bought a third of an acre. Loved it. love. I I

[29:12] still love it's so clean and pristine. It's just wonderful there. So, it was 10 ft above sea level, four lots back from the ocean. Perfect. And um I just thought, well, I'll retire and we're going to build our house there and, you know, live happily ever after. And no such thing happened. How is it even possible for people who do or did what you did for a living to have relationships but be married to somebody who also doesn't work in that agency?

[29:43] >> Oh, it's it's not possible. I hate to say it, but it's just not possible. >> How would it be? I mean, because I'm assuming there I mean, obviously, if you both work there, I'm assuming things are obviously still compartmentalized, but I don't know how you would even bridge that gap. >> You can't. >> You'd have to start off with a lie. I'm assuming the initiation of the relationship. Well, the only thing my first wife knew was that I worked at the CIA >> and that she couldn't tell anybody that I worked at the CIA. That was it. >> I would come home, especially once I went operational. I would come home and she'd say, "How was your day?" I'd say,

[30:14] "Great. What'd you do?" Nothing. Who'd you see? Nobody. >> Yeah. >> Like, okay. Yep. How's your day? Good. And then the phone would ring at 11. I had seven cell phones. And I had a they they always give you a bigger house than you need because you need space to entertain and you need space for privacy. So I one of the little bedrooms I had as a den and I kept the door locked and I had seven cell phones.

[30:45] >> Um all burners all registered to fictitious names. And um 11:00 the phone would ring and I would say you know Lilac personal shopping. I didn't. that was from the Sopranos, but you get the idea. >> And um the guy would say, you know, whatever the code was, and I would respond with my bonafites >> and um like he would say, "Hey, Billy, uh I just got back uh to town." And I would say, "How was your vacation?" And

[31:18] he would say, "You know, it rained the whole time I was gone." That means meet me at the hotel coffee shop in three hours. And we we had previously arranged we found a I I was able to identify a 24-hour coffee shop. So I would leave at 11:00 and she'd be like, "What? Where are you going? It's 11:00. I have a meeting." You know, just like in the Sopranos, I got a meeting. I got to make my

[31:48] collections. And so I would do a three-hour SDR. I would do the meeting. The meeting would last an hour or two hours. And then I would do two hours back to my house, which maybe gave me an hour to sleep. And then I'd get up, shave, shower, go back to the uh to the office and and work my normal day and just hope I didn't have to do the same thing again that night. But she was convinced I was cheating on her. >> Well, I mean, how could she not think that? I mean, the Yeah. the unregularity

[32:19] of the hours and all of those things. >> My second wife though, >> I'll give you an example. I I was uh it was the day I I was leaving Pakistan. >> I had been there 6 months. Abu Zaba was behind us. I had complete and total success in in Pakistan. And she and I had been um uh arranging planning a week-long vacation in uh Santa Fe, New Mexico. Neither one of us had ever been to Santa Fe. Two hours before I left for the airport,

[32:50] I get this cable and it says, "Don't come home. Instead, go to this other country because we want you to break into a house and plant a bug." And I was like, "Fuck." So, I called her. It's like, "Then can I go to Santa Fe?" >> I know, right? I called her and I said, "I am so sorry, but" And then she said, "No, no, I saw the cable. go do your breakin. We'll go to Santa Fe some other time. So, she understood what the job

[33:20] entailed and we two three months later we went to Santa Fe and had a great time. >> But she understood. >> I think that's the only way it could work for people in your line of work. >> Do you think it's possible for agencies like the CIA to exist and not become corrupted? >> No, I don't. That's a great question and it's an important question and the reason why I don't think it's possible is because we will never have appropriate oversight. Oversight just will never happen. There

[33:52] was this like golden age. We like to think this golden age of congressional oversight from 1975 until about 1982 when Iran Contra started. um coming out of the Church Committee, the Pike Committee, the creation of the House and Senate intelligence committees, real oversight with giants sitting on them. Daniel Patrick Moahan, Frank Church, Burch Bay, Barry Goldwater, serious people, heavy weights

[34:23] in 20th century American politics who were serious about, you know, the the constitutionally mandated oversight authority of Congress. And then that just kind of went away and now they're just cheerleaders. I I got a call from a senator a week ago last Friday and he said, "Um, hey, would you come up to my office? I there are a couple of issues I want to talk to you about. This has happened a few times in the last 10 years." And I drop everything and I anytime a senator calls

[34:55] me, drop everything and just go straight up to the to the hill. and he pierced this notion that I had of the golden age from 75 to 82. So I said, "Senator, what can I do for you?" We had chitchat and baseball and he's a baseball fan, so am I. I said, "What can I do for you?" And he said, "I need your help. There are some documents that I need from 1975 and I just can't get access to them." I

[35:25] said, "You're you're a senator. You're a committee chairman." >> Yeah. You should be the one with the keys to the drawer. >> Yeah, just pick up the phone and tell them bring bring the documents by noon. Have them in my office. He said, I've been trying that for the last 7 years and they tell me to go fly a kite. >> What was the topic he was looking for? >> Well, that's what it was. He said, there's a classified annex to the 1975 report. I said, there can't be. the whole point of the 1975 report was that it was

[35:57] unclassified and released to the public. And he said, "Right, that's what they want everybody to believe." He said, "I found a classified annex." He said, "They denied for seven years that it existed and then we found it in a storage area in the basement of the Senate." And I said, 'And you you can't just open the box?' He said, 'N no, it's covered with decades worth of dust and it's

[36:28] sealed and they will not let me see it. And I said, "Have you gone to leadership?" And he said, "Yeah." And leadership said, "I don't want to get involved in a dispute between two committee chairmen." I said, "This is this is outrageous." And because they're congressional documents classified by a congressional committee, they're not subject to the Freedom of Information Act because in its infinite wisdom, Congress exempts itself from all of the laws that it passes.

[36:58] >> Convenient. >> Yeah. And so I said, uh, I said, "Listen, just off the top of my head, I think your only strategy here is to go public. That's it. go public, scream it from the rooftops, and say you're going to raise hell on the floor of the Senate every single day until they open that box. So, the way we left it was he was going to think about it. >> Yeah. Why would an agency allow a hard copy like that to exist,

[37:28] >> right? I mean, it's like, "Guys, here's what we're going to do. We print out everything, put it in this box, nobody will ever find it, >> and just hope nobody ever finds it." No, it's like, and again, I'm not trying to give anybody's like policy approaches here, but it's like, you know, there's there's some truth to the, you know, the only way you can keep a secret between three people is if two of them are dead. >> Exactly. >> Why would you have a written hard copy if like if somebody in charge somewhere is like, "This has to be destroyed." Well, then go [ __ ] destroy it. Well, you've heard the story about Dick Helms

[37:58] and MK Ultra. >> Yeah. So, Senator Church told him, "Do not destroy the documents." and he went back to headquarters from that meeting and said, "Destroy all the documents." He understood the assignment and and they find him like $100 and everybody was chipping in a buck, two bucks in the hallway to pay the director's uh congressional fine. But that's why we only have 15% of the MK Ultra documents because the agency destroyed everything.

[38:30] >> Well, there's definitely nothing good in that other 85%. No, for sure. You know, the reason I asked you the question about the agency corrupting itself is I started looking at, you know, just publicly disclosed like MI5, MI6. >> Um, ju any intelligence agency that, you know, we ask people and countries ask people, your job is to lie, cheat, steal, win at all costs. And people get really, really, really good at that. And over enough time, >> it seems like, and the charter of the CIA, to my understanding, is to be

[39:00] externally focused. But even when I was just looking at it this morning, MI5 and MI6, you see the same similarities, those incredible tools of what are supposed to be external protection start getting oriented inward. And once that starts, how do you correct that? >> Yeah. Right. It could take a generation to correct that. >> Is it even possible in a generation? Is it is it >> possible in our case organ or organization gets so >> corrupted and politicized

[39:30] >> and it's like I I believe the CIA we need an entity like that >> but how do we fix the entity that we have without burning it to the ground and losing that capability. >> I'm not sure it's possible. >> Well, you would know more than I would. I mean, I my access to information comes from Google, >> right? You know what what really wrecked it for us was 9/11 and passage of the Patriot Act. So, you know, right now, great branding, by the way. >> Seriously, right? People have no idea the freedoms that they gave away. They have no even after all these years, they

[40:02] have no understanding. >> FISA right now is currently being argued about. >> You took the word 702. You took the words right out of my mouth. I I was going to say section 702 is coming back up for reconsideration yet again like it does every two years. This is a section that directly takes our constitutional freedoms away for from us in the name of national security. And Donald Trump ran in 2016 u against section 702. Now 702 is what

[40:32] Ed Snowden told us about for the first time in the summer of 2013 >> they were using right Pegasus. Yeah. >> So Michael Google this one. How many illegal FBI queries have there been in section 702? and the number is going to be over 200,000. And that's the issue that nobody wants to talk about. >> I I want I want to show you a number too that I've written about a couple of times as soon as he finishes this one, but it's along the same lines. And this is why we're in such a a >> hundreds of thousands of 78,000

[41:04] misused queries >> in two years. >> Constitutional violation. Every single one of those. >> Every single time. Brennan Center for Justice. If your audience doesn't know the Brendan Center for Justice, you got to go there. They're all geniuses. Um, ju if you don't mind, Michael, um, how many FISA warrant applications have been denied? >> Oh, is this a literal and figurative round number? Check this out.

[41:37] 34,000 requests, estimates ranging from 11 or 120 >> three 100s of 1% have been denied. Ask Carter Page how that worked out for him. >> And here's what's crazy. I agree with the argument that we need to keep track of people who are maligned with the morals and interests of this country. >> But this is a bigger net than that. It query system that Snowden was talking

[42:08] about >> between you and I. Well, you were from the intelligence world. I wasn't. I was from the lack of intelligence world based off my high school GPA. But I am sure even just in the social contacts that I have, if you go six rings farther than that, I am peripherilally associated with the cell phone tree to criminals of some kind. Um, and who knows depending on how that goes and what those people know. >> Absolutely. And that's the issue that people are losing in this is that this net not only captures the person that they may be targeting, but all the other people that are upstream and downstream

[42:39] of that thrown into a database that can be queried unconstitutionally. And the next thing you know, our government is looking at your personal information, which they shouldn't be able to do. And then, let's be real honest here, too. If they worry about the legality of that, they'll just go across the pond and ask those people use the same tools. >> And they do it every single word. Have you ever heard of Muhammadu Ulahi? >> I can't believe you would even ask me a question like that because the answer is obviously no. >> Okay. Muhammadu Muhammadu is is the Nelson Mandela of of our age. This

[43:13] is a guy a movie was made of him an A-list Hollywood movie called The Moritanian. >> Mhm. >> So Muhammadu was a Moritanian citizen. He was in medical school in Germany and his cousin was getting married in Moritania. So Muhammadu had another cousin in Lebanon who was a member of al-Qaeda. And the Moritania cousin called and said, "Are you in touch with our Lebanon

[43:44] cousin?" He said, "Rarely, once a year maybe we talk." He said, "Can you call him? I can't get in touch with him. Tell him his dad had a stroke." His dad's in in very poor health. Muhammad who calls his cousin. Your dad had a stroke. Oh my god. Thank you for telling me. Yeah, I'm going to go to Moretania to go to the other cousin's wedding. I'll check in on your dad. That was it. That was the conversation. He goes to Moritania to go to the wedding. The CIA says, "Hey, wait a minute. There's this guy in Germany. He's talking to al-Qaeda, Lebanon. He's

[44:15] going to Moretania, which is full of al-Qaeda. Oh my god, it's a giant meeting of al-Qaeda. No, it was a family wedding. So, we asked the Mortanians, go to this event, whatever this they're calling it a wedding, probably a code name for operational planning meeting. >> It was a wedding. Go to the wedding and grab this guy. So, they do they grab him, they turn him over to the agency. He spent 14 years at Guantanamo

[44:47] undergoing merciless torture. And after 14 years, the CIA said, "You know what? This is probably the wrong guy. We'll just let him go." Well, by then, he's been identified as a Guantanamo al-Qaeda terrorist. No country would take him. The Moritanians would kill him if we sent him back to Moritania. So, he bounced around. He went to Italy. He went to, I think, Switzerland. Now, he uh lives in the

[45:18] Netherlands. He never finished medical school. He couldn't. So now he teaches. He's married to a Dutch woman. They have a couple of kids. We've become good friends. When he was released from Guantanamo, he went on Twitter and I tweeted at him. I had just gotten out of prison. I tweeted at him and I said, "My country will never apologize for what it did to you, so I will." I said, 'I'm ashamed at what the CIA did to you and

[45:48] I'm sorry. And he DM'd me immediately and we've been friends ever since. I teach at a university in Spain, the University of Salamanca, a course on the history of terrorism. And every semester he he does one of the lectures for me. And his story has gotten out, thank God, with the release of the movie The Moritanian, which you can see on a on a transatlantic flight near you. you know, it's it everybody's got it. Um, his ability to forgive

[46:22] is incredible to me. I've tried to emulate that. I lay in bed at night still, you know, fantasizing about the executions of everybody who's wronged me, but he Who doesn't? >> I know, right? >> And in some cases, they actually used to share the bed. Anyway, that's a different issue. I've had that experience as well. >> So, uh, how this guy has been able to

[46:52] become the the man that he is. He's a he's a he's a role model for all the rest of us. But he's the first guy we should talk to about section 702. Yeah. >> And how it's abused >> abused to target innocent people. Oh, I remember the point I was going to make. Donald Trump campaigned against the reauthorization of section 702 and then last week said that he talked to three dozen generals and admirals and every

[47:24] single one of them said we have to have 702 to keep America safe. So I support the reauthorization of section 702. Okay, that's exactly the opposite of what you ran on. >> And how 702 keeps us safe when we have other electronic means to keep us just as safe without spying on American citizens unconstitutionally. Nobody's ever explained why why do we

[47:55] need 702? You know, when when Ed Snowden went public, the whole goal was to have 702 repealed, to have the Patriot Act repealed eventually, but but to start with 702. And every two years when it comes up for a vote, a couple more people will go over to the no side, but not in any numbers to actually mean something. >> Yeah. Then if you look at it, you if you read four paragraphs down in the articles, it says, well, even if they say no, it the system's already set up

[48:26] so it can continue for another month. >> Yeah. >> Which So again, how do how does the cart or the horse >> go back in the barn? >> Yeah. I honest to God, you know, when we've got when we've got the likes of Lindsey Graham and Mark Warner and and and this is not a partisan issue. Both parties are equally um complicit in stripping us of our civil rights and

[48:58] civil liberties. >> Yeah. >> When you've got these guys who are, as I said a few minutes ago, just cheerleaders for the intelligence community, there there is no going back. I mean, does that essentially mean then that the intelligence community is becoming the power broker in this country, not the elected officials? >> I think so. I I really believe it. You know, on the on the Republican side, Ran Paul is really good. Not perfect, but he's good. >> On the Democratic side, Ron Weiden is good. Also, not perfect, but good. But

[49:30] you can't win these things with two senators. >> Yeah. >> You can't. You need 51 >> and then the house is a lost cause. >> Yeah. I mean, so how do we how do we maintain our capability but put it into a system where we actually have oversight? >> Mhm. >> Or is that even possible now? And if it's not possible, what does that mean for our country and the future of where we're headed? Tom Drake, the NSA whistleblower, will tell you that the systems already exist to spy on our

[50:01] enemies, protect Americans, and preserve civil liberties all at the same time. They existed. And then on the morning of 911, um, Mike Hayden, who at the time was the head of NSA, became the head of the CIA, said that NSA had been waiting for a 9/11 so that they could implement the bigger uh, program and grab everybody's electronics. Not only is it illegal for NSA to intercept the communications of

[50:34] American citizens or US persons, which is anybody in the country legally on a green card. It is a part of NSA's founding charter forbidding them from intercepting the communications of Americans or US persons. And they just say, "Tough 9/11, national security. What are you going to do? You got to start from scratch. >> How do we do that? >> Yeah. >> When we I mean, I'm at the place now where, don't get me wrong, I'm not a

[51:05] geopolitical expert or an expert of our political system. >> I don't think it's correctable from the top down anymore. I think it's only I think it's only can be from a bottom >> from the bottom up. >> But but that's generational. >> It's generational. And you're talking about people on moss >> going into the streets and we're not there. This is not going to the streets had a different I call it the passive aggressive uh revolution. >> You're not you're not talking about summer of 68, you know, millions of people marching in the

[51:36] streets, people getting shot at universities. >> I hope not because people aren't ready for that. The people who are calling for civil war, I always try to just tell them, please be careful what you wish for. >> Mhm. >> Because if you think >> it could get way worse than what we're seeing. Well, if you think the answer is banging it out with your neighbor because they have a different political sign in their front yard in your culde-sac, >> right? >> You are not ready for what this actually looks like. >> The passive aggressive revolution, which this wouldn't work either, is >> we all stop paying taxes. >> Ah, >> here's the problem, though. Most

[52:07] people's taxes are paid through their employer. So, we'd have to get the employers on board. >> That's true. >> That I like that idea. >> How does all this stuff function? Money. Mhm. >> I mean, at the end of the day, and this this is an interesting one. I know you uh have talked openly about your thoughts about Epstein. >> I look at it from like an AAMS razor approach. I mean, could he have been a triple agent? >> Sure, >> maybe. I think the guy just helped any intelligence agency that wanted with the ability to move money. >> That's kind of the way things are looking now with the release of the

[52:38] second tranch of documents. >> Well, here's the thing. I don't know anything, but you know what I I don't really know anything about the world that you operate in, but it's a very uniquely US viewpoint. The agency is we are you guys are the the shining star of freedom. You are part of our umbrella. Well, to the rest of the world, I'm pretty sure they look at you guys like an illegal organization full of gangsters. >> And I've never been on an intelligence operation with you guys, but I feel like when the if you're at a dinner and the bill comes in, you don't put down the CIA credit card or write a check that

[53:09] says Central Intelligence Agency. So the whole mechanism and ability for you to be able to do your job is through money. >> Yeah. >> So you need to be able to launder and move money. >> Epstein was a really shitty trader. >> Yeah. >> But if you're not worried about an ROI, >> who gives a [ __ ] >> You can do anything you want. >> You just pass the money through. Was he into some really horrendous stuff? >> Yeah. Do I think that the government knew that? Yeah. Did they turn a blind eye? Would they be willing to turn a blind eye? 100%.

[53:40] I think he was a useful idiot >> that helped any intelligence agency fund their operations wherever that he wanted. >> I think that's good analysis. It it checks all the boxes and would explain a lot. It would explain why he was volunteering to the CIA and the FBI, to MI5 and MI6, to the Germans, to the Russians, to the Israelis. It would explain those relationships. And then with the the Rothschilds. >> Yeah. >> You know, I mean, this is a guy who never went to college. He was a

[54:10] >> I mean, I can't judge that too deeply, John. >> No, but but how do you end up with the widest townhouse in Manhattan? Uh, and and a multi-billion dollar portfolio when you were a 7th grade substitute math teacher >> because you're willing to do anything for money and people know that. >> Yes. And I wish I wish that I could say that the government, whatever people would define that as deeply cares about their citizens. And to a degree, I think they do. But if you

[54:42] think for a second that they won't allow people to get victimized to achieve the end state that they want, you're living in a fantasy world. >> I think you're right. >> And then I think he becomes interesting too, right? He gets to this level of affluence and wealth. Yeah, that'd be an interesting guy to, you know, like, oh, that's interesting. you're friends with this person in a digital age. It's like >> I I don't know how any of this works, but I'm like, >> uh, Rogan's a good friend of mine. >> And I worry about him because he sits down and he talks with a lot of people. I'm like, listen man, I know you well enough that like you're a UFC

[55:13] commentating like standup comedian, probably not going to be a good asset. But if there's a way to bug your phone and then anybody who comes in proximity to you, their stuff gets attached to it as well, that's very valuable. Yeah, that would be my concern for him. >> You're exactly right. So Epstein, not to try to attach Joe to Epstein at all, departing here, he fits into that category of well, you're around rich people, and in my experience, there's a level of wealth where people start getting a little bit weird. Not all of them, but if you can have everything and anything,

[55:44] >> it starts to fray at the edges a little bit. >> Uhhuh. >> And you know, that's great leverage. Let let me ask you, and I know you don't have any inside information, but this is something that has perplexed me from the start of this whole case. What do you make of Les Wexner? I mean, could it be could this have been romantic at its core? >> I think anything like that is possible. Um, why would Lex Less Wexner Yeah. have showered Jeffrey Epstein with so much

[56:15] money over such a long period of time. What made Epstein of all people stand out to him? This is the richest man in the state of Ohio. >> Yeah. >> Right. He's a billionaire and he earned every dollar of it himself. >> Yeah. >> So, of everybody else in America, why does he pick Epstein? >> Maybe he knew what Epstein was really up to and he supported it. I mean, maybe Epstein was just a like, "Hey, man, just so you know, I actually really suck at trading, but you and I are going to change the world." I've got

[56:46] a really dear friend who was a deputy attorney general. um a he's my friend and my attorney and he maintains that that at at an individual level. The only real way, if you're not a government or connected to a government, the only real way to launder large amounts of money in this digital age that we're in are through high-end real estate, luxury um

[57:16] uh watches and jewelry, fine art, and raceh horses. Those are the only the only ways in which cash largescale cash transactions can be affected. And that's always stuck with me since he said that. >> Yeah. I mean, you the high-end art world is an interesting one. You could travel the world with something worth 50 million. >> Who pays for it? How, where it goes? >> Who knows? It's anonymous half the time. >> The money stuff gets is fascinating to me. And again, I don't have I don't I

[57:48] didn't come from that world, but at the end of the day, I'm like, what makes all this tick? It's the money. >> Yeah. >> Like, if you really want to shut down the CIA, >> like, Elliot, just by the way, you guys have no money. What are you going to do? Oh, I you've you've heard me say you've heard me say that in the days after 9/11, I went up to Kofheer Black, who is the head of the counterterrorism center, and I said, Kofheer, I have a I have an idea for an operation I want to run by you. And he put up his hands and he said, "Whatever it is, just do it. I have so much money, I can't possibly

[58:20] spend it all." And we wonder why, okay, >> these agencies can't pass an audit. >> Uhhuh. >> Yeah. And the and the CIA is essentially a cash business. Everything's in cash. >> Yeah. >> You're just an honor to sign the receipt. >> Again, it it has to be. >> It's a uniquely US optic to think that you're out there with the stars and stripes on your shield. Everybody else is trying to kill you guys. You're a criminal everywhere else. Of course, you're paying in cash. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. I don't think they would take a company check. Even though Harrison Ford did buy a helicopter.

[58:50] >> Yeah, he did. With a check, but he had his business card with >> He did. Do you take a company? The demand was like, yes. I mean, it's that that one's probably not going to bounce for sure, but you're going to have some questions from your boss. >> Yeah. Indeed. >> I don't know what to do because at this point, there's no way you're shutting off the money to any of these organizations. >> Not a chance. >> Not a chance. And institutionally 9/11 happened like, you know, last week. >> Yeah. >> It's not 25 years ago. It just happened. And so, nobody's given up any authority. Nobody's given up any budgets. Nothing's

[59:21] going to change. Where does that leave us >> if we can't change it and we can't even hit the pause button >> and our government continues to grow >> and our deficit continues to grow even though again that was kind of the opposite of the platform that was run upon but here we are again and we can't account for where the money went >> to even include inside of the DoD >> right >> the Marines are good they they have actually been like hey this is the money you gave us >> this is what we have every other branch they're like we don't really No, no. I

[59:51] mean, Jay Edgar Hoover famously went 48 consecutive years with a budget increase. All he had to do is go in front of Congress, which he did every year, and he would say communism. And they're like, "Oh my god, here's more money." That even came up with Gustin and Charlie Wilson's war, how they would go in the appropriations, communism. Well, he explained it. I don't have to tell them what it's for. I just have to tell them the number. And what did they start with? 10 million. and they ended up at over a billion obviously over a course of a period of time.

[1:00:21] >> He said he was very clear. We we talked about when they first when the book was first optioned >> and the writers the writers were coming to Virginia to to have dinner with Gust and just get some ideas for how they wanted to adapt the script or adapt the book into a script. And he would tell them these stories. He he was very clear. He said he never had a mind for budgets. All he ever wanted to do was kill Russians. And so when he went to the the director or the deputy director,

[1:00:52] they said, "Well, what's your idea for the operation? My idea for the operation is we kill as many people as we possibly can kill." And they said, "Okay, what do you need for that?" And he said, "Stinger missiles." And then years and years later, I'm in Pakistan and I get a call from the front gate, from the Girkas or whoever we had at the front gate. They're like, "John, there's a guy here in a pickup truck and he's got a missile in the back." I said, 'Is it a stinger? They said, "Looks like a stinger." "Okay, I'll be right down."

[1:01:23] So, I go down with a camera. In the days before, phones had cameras. And I say hi to the guy. He's just some, you know, Afghan refugee. He's got a missile in the back of the in the bed of the pickup truck >> as they do. >> Yep. And I I roll the missile over and it's got the little tag on it. And I take a picture of the tag and I said, "Let me take the missile. We're going to put it in this in this little building over here. Come back in 24 hours. If this is one of ours, I'll give you your money. So, I uh I send the picture to headquarters. I said, "This guy drove up

[1:01:54] today. He had a missile. I have the missile in the walk-in room, and here's the information that's on the little tag." They write back, they say, "Yep, it's one of ours." So, I go to the cash room. I pull a h 100red,000 out in cash. The guy comes back the next day. I make him sign a receipt. He writes, you know, Muhammad, I give him his 100,000 and there's one fewer stinger missile that's out there to be used against us. >> You're making a difference, John.

[1:02:24] >> That was Gust. It's like Gus, you had to give them like all the Stinger missiles, dude. I mean, look at our exit from Afghanistan. >> Oh, what a [ __ ] show. >> What was it the day later? They had a dude hung around the neck underneath a Blackhawk flying. I mean, if you don't think that all of our nearpeer adversaries were surging into that, looking at the equipment we left behind, all of those things, like you're living in a fantasy. >> What were you doing for the last 20 years? >> We're good at breaking things and entry. We suck at exit. And that's what scares me about Iran as well. >> Oh my god. Yes, Andy. When I was I was

[1:02:57] the senior investigator on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from '09 to the end of 11. And um I went to Afghanistan with John Kerry early. I think it was in '09. He had just become the chairman. And we go into this briefing and I'm sure you've sat through a thousand of these. So it's like 10 generals from don't go into rooms with 10 generals. I was like enlisted or very junior officer. I would like if the door open and there's that many call. I'm like I have a dental appointment. No. So they're between like one and four stars.

[1:03:28] They're all sitting around the the room and um and Carrie and and uh another colleague of mine and I go in and we sit there and they have this this slideshow ready for them and they're like, you know, elements of this the second mountain division are moving here and the armored cores. And >> we come out of it and Carrie, who should know better? He says to me, we may actually win this thing. >> Oh god. And I go, "We're not going to win this thing. They've been given the

[1:04:00] same briefing since 2001." >> Yeah. >> I said, "Seriously, Senator," I said, "Hamid Carzi is the mayor of Kabell. That's it. Why do you think we have to do these corkcrew takeoffs and landings?" "Because these guys still have Stinger missiles and they're going to use them against us. We're not going to win this thing." It's like, my god. Like, does nobody think these things through? I I don't know the answer to that. I mean, we strategically achieved our objectives in Afghanistan in about 90 days.

[1:04:30] >> I I say the same thing all the time. By the end of 2001 for about 20 years. >> Yeah. Exactly. >> That's what that's where it all falls apart. >> The mission was to defeat al-Qaeda and we destroyed them by the end of 2001. >> We were actually too good at it cuz if you look at it, I mean the last uh not intel but articles I've read on it now al-Qaeda or ISIS which you know call them branches of the same tree. I mean, if you would get two or three of those people together, oh, you're going to have a bad day because we were going to come knock. Well, we weren't going to knock on your door. That wouldn't be

[1:05:00] true. We might take the door off the hinges and a man may not appreciate, but they learn real quick like we have to be disagregate. So, we actually were so effective that we pushed that at least from a senior leadership level that ideology into 60 plus different countries. >> Look at this hell right now. It's it's a hellscape. >> Yeah. And what does it even mean to win in Afghanistan? And this is one of the things that I worry about with Iran. What are our what are the measurable strategic objectives that we are trying to achieve? >> Yeah.

[1:05:30] >> How are we going to measure them? >> Vocaliz. >> You'll hear other people vocalizing what they believe the beliefs to be, but I'm yet to hear it from the administration. And I don't feel like these are heavy lifts or high asks for the administration. There's there's a reason why people don't have an appetite for this. we're gonna do some stuff and we'll leave when we're ready. Like we tried that. We had 20 years of GWAT in both Iraq and Afghanistan where that didn't work well. And so other people have verbalized, you know, their thoughts on it. But no, the

[1:06:00] administration hasn't like what are the metrics. I mean even it like reduce military capability by 80%. Like I'll accept that. That's fine. And what are our criteria for exiting? Because that >> that's the question. >> And that didn't exist in Afghanistan. You're right. I mean my first deployment to Afghanistan was in 2002 was shortly after uh Hamakarza had the assassination attempt on him. We augmented their security detail before they turned it over to a civilian contractor. And then my last one was there in 2010 and the war looked very different. But even then

[1:06:31] I mean it was just we could have a tactical influence in the the locations we could physically go and touch. But we also, one of the first operations we did was into a province where US forces hadn't been in 10 years. >> And we almost got our [ __ ] pushed in. >> I bet you. I mean, they like, well, thank you that we have overhead assets. You know, my rifle can shoot a little bit more accurately at a farther distance than yours. >> But to think that we were going to win in Afghanistan, what does that mean? And

[1:07:01] still democracy, that didn't work. It didn't work in Iraq. They didn't want that in the first place. It's never happened there. >> No, they had no history. But how do we >> learn our from our mistakes? >> Yeah. >> And I I don't understand. >> Well, you know, look at our look at our political leaders. Our political leaders, again, this is not a partisan issue. Pick either one of the two major parties. They think they're the smartest guys in the room. >> That's always the most dangerous person. >> It is dangerous. That's right.

[1:07:32] >> They have no demonstrable proof that that's true either. >> No. No. You know, I I mentioned before we started um filming that I did a series of speaking engagements around the UK a year ago. Well, I had a um a conversant. So, it's like an evening with John Keryaku sitting on a stage with a conversant. And the first five it was like an English lit professor. The second was an actor. At the end, it was a retired member of MI6.

[1:08:02] And he said something to me one night that it kind of hurt my feelings a little bit as an American former intelligence officer, but he said, "You know, we've always loved you guys. In fact, we created the CIA." I said, "Oh, I know. I've written about it. It it was you guys, you know, your station in New York um helped us create the OSS." And then President Truman specifically asked MI6, "Can you set something up that would be a central intelligence agency?" So he said, "We always saw you as our

[1:08:34] little brother and then um after the empire fell apart, you became our big brother and then after 9/11, you became strangers because your policy was just simply to kill everybody and that can't be a policy." >> Well, it can be a policy, but where does it lead you? >> Where does it lead you? Yeah. I mean, look at Iran right now. You you brought up Iran a moment ago. I see Iran in the same basket as Gaza and Lebanon.

[1:09:05] I understand your need for security truly, but your policy can't be just to kill everybody. That's not a viable policy. And it's going to turn generations of people against you, >> which we have seen, >> which we're already seeing. >> Yeah. You know, how many times are we going to see these lists of the 10 worst anti-semites in in America and seven of them you're like, they're not they're not anti-semites. I know these people. I know that they're not anti-semites.

[1:09:35] It the it ends up not having an impact anymore, not having an effect. It's a sticky political tool and people won't read past the headline. Unfortunately, I it's exhausting to listen to people who think that they're well informed, but they get all of their information from the same >> Oh, man. >> sources and all they really are is in an echo chamber. >> You're 100% right. >> Yeah. It's People ask me a lot, and I'm sure they ask you, where do you get your news? >> And the answer has to be from everywhere. >> Yeah. >> Everywhere. And then you have to decide

[1:10:07] what's true and what's not true. >> Yeah. the heavy dose of skepticism >> and a and a a constant reminder to myself, do not rush into an emotional reaction to this and don't leap to a conclusion. >> Yep. >> And you have to rely on your own analysis. Like for example, this uh shooter at the White House correspondents dinner the other day. Immediately a buddy of mine sends sends me a picture of the shooter from his whatever Instagram page. He's wearing an IDF sweatshirt and I was like, that doesn't make any sense at all. I get

[1:10:38] that it fits your ideology. >> Yeah. >> But not you, but him. >> Um, but that doesn't make any sense at all. If he's supposed to be this lefty, you know, Trump-hating, why would he be wearing an IDF sweatshirt? And then, of course, two hours later, somebody comes out and says, "There's this image going around. He's in an IDF sweatshirt. It's AI. It's disinformation." Of course it is. But how many people didn't realize it was disinformation? How many people saw it?

[1:11:09] >> How many? >> That's even worse. >> Because it was what they wanted to hear. That's the world that we're in. >> It's not a search for truth. It's a search for what helps me believe deeper than what I already believe. >> People seek out echo chambers. >> I think we need to test that guy >> for metahuman abilities. Have you seen the security footage? >> Yes. I've never seen a person run so fast. >> Now, for clarity, I'm not sure the frame rate the camera was shooting at. Michael, have you seen this? >> No. He could be the first metahuman. >> It was the first thing my son said to me is, "Can you have you seen how fast this

[1:11:41] guy runs?" >> Yeah. And I'm not trying to make light of this at all, but I think this might be like Flash Jr. with the shotgun. And since everybody's okay, and I know a lot of people were >> I like Flash. >> God, the Secret Service is getting just [ __ ] on right now. And the reality is this. >> No, they they did what their job was. >> They did their supposed to. And that like first off, stop going to that hotel. Okay. Really shot. That's what I'm saying. 50 ft away. >> Yeah. I was like, listen, this one is on the no-fly list now, okay? >> Yeah. >> And as much as people hate to say to say

[1:12:11] it or agree with it, cuz this goes directly into political teams. What happened there is the best argument for an actual ballroom at the White House. >> You know, I have to say, as soon as Trump said it, I was like, you know what? He's he's right. >> Well, we live in a free society and freedom comes with risk. That hotel, they can only lock down a certain area. I mean, I sure, I guess they could take over the whole thing. Yeah. >> Uh, yeah, but it's before that. >> It's before this. >> You might not even see it, Michael. Look at this guy. He's the Flash. >> That's slowed down a little bit. >> It is. >> Oh, yeah.

[1:12:41] >> Have you ever seen >> That's pretty quick. >> It It's amazing when it's in real. >> Quicker than you, Michael. Ridiculous. >> Obviously. >> Yeah. Thankfully, it appears that the agent was bladed a little bit. I guess the guy was shooting a slug. It went off his vest, but he's okay. >> Yeah. Thank goodness. >> People think and looking at this, they're like, "The Secret Service sucks at their job." I'm like, "No, this was an This is where they were used to doing the magnetometers. They were breaking it down. He would have had to make it down a set of stairs through a set of double doors. >> The ballroom had 2600 people in it. The president was on the far end of it. >> Oh, yeah. He couldn't have gotten to

[1:13:11] them. >> Oh, not possible. >> And I think he had >> seven slugs. >> Mhm. >> The knife choice is a little bit more interesting. That was weird. >> Yeah. >> Well, normal people don't do this. So, a lot of the weird things I'm like, okay, we'll put that in the weird bucket. But >> freedom, the freedoms that we have come with >> with a risk involved. We can't. I guess we could you could tell the Hilton >> I guess you could write him a check like you're shutting down for the entire week, but that's not the world that we live in. No. >> So, there was a there was a distinct security bubble and then people living their civilian lives. And if that's how

[1:13:42] we're going to do this, then this is possible. You know, a friend of mine, God bless her, she doesn't know anything about intelligence or law enforcement or anything. She's like, I think the Hilton was in on it. I said, why? Why would What could possibly lead you to conclude that? and she said, "Jesus, how how was he able to get in?" I said, "He went on orbits or hotels.com, made a reservation, and checked in a couple of days early." It was literally as easy as that. >> And again, what is more dangerous

[1:14:13] >> than putting on a calendar probably a year out, >> exactly. >> This is what we're going to be doing and this is where we're going to be. >> You're exactly right. >> The Hilton I saw a YouTube video of this. I didn't believe it. I went to the Hilton website. They probably have changed it even though this should be on the no-go list. Anybody out at the Secret Service, don't go back to that Hilton. There was a 360 virtual tour. You could click your >> Are you kidding me? >> No. Every >> I bet it never occurred to anybody. >> Every square inch of the public areas. Obviously, it's not going to go into the individual hotel room. >> This guy was breaking down the exact

[1:14:44] place where he accessed the gap, the bubble between >> security and uh the civilian portion of it and could walk the entire steps. He was panning, showing the doors that was in the security footage and then walked the whole way. This is the He would have had to go. There's a glass barrier that thankfully absorbed the rounds that the agent shot at him. Everybody's like talking, you know, how could that agent miss? I'm like, how you've never tried to shoot at somebody after you've just been shot with a pistol and they're running >> and he's running at double human speed >> cuz he's a metahuman allegedly have to get around to go down the stairs

[1:15:16] and then he on the 3D tour goes down the stairs into the doors and it opens into the ballroom and you can see on the far end where the president was and he starts, you know, click click click click like hundreds of clicks to cover the distance and showed. Yeah. Although the news is like the Secret Service sucks and we need to redo this. No, no, listen. I I love criticizing everybody, right? I I do. It's I make a living criticizing people, and I can tell you about that in a minute. Uh but uh but they they did exactly as they were supposed to have done. They did exactly

[1:15:47] what they're being paid to do. They protected him. The guy the the guy wasn't there apparently allegedly just to kill Trump. He wanted to kill every administration official he could get into proximity to and uh and he didn't get anybody. Y >> So they they did a good job. >> Yep. And then he got all his clothes cut off him. So, you're you're welcome. >> I saw that. It's like that's kind of odd, but what do I know? I'm not a law enforcement guy. >> Well, we they needed to see if he had a flash suit on underneath his clothing. >> At first, I mean, obviously, I'm an

[1:16:17] [ __ ] in many ways, but the I saw that footage. I was like, hit play on that again. >> Yeah, seriously. I did exactly the same. >> I'm like, nobody runs at that speed. And I'm like, okay, hold on. You know about cameras a little bit. I'm like, okay, it's probably a frame rate issue, but there's a chance. It's the first meta human ever. >> He's Superman. I would worry about him having that ability and not the cognitive horsepower to go with it, but that's a different issue. >> Right. >> Yeah. >> Very impressive. >> I don't think we're done with stuff like that. It's a long two and a half years left. >> Oh, I agree. I agree.

[1:16:49] >> Two and a half years is a lifetime. >> I don't know what it's going to look like. Um I'm thankful that the people who have seemed to take action like this so far have been very disorganized and unprepared. Mhm. I have a I had a friend, he since passed away. He um he was a 25- year secret service veteran. Mike Master Veto. Mike was an awesome human being. He um he retired while he was told you need to retire like this afternoon. >> Yeah. >> And so he came over to the agency as a

[1:17:21] contractor and became a specialist in Greek terrorism. So we worked very closely together in Athens. And um Mike told me that he started at the very end of the Eisenhower administration. He was in Dallas with Kennedy, had an incredible scrapbook of all the stuff that he done over the years. But he was finally able to convince the Secret Service leadership to create an intelligence division. And he became the very first director of the Secret Service intelligence division. And for a while it was just him. He was the intelligence division. So anytime

[1:17:53] somebody would write a threatening letter and send it to the White House, it would be routed to him. And he said that what ended his career was uh he went to uh San Francisco with a letter from Sarah Jane Moore and the letter said things like, you know, ask not for whom the bell tolls it tolls for thee. You know, she was writing to President Ford. M. >> So he knocks on her apartment door and

[1:18:23] he said, "Sarah Jane, I'm Mike Mastervito from the Secret Service. I got this letter that you wrote to the president. What's going on here?" >> Got a few questions. >> Yeah. And she's like, "Oh, my social security check was late and I was really mad." So I I wrote the president a letter and he's like, "Well, you threatened to kill the president." In the letter. No, I'm not going to kill the president. He said, "Okay, you're promising me now." He says, "You're not going to kill the president." "No, I was just angry. It was a bad day."

[1:18:55] Ford goes to San Francisco 2 weeks later. She's standing on the side of the street. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, with a whatever it was, a 44. And then she ended up spending almost the rest of her life in prison. They finally released her when Ford died. And then Mike was said, "It's time for you to go." M >> but uh you know we have to remind ourselves that the Secret Service is not always good. Reagan got shot. Ford was subject to two

[1:19:26] assassination attempts in three weeks. >> Yeah. >> Kennedy was killed. >> Bless you. >> Excuse me. Thank you. So, you know, sometimes we get lucky. >> It's just people doing the best. >> Just people. That's it. You know, on that note, how does somebody >> It's so easy to judge entire communities by the actions of individuals. And >> isn't that the truth? >> Yeah. And I know we're talking a lot about where the agency is now or even just intelligence apparatus. I have to believe that there are still people working for that agency who are

[1:19:57] there for what I would consider to be all the right reasons. >> But how do you operate inside of a system that has oriented yourself in a different direction? So like how we'll call it a true believer, somebody who truly believes in what >> the cause, the mission and they want to have a positive impact and they get put into this system. >> How do they operate inside of that system when it's they are noticing that it's now moving in a different direction? That's a great question, man. Um, there are a lot of people I I would you

[1:20:29] know what? I'm going to go out on a limb and I'm going to say most of the people who work at the CIA, just like the ones that work at the FBI or NSA or DoD or Secret Service or whomever are there for altruistic reasons. They want nothing more than to serve the American people. Certainly, that's why I was there. And I met very very few people in my time at the agency who were there for any other reasons to enrich themselves or access to power. I mean there are a couple of sociopaths who are going to rise to the

[1:20:59] top and Oh, I've heard you talk about how they select for sociopathic tendencies. >> Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> That's why I could never work there. It's because I have none. Uh, special operations might be. >> Well, that that that house that I needed to to break into and plant a bug. Yeah. >> Secretly, I was like, "Woohoo!" >> Yep. Now's my time. >> I'll tell you a funny story about that. We get to the house and there's like a $20,000 German security door on it and the locks and pics guy says, "It's going

[1:21:30] to take me two weeks to break into this." He goes, "We can't break into this." I was like, "I flew all the way out here for nothing." and they're they're looking at the doors like, "Yeah, this is a this is an, you know, AL512. This is like state-of-the-art." So, while they're talking about how this is a state-of-the-art security door, I walk around to the back of the house. There's a $5 Yale lock on the back door. >> That's what I'm talking about. >> And I was like, "Guys, guys, we're going in the back." It's like being uh I was a breacher for a little bit. And, you

[1:22:01] know, guys would call for the breacher. And one of my favorite things to do would be to come to a door just to check to see if it was locked. >> Oh god. Yeah. >> Oftentimes >> filing cabinets are the same way. >> Oftentimes it wasn't. And you know it's you just take your hand and and these are on US doors where we were training, but even in training runs you could tell that it would move and you're just like, "Hey, just make nice eye contact with him, turn the lock, open the door, like there you go, buddy." Just to twist the knife a little bit. >> In training, >> you got to look around. Yeah. We we we did extensive training in crashing

[1:22:32] through roadblocks and getting away from shooters on the side of the road and stuff like that. And what they what they started with was you're in the car, a quarter of a mile up is the roadblock. The instructor's in the passenger seat with you and he's like, "Okay, you ready to go? You ready to go? We're going to do this, right?" "Yeah, we're going to do this. We're going to do this." And then very quietly, there's a shooter right there outside your door. you're so laser focused on what's ahead and he opens the door because you forgot to lock it and then shoots you with a paintball and he's like, "Well, you

[1:23:04] flunk. We're going to try it again tomorrow." >> Yeah. You have to have those experiences though. >> You have to. >> It reorients your optic on the reality. >> Oh my god. Does it? We We did this one exercise one time. Oh, I'll never forget it. >> It was at the It It was at It was at a training facility uh here in the United States. And so you have to go into this house. No, it wasn't a house. It was supposed to be a a hotel, a cheap flea bag hotel in Central America. Okay. And

[1:23:35] you're sitting at a table with a chair and you've got your gun. And then they say, "Okay, let's begin." So there's a knock on the door. I I volunteered to go first just cuz I wanted to get it over with. Right. So everybody else, they're like seven of us, eight of us all together. The other seven are in the van waiting outside with music blasting so they can't hear like gunshots and stuff. So I'm sitting at the table. My gun is on the table. There's a knock on the door and I said, "Who is it?" I didn't say come in. I said, "Who is it?" And

[1:24:05] the door opens and it's these two guys dressed as uh uh maintenance and one of them's holding a vacuum cleaner and they're speaking really quickly in Spanish. I don't speak Spanish. And so I was like, "Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I'm such an idiot. So I was like, I didn't ask for maintenance. And so I I got to stand up and one of them drops the vacuum cleaner and he's got a gun and he's like bang bang bang. And I go, "Paint, paint, paint." I'm

[1:24:36] like, "Fuck." And he goes, "You flunk. Next. And don't tell anybody in the van what happened." So, I go to the van and they look at me and they were like, "What happened in there? What what's what are they doing? What's the exercise?" And I just I go like this and every single person came back with three paintball >> Yeah. >> uh hits. Every single one of us. But I'll tell you what, um, I learned a very valuable lesson that night that if

[1:25:07] you're in some [ __ ] hole and you think that maybe possibly there could maybe be a threat to your security, >> you go guns blazing and work out the paperwork later. >> That is an important mindset to have, but I think that mindset also is what led the agency to torture people. I think you're exactly right. You there's a parallel there. >> When did the agency shift in your mind

[1:25:38] from not or maybe they were always willing to do that? And for clarity, there's the agency being directly involved in torture and then there's a rendition program that will just take you to I don't know, Jordan as a random pl allegedly place on the map where they might hook your testicles up to a car battery or strip a mattress of everything except for the springs and put the car battery on that. allegedly. >> That's right. >> When has that always been there in the agency or is it that? And here's the thing. You can't for what you did, you can't have

[1:26:09] somebody that doesn't have that mentality. >> Correct. >> But if you do, that can be the natural byproduct because shooting yourself out of that situation, the knock on the door, an argument can be made like, well, you know what? I'm actually going to go hot before they open the door. Well, it might be the maid, right? >> Exactly. And that's and that's where you know you you have to you develop some cap tactical competence. You can set yourself up a little bit but you have to let it play out just a little bit. But that mentality of we are going to fight our way through this and we'll handle

[1:26:39] the paperwork later is I know because I've seen this firsthand the justification for we need an answer from this person right now. >> Go get it. I I have to tell you, I taught this class at Liberty University, uh, which is the largest evangelical Christian university in the world, and I taught there from 2008 to 2012. When they first called me, I said, "Are you

[1:27:10] sure you're looking for me? What course do you want me to teach?" >> Right? And they said, I said to them, I said, 'We probably disagree on 99% of the issues. Why do you want me? And the dean, the dean of the Jesse Helm School of Government says, um, torture is not Christian. And I said, "Oh, okay. You know what?" I said, "I'll take it." And I enjoyed every minute that I was

[1:27:40] working with these guys. Anyway, the reason I'm bringing this up is there was one professor in particular that I became very close to. He spent a very brief period of time from like 1958 to 1960 at the agency and then went into academia. And uh he's very old now. He's in his in his 90s. But he sent me his final exam one one semester and he said, "What do you think of this final? I'm going to give my students this final." And here I've got this final. it's going to take them

[1:28:11] hours and they're going to fill three blue books and it's all these essay questions. His was four questions and it was live. So he had the first question on the board and the other three questions were covered. And the first question is you are a CIA case officer. You have just captured a major al-Qaeda leader. You know that there is a bomb somewhere in the United States set to go off. You know that he knows the location of the bomb. Do you torture him to get

[1:28:44] the information? Yes. No. And explain your reasoning. Okay. >> Basically, this is the plot of the TV show 24. By the way, >> that's exactly what it is. It's the ticking time bomb scenario. >> Yeah. The second question was, he didn't say a word, but you have his wife in custody. Do you torture his wife to force him to give you the information? Remember, he says, remember American lives are on the line. Yes. No. Explain

[1:29:14] your decision. And then the third question was, the wife is a true believer. She didn't give you anything. But you have their kids in custody. Do you beat the kids? Do you torture the kids in front of them? Yes. No. Explain your reasoning. And the fourth question you could only ask at Liberty University. you've died and you're standing before the judgment seat of Christ and he says, "Explain your actions." What do you tell him?

[1:29:47] What you've just laid out is a very difficult test and everybody would have failed it. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. This is tough. I understand I understand the underlying motivation. The first three questions. I'm not a religious person. It's never just really landed with me. >> Fully supportive of people being religious. So, >> I don't know what the hell happens at the end of this track, you know, the lap around the track. So, focusing on >> I'm hoping for the best. >> Same. Focusing on the other three.

[1:30:22] >> Yeah. >> I I I understand both answers. >> And arguments can be made for both answers. Mhm. Mhm. That's why this is such a difficult proposition. But who do we want to be? That's the question. That's where I took the most [ __ ] back in 2007. We're supposed to be better than that. You know, I remember being in

[1:30:53] fundamental disagreement with something that Dick Cheney said at the time. He said he would rather imprison a hundred innocent men than to let one guilty man go free. And I was exactly the opposite. That's not what freedom is. >> That's not what freedom is. >> Freedom isn't about perfection. It's about possibilities. >> And it's not, you know, I used to have, as dumb as this sounds, but um when I was in the military, maybe it doesn't sound dumb. I I deep I deeply I still feel this way. >> Over my door, I had a sticker that said,

[1:31:25] "Freedom isn't free." Mhm. >> And >> that cost is borne by very few people >> and it's a heavy it's a heavy burden to carry at times and it can change who you are and how you view the world. But it's not perfect. And those those the academic questions, they capture a lot of the the weight of those questions. But I tell you what, >> you know, we had uh the special operations community had a battlefield interrogation program called bit on >> that that had to be brutal sometimes.

[1:31:58] But if you want if you wanted to see a realworld case study that if you apply pain to people they will talk but what they say >> that's the issue will have almost nothing to do with reality or they will tell you >> what they think you want them >> to say to make whatever it is is happening to them >> stop. >> Um >> and I'm not saying I witnessed torture because I didn't. I witnessed what I would call very very aggressive

[1:32:28] interrogations and and honestly I'm not a legal expert on where that falls. I was never involved in the program as a part of a program. This was all after you know target secure and then we're going through looking for sensitive information that we can turn upstream to intelligence organizations. But you know follow on targets are a real thing as well too and a lot of the times we were driving that through electronic means but every once in a while you know somebody would be there and uh I've seen it in real life. It doesn't work the way people think. >> It just doesn't. >> It just doesn't. Yeah. >> You know, I I say all the time that when

[1:33:00] I was working for Carrie, um his office was in the Russell building right near uh John McCain. So, whenever Carrie and I would be walking out of the office like for a vote or something, McCain would be coming out of his office to go to the same vote and McCain would always go out of his way to shake my hand and say, "Hello." Hey, John. Hey, Senator. Good to see you again. Finally, Carrie said to me one day, "Why don't you and McCain get a room or something?" And I said, "No, no, he's this is this is

[1:33:31] heartfelt. This is the kind of person he is. It's about torture." I said, >> "Mhm, >> it's it's all about torture." And then when I got out of prison, I was home, I don't know, maybe 4 days or so, and I got a call from his office, and the guy says, "Senator McCain says, "Welcome home." And he wants to know how he can be helpful. And I said, "He can help me get my pension back." I said, "These Obama people took my pension and unless I get a pardon, I just can't get the pension back." So this friend of mine who had been the deputy attorney general

[1:34:02] and I went up to McCain's office to meet with his legislative people. And what we decided to do was brilliant. My attorney wrote a one-s sentence amendment. It was every American convicted of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act between October 1st and October 31st, 2012 shall hereby have his pension reinstated cuz I was the only person in the world. >> Oh, I was going to say this is like writing a soul source contract for like

[1:34:32] the one contractor you need. >> It's called a specific purpose bill. So McCain said, I'll just stick it into the National Defense Authorization Act. He says, "Those things are like 3,000 pages long. Nobody reads them." He said, "I'll stick it in." I said, "Yeah, but then in conference committee, somebody's going to take it out. Somebody on the House side." And he said, "I'll get myself named to the conference committee and I'll make sure it stays in." I'm like, "God bless you, Senator McCain." And then he got sick. >> Yeah. >> And then he died and so it never happened.

[1:35:03] >> Do you think the agency has actually stopped? Wow. You know, people ask me that and and again, there's the agency directly or I found out about the rendition program. I got into aviation when I was uh exiting the military and I got type rated to fly a Gulfream G4. >> No way. Yeah. I thought you were going to say a Cessna 172. >> That's what I started in. We all We all did. >> We all did. >> But you you went jet. >> Yeah. >> That's incredible. Congratulations. It

[1:35:34] was It was fun. But I see where you're going, too. >> I started researching Gulf Streams. >> Ah, I see exactly where this is going. >> A GFream came up for sale. >> Oh my god. >> And one of the things that blew the lid off the rendition program is that the people looking to do the purchase of the Gulfream dug into its flight history. >> Oh god. >> And they were like, "What the actual fuck?" >> Like Afghanistan to Egypt, Afghanistan, Jordan. And that was one of the things that

[1:36:05] actually brought attention. It was an agency probably third party. >> Mhm. >> But it was one of their rendition platforms. That's how I heard about it. It wasn't through the military. It wasn't through the intelligence community. It was just a it was an interest in the airframe that I was flying. We used to send a lot of people to third countries to be softened up. And I remember there was a period when I got back from from Pakistan, I was named chief of counter inelligence in Alex, the Assama bin

[1:36:36] Laden group. So my job was to ensure that al-Qaeda couldn't infiltrate American embassies, uh the embassy staffs, the the third country nationals employed in embassies, and that the walk-ins that we were getting all around the world were not really dangles from al-Qaeda. It was it was a challenging job. >> Yeah. So we grabbed this professor from the University of Toronto named uh Maher Aar and a group of us went to the chief

[1:37:06] of operations who we called the red-headed devil >> to his face. >> Her face. >> No, not to her face. >> That was more of a behind the back one. Okay. Yeah. She was portrayed by Jessica Chastain in uh Zero Dark 30. >> Gotcha. >> She doesn't look anything like Jessica Chastain other than the red hair. So, we went to the redheaded devil and we said, "This is the wrong guy. We're snatching

[1:37:38] the wrong guy." And she's like, "Oh, no, we're not. This is the right guy. He's dangerous." I'm like, "This is a [ __ ] political science professor in Canada. He's not an al-Qaeda mastermind. We grab him. He had gone to Tunisia to visit family one summer, the summer of O2. And he flew back. He was flying back to Toronto, but he had to transit JFK. And so we asked the FBI, just grab him when he gets off the plane at JFK, completely

[1:38:09] off the books. Turn him over to us. We flew him to Damascus and we said, "Have at him." The Syrians finally came back. Fast forwarding, Syrians finally came back to us like eight or nine months later and they're like, "This is the wrong guy. We've done everything to this guy and he doesn't know anything. He's just the wrong guy." We denied and denied and denied to the Canadians that he was ever on that plane. What we didn't know was, you know how like an hour before you

[1:38:39] land the the flight attendants go up and down the thing saying duty free, duty free. He bought a pair of sunglasses for his wife and he used a credit card. So a month after he goes missing and the Canadians are telling his wife, "He wasn't on the plane. We don't know what you want us to say. He wasn't on the plane." She said, "Yeah, then why did he use his his credit card on the plane to buy a pair of sunglasses in the duty-free?" And the Canadians were like, "Oh [ __ ] the Americans have him." And

[1:39:10] then we had to let him go. So we told the Syrians, "Just let him go." He flew back to Canada. He sued us in the Eastern District of Virginia. CIA went in to the courtroom and said, "Your honor, national security." And the judge is like, "Case dismissed with prejudice. national security 911 national security. So he sued the government of Canada and he won $6 million. I spoke to him I'm gonna say it's been a while now. I spoke to him about 5 years ago. I asked him if

[1:39:40] he would come on my podcast and he said uh he said he can't. He said I have developed such agorophobia. He said I haven't left my house the four walls of my house. He said, "In 15 years," and he said, "Even to be on a Zoom call, I just can't do it." He said, "I'll have a panic attack. I'll have to be hospitalized. I just can't do it." We

[1:40:12] ruined his life. >> Can you imagine if that was a US citizen and a third an >> nation had done that? >> We'd be bombing them right now for what they did to an American. >> Mhm. problem is how many >> there was another guy how many of those stories exist? >> Yeah. Khaled al-Mis I think his name was German guy owned a grocery store. One night he gets in a fight with his wife and he's like ah [ __ ] you. He's so mad he walks out, buys a bus ticket.

[1:40:45] He's going to go visit his brother in Montenegro. The name Almissi, it's not really a name. It just means the Egyptian. Muslim is Arabic for Egypt. So his name is Khaled the Egyptian. Okay. There are only about 150,000 other guys named Khaled al-Mis. >> You're like Abu Muhammad. >> Exactly. >> The number of times I went after Abu Muhammad >> with a picture of a like basically >> Muhammad's dad. >> Yeah. A green silhouette. I'm like >> he's got olive colored skin.

[1:41:16] >> Yeah. He has no features to his face whatsoever. Looks like a flat 3D green silhouette. So, this guy is on a bus and he's in like Serbia on his way to uh Montenegro and a sister agency informs us that there's this Egyptian guy named Khaled and he's going to blow up the American embassy in Tana, Albania. And we're like, "Wait a minute. There's another guy named Khaled and he's

[1:41:48] Egyptian and he's on a bus going in the general direction of Albania. It must be him." So we tell the Serbs, "Stop the bus, grab him, and turn him over to us." And that's exactly what they do. We send him to Egypt, and they torture him to within an inch of his life. And they're like, "Yeah, this is the wrong guy. This guy's just named Khaled. He happens to be Egyptian. When he gets out of the the torture chamber in Cairo to return to to

[1:42:20] Germany, he's got a beard down to his waist and he's clutching a copy of the Quran. And a German reporter asked him, "What are you going to do now?" And he said, "All I want to do is kill Americans." Today's episode is brought to you by Brunt Workware. Probably one of the coolest things about this brand, other than the quality and comfort right out of the box, is this. They actually let you wear the boots to work before deciding if you want to keep them. A real job site on real work days, not just walking around at your house.

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[1:44:56] want us to be as a nation. >> I agree with you. >> How do you think it worked its way through the agency to a place where it was an approved program? >> Don't underestimate the level of shame in the agency after 9/11. >> Meaning they they thought that they had missed something. It was their fault. >> Yeah. This was all our fault. We were asleep at the switch. And then it was actually worse than just being asleep at the switch. It was that we knew the hijackers were in the United States. We

[1:45:27] didn't want the FBI to know. >> Yeah. A lot of it was just not being able to share information appropriately or not. >> Yeah. Because we wanted to recruit them. >> Well, also if it was anything like the pre 911 SEAL teams, we wouldn't even share information. Like I would start off at on the West Coast. >> Seal team 5, three, and one were a shitty nine iron from each other. But nothing was happening and we were all afraid if the big mish came up it would go to somebody else. So we would just in the absence of an enemy we had to fight each other and all we were actually fighting for was relevance and another word for that is budget.

[1:45:59] >> So I I mean I know the world the pre 911 world where it's you know the agencies got their stuff and then there's the FBI and the NS and but it's like we have to protect our budget we have to protect our relevance. How if we share this information what's going to happen? I don't know, maybe the US will be a little bit safer and we can put some pieces together. But again, that's judging in hindsight. >> It's all to say I understand where that mentality came from. >> Oh, I can't tell you how many times over the years pre 911 um we would either do something or

[1:46:30] prepare to do something and at the last minute would the boss would say, "Don't tell the FBI." He's like, "Okay, I won't tell the FBI." Do you think you guys would have been able to actually recruit or turn any of the hijackers? >> I don't think so either. >> They were true believers. Yeah, true believers. >> God, they were I uh I took flight lessons in Montgomery Field where some of them did afterwards. Obviously, >> there was a little bit more scrutiny of students. Yeah. >> And and you didn't say I don't need to

[1:47:01] learn how to land just to take off. >> Too soon. Jump. Too soon. It was too soon. Yeah. They I mean they were going to I mean in the typewriting course for the Gulfream it all occurs in a simulator cuz they are not >> very impressed that you oh my god got jetqualified. It's incredible to me. >> They're not going to throw you the keys to a jet even though there are no keys to a jet really except for the door like you're not finding the ignition and just like oh you got to put the clutch in and put it in neutral. It doesn't work like that. So it's all done in these sims and it's every phase of flight. It's a It's a

[1:47:34] Chinese Communist Party ticker tape parade of red flags. If somebody goes in and says, >> "Can you just have me focus on the phase of flight where I'm flying?" >> Like, what? >> Mhm. Nobody thought to run that sucker. >> Literally nobody at any level. >> Yeah. Nobody thought that was unusual enough to alert a superior. Even in a non 911 world, it's like, "Hey, make a call." >> You know, I don't know how you guys work, but maybe have a an additional SIM

[1:48:05] instructor sitting in there with them just like >> That's right. >> Putting an eyeball on these guys. You know, it >> Yes. >> Yeah. It's uh >> So, you're like John Travolta, huh? >> I don't believe in Scientology, so there's some differences. >> I'm not an OT7 or an OT8, whatever level. >> Right. Right. Well, you got to be careful of those theatons. >> No, but seriously, he he even has flown 747s. >> I think he owns one. >> He owns a 74. Very impressive. But I mean, flying a Cessna 172 is one thing.

[1:48:37] Everybody can do that. But they all kind of fly. I mean, the theory of flight is all the same. >> It's the same. And the plane is designed that it wants to stay in the air. Yes. >> Right. Unless it's breaking apart or something. >> Well, then you're screwed. >> Yeah. Then you're screwed. Right. Unless you're in a a Cirrus SR SR22, which has a parachute, >> which are amazing. I flew those for about 1500 hours. >> You're kidding me. >> Yeah. >> I got into helicopters about two years ago. >> I heard those are especially difficult. They are very different. >> I would describe it as this. Flying an airplane is you have a metal bowl and a BB and you're holding it at the bottom

[1:49:09] just trying to keep it. >> Right. Right. Right. >> A helicopter, you flip the bowl upside down and the BB's on top and you're trying to keep it on top. >> Oh my god. So much more handsyfooty, if you will. It's uh it's fun. >> You know, I went to Arlington Cemetery the other day. I I go every couple of months, and I I live within walking distance of it, and it's just such a beautiful, humbling place. So, I went to do a a video podcast on CIA officers buried at Arlington or or

[1:49:42] two of them were pre-CIA, they were OSS. But anyway, one of the graves that we went to, and I I put flags at each one of them, was Francis Gary Powers. This poor guy, besides the whole YouTube thing, and we denied that he was not only just denied that he was CIA, we denied that he was USG at all. M >> and then finally had to trade him, you know, in one of these bridge of spies situations. But this poor guy after piloting the U2 ended up piloting a

[1:50:12] traffic helicopter in LA and then he crashed that and was killed in the crash. A U2 pilot >> lost control of a traffic helicopter. That's how hard they are to fly. >> Well, there are mechanical things that can happen as well where even if you're doing the right thing, >> you're still going to crash. Yeah, like the there was a recent crash, the one in New York, the passenger, the tour. It looks like the main rotor blades departed from the aircraft. There's nothing you can do. No, you're >> you're going to die. >> You're you're going to die in that. That was probably total hypothesis and guess

[1:50:44] on my side a maintenance issue that was undiagnosed. >> So, when you fire that thing up and you get it off the ground, that day was your day. There's nothing you're going to be able to do. >> I'm sorry to get off topic, but I'm so fascinated that that you're jetqualified. I've got to ask you. I I don't know because I think because when I went to get my when I went I was serving in Athens. We work a full workday one day and all the guys from the counterterrorism group there there was a bar in the it was like a shack but it's it served they serve beer in the parking lot of the of the embassy. So we

[1:51:16] would go there and drink beers which believe me at the time was better than going home. So, uh, one of them said something about about, uh, flying the the Cessna 172, and I said, "Oh, I didn't know you were a pilot." He said, "Oh, yeah. I've been a pilot for years." And then the second guy said, "I loved my Cessna 172 so much I bought one." And I go, "You're a pilot, too?" And then the third one said, "Um, I started on the 172 and then

[1:51:48] I went to the 182, the twin engine." And I said, "Come on, you guys. Come on. You're putting me on, right?" And then the fourth one says, "I'm older than you guys. I learned on a Piper Cub and they don't do that anymore." And I said, "Are you telling me that all four of you guys are pilots?" >> Yeah, you missed the memo somewhere. >> Seriously. And then one of them, the one I was closest to, he goes, "What's the matter, baby? You afraid to get a pilot's license?" I said, "If you morons can get pilots licenses, I certainly

[1:52:19] can." That's also accurate with me as well, too, so don't be too impressed. Well, I I I went home on RNR a couple of months later and I was driving my dad to Walmart in Newcastle, Pennsylvania, and there's kind of a back road, like a cutthrough, and you go past Newcastle Municipal Airport, which is just a strip, and they have a banner outside and it says, "Learn to fly here." So, I said, "Dad, give me 5 minutes. I just want to run in here real quick." So, I pull in, I go up to the guy, I said, "How much is it and how

[1:52:51] long does it take?" He said, 'If you're serious about it, you can do it in six weeks. And mind you, this is 26 years ago. It's a flat $5,000. So, I pulled out my credit card. I said, "Sign me up." And 6 weeks later, I soloed. But then 911 came. >> Yeah. >> And then I I just there there's no time to do anything. >> No. >> Let alone, you know, try to get flight hours in. >> Now you got time, though. >> Now, and and in the next couple of months, I'll be able to afford it. That would be

[1:53:22] amazing. >> I actually called the airport the other day at uh College Park, Maryland, and they said, "Oh, yeah, sure." I said, "Listen, I want a Sirrus SR22." And the guy said, "We've got three of them." Yeah. >> I said, "Oh my god, okay, I'm going to do it." >> Yep. I have uh sub I got my instrument rating in a Cirrus. I have a substantial amount of time in Assirus. They're a great platform. >> Have you ever flown the uh Diamond DA40? >> No, but I know what you're talking about. The school that I um was going through my ratings at just didn't have any. Otherwise, from a economic perspective, I probably would have gone

[1:53:52] that route. >> I heard that they're light as a feather and really easy to fly. They're made in Austria. >> Yeah. And economically, they're very efficient, so it'll reduce the cost of your training as well, too. >> And my original question to you was going to be I I love going to little airports cuz they always have coffee shops. Yep. >> And you can just sit there and have breakfast. I used to take my kids when they were little little and we would go watch the planes take off and land and have pancakes and, you know, whatever, call it a morning. But I would always pick up the used planes for sale magazines that are there. And um

[1:54:24] invariably in the back they always have like MIGs from the Czech Air Force. And it was mostly MiGs. >> Yeah. >> I have you've ever flown something like that? Like is it >> a backseat ride in a MiG 29 last year? >> Really? >> Boseman, Montana. >> What was that like? >> Uh it was like being strapped to two rockets. Ah, see that's that's what I would be afraid of. >> So Jared Isaacman, the now head of NASA, was the guy flying it. >> Oh my god. >> He has a private jet collection because they used to be the OP for they

[1:54:56] contracted out to be the OP for foreign adversaries for US pilot training. >> Ah, that makes sense. >> So he had a MiG 29 down in Bosezeman and buddy calls me up, asks me a incredibly rhetorical question of do I want to go on a backseat ride in a Mig 29? Like do you not know who I am? Of course I want to do that. I tell you what, I can tie this into you with something that I think is the one of the largest threats to national security. >> Small private airports. >> Yeah, >> totally. The next 911 is not going to come from a commercial airport. The the completely

[1:55:27] >> unregulated open nature of almost all small municipal city airports would knock people on their ass if they understood how easy it is to just get in and out of and manipulate those systems. I have been like screaming like we're up near the northern border. I don't know if you know this, but we haven't had an illegal crossing in nine months. Somebody said that. >> Uh and I was like, "Okay, >> on the Canadian side." >> Oh, no, no, no. Trump uh put out that we haven't had a single illegal crossing in 9 months. >> Come on. >> Swear to God, Michael. Pull that [ __ ]

[1:55:58] up. >> So, I saw that on Twitter. I was like, "So, you've never been to Mont?" Yeah. I'm like, "Come on." Like, why why would you speak in absolutes when that's so demonstrabably false? Mhm. the southern border. I get what I can't get people to pay attention to is yeah say that his administration achieved nine consecutive months with zero mind you zero o >> has he never been to Texas I >> I don't understand how any of this stuff makes it out in into the world of factchecking but it the velocity seems

[1:56:30] to be increasing but I have done so many conversations now on change agents about the northern influence and you know, precursor chemicals going to the port of Vancouver as opposed to places in Mexico and >> how poorest the border is. I flew I was with my buddy uh John Norris who was a game warden in California and started an anti- uh marijuana task force there who now lives 60 miles to the east and we got in the helicopter and I just we flew up to the northern border just to get it on video and show it's just mowed grass

[1:57:04] and nobody's I mean if I was any level of sophisticated individual first off the ability to get in Canada on passports is way easier than it is in the US I would 100% go that route. get rid of that stuff. Walk across the like that's what concerns me more and nobody's nobody's paying attention to it that I can tell at least it's a huge huge liability for this country. >> Uhhuh. >> So >> I think you're 100% right. >> I mean I'm hoping the agency has a

[1:57:34] northern border task force. I don't think so. >> Not that I've ever heard of. >> Yeah. >> You know it's funny, too. I mean, are they even allowed to? Aren't you guys not supposed to be working in the US? What's >> forbidden? >> Forbidden. >> Okay, I understand it says that on paper. Have they ever not worked in the US? >> Well, there's there's a US division called the National Resources Division, but the the job of an NR case officer is very simply to call up American CEOs, CFOs, COOs, and say, "Hey, I heard you just went to China. Can I come to the

[1:58:06] office and ask you some questions?" Yeah, >> that's it. That's all they do. I feel like the agency is doing more than that in the US. >> Well, I suspect strongly that they are and they're not supposed to. >> How do we get that under check, John? >> You know, it probably started with these JTFs, right? >> The joint terrorism task force. >> Joint terrorism task force is there. >> Is that because of the authorities that came with that? >> Yeah, >> they can do anything that they want. And technically, you're you're you're on assignment on rotation to a JTF. So,

[1:58:37] it's a CIA guy, an FBI guy, a State Department guy, some DHS people. >> It's all about keeping America safe and next thing you know, you have CIA people operating domestically. >> And how do you unwind that once that starts? >> Only through robust congressional oversight, which is not happening. I feel like the agency itself would rebel against that or do everything they could especially if you have the ability to say national security like agreed done. >> So then do

[1:59:10] >> do we build CIA 2.0 like what do we do? >> Oh my god. You know the the first time I ever worked with MI5 I'm gonna I'm gonna answer your question with an anecdote. First time I ever worked with MI5 >> I was I was serving in Athens. I was working against a guy that when I teach these classes, nobody's ever heard of. And then when I say he was the Osama bin Laden of the 70s and 80s, I said his name was Carlos the Jackal. They just look at me with these blank stars. >> I've seen the movies,

[1:59:40] >> right? At least at least watch the movie. >> Yeah. They look at me like they've never ever heard this name before. So, what I was trying to do was figure out who the middleman was between Carlos the Jackal and the Greek terrorist group revolutionary organization 17 November. So, I got a uh I got a tip about a guy who was the middleman back in the day and uh and I found him and he's living

[2:00:12] in a housing project in London. So, I reached out to my MI6 counterparts and they said, "We'll find him, but this is an MI5 issue. You'll work with MI5. Just let us know what what you find." I said, "Fine." So, I I fly to London, and I did this like every few weeks over the course of six months. We find the guy. It wasn't until I was working with them that I learned that they do not have arrest powers. H.

[2:00:42] >> And I said, I always thought MI6 was the British CIA. MI5 was the British FBI. They said, no, Scotland Yard is the British FBI. I said, so what's MI5? He said, we are domestic intelligence. We spy on Britain's. And I said, I don't think I like that at all. By like by their doctrine and charter that Wow. >> Yeah. >> I was not aware of that either. >> I never heard that before. >> Yeah. I thought they were externally facing an anal an analogous to the agency as well. >> Yeah, they are. But they're only

[2:01:15] domestic and they can't make arrests. I said, "This this just turns my worldview on its head." And they're like, "Yeah, we're even worse than you guys are." Yeah. So, I think I fear that that's where we're headed. Even if it's in slow motion. Again, it's been 25 years since 9/11. >> So, but but I'm I'm worried that we've got any number of intelligence a there

[2:01:46] are 18 intelligence agencies in the US government, which just flabbergasts people overseas when you tell them that cuz most countries have one. Some big countries have two, like the Brits, >> the Australians, the Canadians. We have 18. Like, do we really need 18 separate intelligence services? Seriously, >> come on. >> I mean, I'm sure their budgets are small. >> You know, I'd be comfortable paying more taxes if they could show me where my tax

[2:02:17] money went. >> I I I would I would like that very much. >> Let's just be transparent. Show me where this money is going. And >> And I won't object. Yeah. >> Just Just tell me where it's going. And I'd say, "Okay, thank you. Go ahead. Spend Spend my tax money the way you see fit." Yeah. >> Thanks for being transparent. >> Yeah. I'm not a betting man, John, but if I was, we're not getting that. >> I think I think we're not. Oh, so I was going to make a point, too. I'm not saying that

[2:02:47] people on Capitol Hill just have their heads up their asses and they're not interested in in oversight. A great part of the problem is using just the CIA as an example. I I don't know how many people are in the CIA. It's classified anyway, 20, 30, 40,000 people. I don't have any idea. But you can't oversee an agency that has 20, 30, 40,000 people with a staff of 40 on Capitol Hill. You can't do it. It's not possible. And then you've got DNI on top of it.

[2:03:18] >> Besides DIA, FBI, NSA, Homeland Security, the Uniformed Services Intelligence Services, you can't do it. It's just not possible. >> I think we have to add to that too the cottage industry of people who leave >> threeletter agencies and start consultancy firms in the DC area or >> everybody got rich everybody. >> And it's, you know, it's like, okay, cool. These people don't work for the agency, not meaning necessarily the,

[2:03:48] we'll just call them the alphabet soup organizations. Sure. They're not working directly for that, but you're contracting them to essentially do a job that would be what they used to do and now they can operate outside of certain boundaries because of a tax status. >> That's right. >> That how do you even quantify or calculate that as well too because that although not directly associated with those alphabet soup agencies are still being paid through the budget of the you know what I mean? >> Yes. >> It's a cottage industry and I know very little about it but I know that it exists. It's a not a revolving door process but like hey we got a problem we

[2:04:20] need to solve. We can't do it doctrally here. Who's getting close to retirement? Hey man, here's your here's your greased money train. I cannot even begin to tell you how many people that I worked with in the CIA's counterterrorism center that would leave work on Friday with a blue staff badge, come back on Monday with a green contractor badge, making three times what they were making on Friday, sitting in the same desk doing the same job. You know, I say all the time too on podcasts, it's not an accident that before 9 911, the highest

[2:04:51] concentration of millionaires in America was in Silicon Valley and after 9/11, it was Washington DC. >> Is it really? >> Damn. I mean, there certainly is a business around war. >> You got that right. >> And it's ugly. >> Yeah. And it goes forever because too many people are getting rich. Why stop it? Man, what are your thoughts on the invasion of Iraq 2004? Man, I argue with my dad on this one. I

[2:05:22] was a young man in a profession of arms and I wanted what all young men want in a profession of arms, somebody to fight. >> My dad is a Vietnam veteran, and he was like, >> "Listen, kid, there's something wrong with the smell of this cheese." >> He was right. He was right. I still haven't admitted that to him because he can be right about nothing. So, he will. Now, it's interesting now looking back at it. >> That plan to go into that country

[2:05:53] predated 911 for sure. >> Absolutely. Yes. >> There's a famous story ring binder on the shelf somewhere. >> You know, I I I I blew up on TikTok about eight weeks ago. I would say congratulations, but I'm not sure that's a good thing. >> Yeah, I I'm the juryy's still out. But one of the things that really blew up that's taken on a life of its own is this uh story is this story that I tell about Colin

[2:06:25] Powell calling me one morning, 1993. You know, every every group in the CIA has a morning meeting at 9:00. Every single group. And you talk about what happened overnight in the area that you cover. And these meetings last 30 minutes and then you start your day. And I go into the morning meeting and the secretary walks in and she says, "John," like with this puzzlement, she says, "John, General Powell's on the phone for you." And I said, "For me?" I said, "How does General Pal know who I am?" And she said, "I don't know, but he

[2:06:56] asked for you by name." And I look at my boss and he goes, "Well, go answer the phone." So I go to my secure phone and I said, "Good morning, General Pal. May I help you?" He was the uh chairman of the joint chiefs. I think at the time he was chairman of the joint chiefs. Clinton had just become president. I said, "Good morning, General Pal. May I help you?" And without missing a beat, he says, "John, if the Iraqis were going to kill the president, who would actually be in charge of carrying out an operation like that?"

[2:07:27] >> It's a very pointed question. >> Yeah. Very specific. >> Yeah. And I said, if you're talking about the attempt to assassinate former President Bush, all Kuwait operations are run from Iraq uh Iraq's Basra station and Basra station operations are run by the Iraqi intelligence service director. Is that is that Ibrahim Sabra Abdul Aziz Adori? And he says, "Where does he physically sit?" And I said, "In Iraqi intelligence service headquarters in Baghdad." And he

[2:07:58] says, "Thank you." and he hangs up. So, I go back in and everybody's waiting for me. My boss said, "What do you want?" I said, "He had a very specific question." And I I told them. And we're like, "Okay." And then we went on with the meeting. 8 hours later, we fired 47 cruise missiles into Iraqi intelligence service headquarters. And the reason why this has taken on a life of its own is because the only person we killed was a janitor. It was middle of the night, Iraq time, and we killed the janitor. He was the

[2:08:30] only person in the building. And I went to the office the next day, and I said to my boss, "I killed that janitor last night." >> And he said, "I knew you were going to say that you didn't kill the janitor. Powell killed the janitor. You didn't know why Powell wanted the information. And you did what you're trained to do. You answered the man's question." But it's always bothered me. You know, if if we had killed Saddam Hussein, I would have said, >> "Yeah, >> I killed Saddam Hussein." Y >> where's my Presidential Medal of Freedom? But it wasn't Saddam Hussein.

[2:09:01] It was some poor guy probably had a couple of kids at home. Never meant any harm to anybody. >> Why' they strike it at night? >> You know, it was this weird [ __ ] up policy of the Clinton administration that by God, we're going to show them how tough we are. We don't want to kill anybody cuz we don't want to be bloodthirsty. So, we're going to do it in the middle of the night. Okay. Well, that they laugh at us when we do stupid stuff like that. >> Yeah. >> So, anyway, there was this there was this belief

[2:09:32] all through the eight years of the Clinton administration that we're going to get these damn Iraqis one of these days. We're going to get them. It might take us a while, but we're going to get these bastards. And then there's a famous story about the 12th of September 2001, Richard Pearl being at the White House telling everybody who would listen. And he was friends with all of them from Scoop Jackson's office when they were young men. Telling everybody, you know, we have to attack Iraq, right? You know, we have to attack Iraq, right?

[2:10:04] So, the fix was in from the beginning. What do they say? Never let a tragedy go to waste. There it is. That's that's the modern history of the United States right there. >> I'll be really curious to see how the history books judge our involvement in Iraq. Afghanistan, I think, was at least more altruistic and why we execution >> arguable for sure. Sure. But but the reason to go into Afghanistan that was a righteous war. >> It was righteous. The beginning of it was, you know, we had to destroy al-Qaeda. We had to. They were saying

[2:10:34] Osama bin Laden said that he was planning another attack that would dwarf 911. So, we had to stop them. They had murdered 3,000 Americans in one day. >> That was a righteous war. Iraq was not >> such a commitment of like America's treasure. And I'm not talking about money. Just the cascading consequences of two decades. See, and that's another thing, Andy, is there's never any even after war after war after war, there's

[2:11:06] never any thought to the blowback. Like, why do we never have that conversation? It's easy to invade a country. I I said this recently in an interview. It's easy to invade a country. It's easy to overthrow a government. The rest of it is really, really hard. How do you get out? And how do you get out without leaving the place in a state of anarchy? Look at Libya. We overthrew that government in 2009 and it's still a in a state of chaos.

[2:11:37] >> Yeah. I don't know why people think that Iran will be any different. >> Iran is the size of Western Europe. It has 92 million people and a forbidding topog topography. >> Mhm. >> How do we win something like that? Unless you want to commit, you know, 400,000 troops, which we're not going to do. >> We tried that on their eastern and western border. >> Exactly. >> Yes. >> I look back at that now I'm like, okay, not that I am arguing for eating the delicious center of the Iraq Afghanistan

[2:12:10] Oreo. But that's probably the time we have had more military firepower and projection of power on their eastern and western border. Yes, they death to America is a real thing. Yes, largest state sponsor of terrorism. Yes, we've had issues for five decades. >> Maybe it would have been a better idea to handle it while we were already there. >> But I'm God. >> You know, I remember when we first attacked Iraq in early ' 03, we had to

[2:12:41] go to the Iranians and say, "Listen, we're going to cross your border a couple of times. If we do, it's going to be an accident. We don't intend to remain. It might be one plane. It might be one jeep full of guys. We mean nothing by it. Our fight is with the Iraqis. And the Iranians said, "Just keep us out of it." And we were okay with that. Just let us enrich our uranium. I >> Nobody wants a nuclear Iran. I think we

[2:13:11] can all agree that. >> Nobody does. I thought we destroyed their nuclear capability last year and now >> I think the word was obliterated. >> Yeah. And I don't know a lot about big words, but I think I know what that one is hinting at. And then it's no like no, we had to go now because it was at the tipping point. And there's so much I mean I can't separate the amount of external control Israel may have over the decision-making of the US. I don't I don't know what to make sense of this [ __ ] stew that people are just pouring

[2:13:42] into with absolute certainty about what it is that they're saying, >> which anybody who's absolutely that sure about anything already scares me. I love things like I believe, I think, >> which is not what the terms that the news. I I don't know what to make sense of it. I could see other countries having influence. And one thing I've heard people say is, well, Israel came to the US and they said, either you do it or we're going to use nukes, right? So it was this le well there's other nuclear powers. So what if Russia says hey you need to smash Ukraine for us or we're going to use nukes. Are we going

[2:14:13] to go do that next? >> Right. >> Good question. >> India says you know what we're tired of these [ __ ] on our border. You either do something about Pakistan or or we're going to like what does that make us the world's [ __ ] Like we just go around and play nuclear cleanup. I don't buy that. >> See that? That's an oped right there. >> That's an oped. I don't know that. >> That's a great that's a great line of analysis. I I might steal it if you're not if you're not going to publish it. >> No, I'm not publishing [ __ ] >> Nobody wants me to publish an op-ed. First, I'd have to look up what the [ __ ] op-ed means, but and how you do that. But that to me, again, it's the same

[2:14:44] thing as Epstein. The AAMS razor approach to me is the is the one that makes the most sense to me. I also don't come from the intelligence world, so I'm just trying to look at this realistically. It doesn't make there's too many other people that could then and if they saw if that was proven to be true, they'd be lining up at like a lemonade stand to pull that [ __ ] To me, the saddest part of this whole thing is that the JCPOA, the joint comprehensive plan of action, it was working. You know, whether or not

[2:15:14] twothirds of the Senate uh ratified it, the answer is no, they didn't. whether or not it became partisan, it was working. It was almost exactly the same deal that we had through the United Nations with Saddam Hussein's government through um uh the UN Security Council resolution 986, right? Unannounced uh inspections by United Nations weapons inspectors, lead seals, cameras going in

[2:15:45] every direction 24/7. It was actually working. I get that Donald Trump didn't want Barack Obama to have that kind of a foreign policy win. I get it. But withdrawing us unilaterally from the JCPOA put us back at square one again. >> And what we're hoping to get now um is the exact same language that was in the JCPOA. no uranium enrichment and we want to

[2:16:15] inspect the nuclear sites and we want them to be sealed. Okay, we already had all that and we withdrew. So now you want to renegotiate the the same agreement and how many what with 13 people have died on our side already for what? For nothing. For literally nothing. >> This is why now you're going to get me started now here. We need to operate utterly independently of the Israelis. I've said a million times. I'm going to repeat it. Starting in the mid1 1980s

[2:16:48] when Ronald Reagan was president, every single Israeli prime minister, no matter who it was, when they came to the United States, and they come all the time, they would say, "Please attack Iran. Please attack Iran. Please attack Iran." And every single president said, "I'm not going to do it." Obama said what, two weeks ago that Netanyahu came and said, "If you don't attack Iran, we're going to use nuclear weapons." And Obama said, "Go ahead. Go ahead, use them." And he called the bluff. And they didn't use them. Since 1986,

[2:17:19] the Iranians have been 6 months away from a nuclear weapon. Well, guess what? No, they're not. That's a lie. There have been two, count them, two national intelligence estimates. What a national intelligence estimate is is it's a sense of the community of the intelligence community formal paper and this is important. If the CIA writes a paper okay congratulations this is the CIA believes this or DIA believes that or state department believes this other

[2:17:51] thing. An NIE national intelligence estimate is you have all 18 intelligence agencies sitting around a giant table in the offices of the National Intelligence Council and they're going sentence by sentence. Okay, the first sentence is and the the National Intelligence Officer reads it. Anybody have any objections? And all 18 people get to weigh in. It takes weeks normally to coordinate a paper like this. All 18

[2:18:21] intelligence agencies concluded decisively twice that the Iranians did not have a nuclear weapons program. >> How recent were these? >> The first one was 2003 and the other one was like 2009 something like that. And in addition, Ayatah Kamayi issued a fatwa saying that it was a sin to develop a nuclear weapon and that's why they were not enriching to weaponsgrade levels. >> Yeah.

[2:18:51] >> And the Israelis said they didn't give a [ __ ] They want us to bomb bomb bomb. >> So finally we did. >> The meeting that you're talking about where there first off I'm surprised that any you fill a room with 18 different agencies. I'm actually surprised anything ever in the world gets accomplished. I'm not exaggerating when I tell you I never hated anything in my entire career as much as coordinating an NIE. I was the deputy national intelligence officer for a while. Um, and then to get promoted to GS14,

[2:19:21] I had to write an NIE. So I wrote this NIE in 19 97 and it was called Iraq colon Saddam's next 12 months and we coordinated it in 8 hours and the national intelligence officer Ben Bon God rest his soul terrific guy he came to me afterwards and he said that was the fastest coordination session for an NIE that I've seen in 25 years and I

[2:19:53] said this one was Actually pretty easy, Ben. Saddam could threaten Kuwait. Saddam could threaten the Kurds. Saddam could threaten the Shia. Saddam will probably try to violate sanctions. >> Yeah, >> big deal. >> So, are those NIEs in layman's terms, are they a way to assess risk and then you can brief policy makers? >> That's exactly what they're for. And so the reason I asked this is it's listening to Tulsi Gabbard testify >> and she said essentially I'm paraphrasing Michael if you could pull it up that Trump is the

[2:20:26] single or sole individual that determines the immediiacy of the threat. >> Mhm. >> I feel like that premise is incredibly dangerous. >> It is dangerous. But and I also don't know is that is that a real assessment because wouldn't an organization or organizations create something like an NIE and he would be able to I'm assuming that that is the role of intelligence organizations and and and maybe this is a gross misunderstanding of what she was saying but if that's the case what if

[2:20:58] one day after we're done with Iran he goes Mexico is an imminent threat like is it really like that? Like the guy sitting in the chair with the Diet Coke button gets to just determine it like that. >> This the >> Am I misunderstanding? >> No, no, you you've hit it on the head. The answer to the question is very complicated. So the CIA really any intelligence service I should say >> sole individual authorized to determine what constitutes an imminent threat. I

[2:21:30] thought that that was the role of the intelligence apparatus. The intelligence apparatus will say the intelligence community does not believe that Iran is an imminent threat. The president can elect to ignore that. So technically, sure, he's the decision maker. He's the one that's going to make the final call. >> Any other president in modern American history has been surrounded by, you know, the best and the brightest, and this guy was a professor at Harvard, and this guy was the deputy assistant secretary of whatever, and this guy, you

[2:22:00] know, whatever. you you surround yourself with people who know these things, the Henry Kissingers of their day, although I hate to use that example, but you know what I mean. >> Um, so technically the president is the final authority on these issues, but any other president will ask the secretary of state, what do you think? Secretary of Defense, what do you think? National Security Adviser, what do you think? CI director, what do you think? And everybody's going to weigh in. And then these are his top people. He's gonna in

[2:22:31] in concert with them come to a policy decision, >> collaborative effort, >> a collaborative effort. And remember that the CIA is not a policy organization. It is a policy support organization. George W. Bush did something that was very, very controversial. Just as I was leaving the agency in the president's daily brief, which is, you know, six days a week, 16 pages, the the first article is a full page. After that, there are a couple of articles of a paragraph of fact and a paragraph of analysis.

[2:23:02] Um, he ordered the CIA to put a paragraph of fact, a paragraph of analysis, and a paragraph entitled policy recommendation. >> Well, that flies in the face of everything that the CIA is. You're supposed to be the one that makes the policy, not the CIA. The CIA can tell you what the facts are and what the facts likely mean, but then you make a decision. That only lasted for George W. Bush's second term and then it went back

[2:23:34] to its normal state of equilibrium. My point being, sure, Donald Trump is the last person. But then Trump told 60 Minutes, not most in the mo most recent um interview, the one before, when asked, "Who are your closest adviserss?" He said, "I don't have any. I just go with my gut." And we've not had a president like that before. >> God, that is a bold mission statement. >> Yeah, it is. It's very, very bold, very

[2:24:05] gutsy. >> Yeah. Another thing like to see what do you mind searching to see when those NIEs were NIE on Iran the Iran nuclear program. >> I tell you what I would like to have looked at very deeply perhaps rewritten is the authorized use of military force. >> That's a tall order. It's a >> see but here again you've got manipulated and bent every president since its inception. >> Yes. And you've got these cowards on

[2:24:36] Capitol Hill. We got 20 >> 2007 and 2003. I thought it was three and nine. Three and seven. >> Yeah. The AUMF provides some immense latitude. >> It's uh sometimes I'll get online and people think I'm arguing or uh what was the term somebody used? They called me pedantic. So I had to look that I had to look that one up cuz they're like we're at war. I'm like no we're not. >> No we're not. >> And we're not. And the point is, isn't that [ __ ] ridiculous?

[2:25:07] >> Yes. >> That we can do this. They what they think, again, I had to look up the word pedantic, and now I try to use it every day because it's really good. But >> somebody called me mercurial the other day. >> That's a good one, too. >> I had to look it up. >> Yeah. But it's it baffles me that we can do every action that looks exactly like warfare. >> Yeah. >> But not as a country declared as war. And again, it's it's a way where actions can be taken without the oversight that

[2:25:37] I want to see. >> Unacceptable. >> But and then people like, "Oh, it's a political." But guess what? Your team captain did the ex. He bent the [ __ ] out of this, too. >> That's right. >> Blue and red, they manipulated the [ __ ] out of this. >> We have not declared war on on anybody since >> Vietnam. >> No, we never declared war. >> No, I'm sorry. Since before Vietnam. >> Yeah. Yeah. It was World War II. Yeah. On December 8th, we declared war on Japan. And the next day, we declared war on Germany. And that's it. That was the last time. Even Korea wasn't a war. It

[2:26:08] was a police action. What do you think it would take to change that thing? I don't think Well, first off, I don't think people realize the powers that it provides and the off-ramp, >> at least in the short term, to oversight that are foundational documents were written upon. >> Why would we want that? >> I know, right? The Constitution is so crystal clear on these issues. It it makes the executive, the legislative, and the judicial branches of government

[2:26:38] co-equal branches. Co-equal. And then you have these clowns like Lindsey Graham saying, "I want to make Congress weaker." It's like, "Are you out of your mind?" An argument could be made. Yes, there's a lot of stuff that we could say about Lindsey Graham. >> For clarity, an argument can be made about me as well on that. It's, you know, you know, there's strong arguments and weaker arguments, but >> I don't Yeah. >> I And people national security,

[2:27:11] >> safety, what's the saying? Somebody willing to sacrifice liberty for security is is worthy. >> Deserves neither. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> I have never seen the government give the power back. >> No. Ever. Ever. it we have to come to some catastrophe like that which resulted in the in the uh church committee before there's any real change like structural change. >> Yeah. And then is the system so far outgrown or so far outside of the lines

[2:27:41] that they're supposed to color in >> could it even be put back in or reoriented back in? I don't know the answer to that. You know, it's different now, too, than it was in 1975 just because of the state of technology. Like, how do you put that genie back in the bottle? >> I love the shorts of you on the diary of the CEO just blowing people's minds with what the agency can do. >> I mean, Vault 7, >> all of that's public. How is it that nobody paid any attention to that? >> It's all public.

[2:28:12] >> We only think that they're doing it to our enemies. >> Yeah. And then the reality is that's not true. >> No, they can do it to all of us. >> How do Okay, how does somebody survive in an electronic world? Like what? How does >> you know we got to all turn into Ted Kazinski is what is what it comes down to. You live in a shack in Idaho. >> Yeah. No, I think it was Montana. >> Montana. >> Yeah. Somebody bought his shack. They have it I think as their like lawnmower storage. >> Oh my god. Can you imagine? >> Yeah. I can't get behind the bombing campaign. But under like going on like a

[2:28:44] little tech break, I totally understand. >> Yeah, I get it. >> But even then, in a world where everybody is defined by their technological usage, just like my wife doing accidental SDRs, you might end up on their radar because like this guy has got some amazing fieldcraft. He's a ghost. Like no, he just hates >> Yeah, he's a lite. That's all. He's a lite. Ah, but I mean >> how do we how do you operate in a world where they can reach into basically anything that is powered

[2:29:16] >> and take it over? >> Do you just I mean is it just forced acceptance? I mean it's not like you and I can stop it. You can tell as many people that it is happening as possible. >> I'm sitting on my cell phone right now and I know you are too. >> Oh yeah is with us right? Hello NSA. I you guys should get a budget increase. Good job. >> Yeah. Yeah. I there are a couple of little things that I've done like uh you know Tucker Carlson's got this uh or he advertises this uh cell phone like encrypted cell phone. >> Yeah, but I could point you back to the

[2:29:47] agency making a cell phone for the specific usage of invading drug cartels. >> Well, I don't I don't have one of his cell phones. You're exactly right. I don't want to have a cell phones, but it got me to thinking. And so, um, I went I I went to an electronic store in Europe and I just bought a cell phone and I was able to register it in in another name and I have a spare SIM card. I can pop out my SIM card, pop this one, and this is registered in a Middle Eastern

[2:30:18] country. So, wherever I happen to be, I'll just go into the local version of Radio Shack or or Best Buy or whatever. >> Yeah. >> And I'll buy a I'll buy a burner phone or I'll buy a SIM card and swap them out. >> But even that's not going to >> Yeah. >> really protect me in the long run. >> Yeah. That'll give you that give you a little bit of a head start. They're going to find you a >> little bit. Oh, they'll find >> especially with the computing power. >> That That's another one. Like >> I mean 25 years ago, that's how we got out as a beta. >> Yeah. He he made one single mistake. He

[2:30:49] he accessed his emails with a landline. >> John, that was it. I was killing people because of their SIM cards. >> See, 2005. >> I mean, >> they learned though. They learned quick. >> Yeah, they did. >> And we adapted. But yeah, it's, you know, these NSA databases and and just data farms that are showing up in odd locations and it's like, oh, every single like, we're not looking through it, though. We're just storing it, >> right? >> Yeah. You're not looking now.

[2:31:21] >> Yeah. Then why do you need this gigantic facility in Utah that you've built? Because we might need to look at it later. >> Yeah. >> And then depending on who's throwing >> without a warrant, by the way, >> that's the biggest thing that bugs me that I either the Constitution matters or it doesn't. Either it means something to be an American. And I truly still believe that we can be a beacon to the world, but we don't do that by hiding our missteps. We have to be honest about where we have fallen short. And we have to learn from our mistakes. >> And that last one right there, I'm not so sure that we're actually doing.

[2:31:51] >> I have to agree. I have to agree. It's like we reinvent the wheel every time we elect a new president. >> Yeah. And that's where I landed. I don't think this is a top down fix. I think it's a bottomup fix. Generational. >> Mhm. >> And I I have uh three children. I have my daughter I'm getting ready to get into birthday season. So I'll have 18, 21, and 23. >> Wonderful. >> They're fantastic. I'm loving their skepticism and >> good. >> Yeah, it's it's healthy. I don't I don't like throw fire on it and like fashion them like tinfoil berets or anything

[2:32:21] like that, but >> I I like it. Michael's an example, too. I mean, he's 23 years old. He's, you know, his views of the world and the way he thinks about things and his response to what he is seeing being put out nationally and globally. I ask him about it all the time >> because he also has a different optic than you and I have had based off of our previous careers. And Mhm. >> The answers are very informative. The pendulum, I don't know if we have like bounced off of where it's swinging to, but it is going to come back. >> It has to. >> And I think the country will survive.

[2:32:51] I'm not saying a tire or two might not go off the track, but >> I think we're going to be okay, right? >> Because of what I see from the younger generation. >> Good. >> I'm hopeful. >> I am, too. >> Maybe I'm being too incredibly optimistic, dude. But on that note, I mean, there's such a difference between the price and the cost. >> I mean, when you signed up to serve at the agency, >> you pay that price. And it's the same thing as military service. You know how long you're going to enlist for, and you know that there's risk associated with that. >> The cost though

[2:33:22] >> is everything you can never calculate. The strain on family, the time away. How has everything that has happened to you like and I'm sure it's changed over time but like with your children >> how how did it impact them or your relationship with them? It >> it was devastating. >> Yeah. >> I have five children. I have four boys and a girl. Boy, boy, boy, girl, boy. Um, four of them don't speak to me >> still to this day. >> One I'm very close to. We speak almost every day. um and then start at the time

[2:33:54] where you uh I mean >> yeah I was still in >> well and the reason I I mean you have talked on so many large platforms about a lot of the things that you did in the agency so I'd rather just talk to you as a person you know what I mean and so people can go and re go watch Diary of the CEO and just watch when he talked to him about how they can turn the speaker on a TV into a microphone I'm like oh yeah they definitely can do that and he's just like what I'm like yeah dude they got you I thought everybody knew that you and I knew that a lot of people don't want to believe they have those abilities. So, people can go reference that. But, you

[2:34:26] know, to me, I I had a time period when I was going through my divorce where I lost 18 months with my oldest son. Very close now. I think our relationship is better. >> Thank God. >> Well, and I hope that that can be the case for you with your other kids. >> I'm optimistic. >> Did the relationship break when things started becoming public about what had happened with you at the agency? >> Yes. >> God damn. >> Yes. Yeah. I'll get there. I I'm optimistic. >> Yeah. People often accuse me of being irrationally optimistic, overly optimistic, but I prefer to live my life

[2:34:57] like that. And I I'm I'm hopeful and relatively confident that things are going to work out. >> How old are they? >> Uh 33, 30, >> 21, 19, and 14. >> I think sometimes they have to get their own laps around the sun. >> It's uh >> agreed. I there are I understand yet don't agree with the criticism of

[2:35:27] what you did by coming forward. I understand the people that say that in my opinion I wish there were more people who were like you who were serving in the agency. Thank you very much. >> Because I saw it firsthand, you know, and we were often times the action arm of the intelligence and air. >> Very much so. >> And >> you were >> and it's not perfect and everybody's doing the best that they can, but to me it's it's a rare thing to be issued the flag of your country and not rented, you know, or or go buy it on a t-shirt, which everybody can do what they want to, but it has to mean something to me.

[2:35:59] >> And uh and from people the outside, they can criticize what you did because they don't have an understanding of it. And more importantly, they don't have a skin in the game. >> No, they don't. >> And you know, I say I'm not I'm not trying to [ __ ] on people, but >> any slob can roll out of bed and write a nasty comment on a YouTube page. >> Yeah. >> So, I I try hard just to ignore all that noise. >> Remember this, Joe has said this many times. He's never encountered somebody in life who is living an enriching, successful, joyfilled life that spends

[2:36:31] their time being an [ __ ] on the internet. >> Ah, that's that's great. >> I mean, it really helps you reenter. >> And often times now, I will respond to people >> and just say, "Listen, I don't know what's going on in your life, >> but I truly hope that whatever it is that you're dealing with gets better." Because people who are doing well, they don't act like this. Most of the time you'll get a middle finger emoticon. >> But I hope that it I hope that it sticks with them. And it goes to the point >> Yeah. >> about the kids

[2:37:02] more laps and more context. If you can keep showing them who you are, I think you're going to be >> I think you're right. And and I'm very hopeful in that respect. And I've I've also made very clear to every one of them that I'm a phone call away. >> Mhm. >> That's all they have to do. >> I did the same thing with my son, too. And one day the phone rang >> and it changed everything. >> That That's what I'm hoping for. >> That 18 months felt like about 18 decades.

[2:37:32] >> Yes. >> For clarity. >> Yes. >> Um and it was it was all tied around that time period of that divorce. But and I get it. He was the oldest, probably the most impacted by it. had a had a processing ability that probably let him go down just a mental rabbit holes of the wise and the that's just the five W's, you know. >> Um, >> good. All you >> I'm glad that happened for for both of you. >> All you can do and the only thing I could do was consistently be the best version, try to be the man

[2:38:02] that I wanted to be, which I still fall short every day. >> But to show him that example, >> they'll come back around, man. >> They'll come back around. God willing, I'm hopeful. Families are a bastard. You know, I wonder too if if it's something about this generation specifically. I've I've tried to do as much reading about family estrangement as I can. There are a lot of really good books out there right now. >> It's a really common issue, actually. >> And that's exactly what I was going to

[2:38:33] say. I I saw something on the news just yesterday saying that 25% of all American families are experiencing some level or form of family estrangement. And it's easy to think you're alone. I have a I have a friend. She used to write to me when I was in prison. She was a Broadway star from the 60s and now she's almost 90 years old and we call each other every few weeks. her son. She has one child. Her son who's now well

[2:39:05] into his 50s, just cut her off like 10 years ago, 12 years ago now, just cold turkey cut her off. >> She doesn't have any idea why. She called me one day and she asked me if I knew of a good private investigator. I said, "Oh yeah, I know a very good private investigator." And I connected them and she hired him. I didn't ask her why she wanted him. It was her business. But he told me all she wanted was a picture of her granddaughter. >> She had never met her granddaughter. And

[2:39:36] so he kind of, you know, he parked across the street from the school and um and figured out who her granddaughter was and took a picture, but not a, you know, a minute goes by that she's not thinking about >> Yeah. >> the son that she doesn't understand how she lost or why she lost and the granddaughter that she's never met. She doesn't have very much more time left on on Earth. >> Kind of the harder realization is in that too is that the situation may not change. It may never change. >> Yeah. I suspect if it hasn't by now her

[2:40:09] husband died, the guy's father and um and the guy never reacted or responded in any way. >> Yeah. Yeah. It's a it's a real shame, but it's not uncommon is the point I wanted to make. It's not uncommon. So, I hope for the best. >> Yeah. It's the only advice I am not somebody to give advice, but it's the only advice I can give based on my own experience. It's just to keep you in you. >> I'm glad that it worked out for you. >> It doesn't work out for everybody for sure. That was uh you want to talk about a humbling experience that makes you question who you are as a human being.

[2:40:40] >> Yeah. People think buds is hard. I'm like, so here's what you want to do. You want to be tougher than a seal. Go through a contentious divorce. >> Right. Seriously. Oh my god. Like, stop researching these selection courses to go through. Just get a divorce. It's way harder. Not actual advice that I'm giving to anybody. This is completely sarcasm and tongue and cheek, but God, it will destroy you. It's truly the hardest thing I've ever done, though. >> Oh my god. Me, too. >> Yeah, >> I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. >> I would agree with that. I would agree

[2:41:11] with that. It's uh Man, there's not a hard drive long enough or big enough to encapsulate my thoughts on that process. But >> and I'll tell you another thing, Andy, is, you know, when you go some through something like this, you really get to see who your friends are. >> Yes. >> Including people that you share blood with, you know, including people that you may be married to or otherwise, you know, engaged to in some way. I I had one c I have one cousin. >> He's um he's a good 10 years older than

[2:41:42] I am. And when I was a little kid, I always looked up to him. He was like, you know, the the big kid, good-looking Navy pilot. And um when I got arrested, uh he called me and he said, "Listen, I got to cut you off." I was like, "What? What are you talking about?" He said, "You brought shame to our family." And I said, "You think I didn't read about you in the Washington Post that you were the mayor of Alexandria, Virginia's Coke dealer? You think I didn't know that you

[2:42:14] and your guys are standing on the beach in Florida waiting for the Colombians to drop the bales of of of weed out of the plane? I know all about you. And I brought shame to our family. I said, "Fuck you." And I've cut him off. Well, now he's like sending me Facebook friend requests. Hey, cuz you're really famous now. Yeah, [ __ ] you. I haven't forgotten about 2012. Yeah, >> [ __ ] I have shifted years ago. Family actually to me is nothing to do with

[2:42:45] DNA. >> It's treats you. >> You got that right. >> Plus, if you go deep enough, people are like, "Oh, our family's perfect." I'm like, "Tell me about your grandparents." >> Yeah. Exactly. >> You go deep enough in every family, they're like, "We don't really talk about Uncle Bob that much cuz he's [ __ ] crazy." I'm like, "We all got crazy." I had an uncle like that. My grandmother's brother, I I remember meeting him. I must have been like 12 the first time I met him and I was like, "How come I never heard of Uncle Bill?" Like I said this to my mother. How come >> how come I never heard of Uncle Bill?

[2:43:17] How is he my uncle? Oh, he's your grandmother's brother. How come I've never met him? He lives here in the same town. How come I never met him? And she said, "When you get a little older, I'll explain it to you." Well, I'm like 15. And she finally explains to me he he was one of the American soldiers who liberated Dao concentration camp at the end of the Second World War. And it made him nuts, right? See how it couldn't? >> So, yeah. Seriously. So, he came back with what today we know as PTSD. Back then they called it shell shock and all different kinds of things.

[2:43:48] >> In 1953, he had been home for eight years. He somehow got it into his head that Richard Nixon, who had just been uh elected vice president, promised him a job at the post office in Stubenville, Ohio. >> Sounds reasonable. >> Yeah. So, he puts on his suit. Monday morning, he goes to the post office. He's here for his job. It's very sad. I mean, I laugh, but it's sad. I'm laughing with him, not at him,

[2:44:19] sort of. >> And they're like, "Who are you?" He said, "I'm I'm Bill. I'm here for my job." They're like, "We don't know what you're talking about." And he said, "That damn Nixon. I'm going to get him." 6 months later, Nixon comes to Stubenville to give a speech. Complete serendipity and Uncle Bill tries to get into the civic center with a 45. >> Oh no. >> And they get him. And my mom said, I'll never forget these words. She said there, but for the grace of God, our name could have been Oswald.

[2:44:51] And then, how did Uncle Bill die? He got hit by a train. And I said to my mom, I was in college at the time. It was on the front page of the paper. I was like, how do you not hear a train coming? And she's like, you know, this is one of those things that's better just left un uh unresolved. Yeah, trains are really deadly, but also if you don't go on the tracks, you have a real good chance. >> Yeah, maybe stay off the tracks. Especially when those arms come down and the red lights are flashing. You might

[2:45:22] want to stay off the tracks. >> Indeed. Have you heard the latest narrative around the XCIA? I don't know what they call officers, agents. Um, this is a new one. I heard you guys. At first, the CIA was like, "Oh, no. They're telling all the secrets." But now, people think, some people think that the CIA is actually trying to help you get on shows because, >> oh, we're friends again, are we? >> You can sew misinformation. So, now

[2:45:53] you're not a whistleblower anymore. Now you're a knowing and witting mouthpiece of the agency. >> Wow. And they came up with that all by themselves. >> Somebody did on the internet. Bam. Monte's name was in there as well, and some uh a couple other people. I didn't recognize their names as much. But that's an interesting shift in thought process. I'll tell you, there is literally nothing that I hate more than when people say, "Once CIA, always CIA." Okay. Very movie based. >> Yeah. I'm going to call Ed Snowden and the sons of Philip Agy and Ray McGovern

[2:46:26] and tell them that you think because of your incredible [ __ ] intellect that they're still in the CIA. and I'm in the CIA. Well, that was that prison sentence. That was cover. They that was that was so you could establish cover. It's like that is just great. >> And then go on a podcast circuit so you can just be the mouthpiece for the agency, >> right? >> Do you think the agency is [ __ ] >> No, not anymore. >> Do you think that they have people who pay attention or >> Sean Ryan posted a picture that he got

[2:46:57] they he got an advertising request for the agency? They were >> Are you kidding me? I swear it was on his social media. It was an ad buy request from the agent I'm like, "You should definitely take that money." >> Yeah. >> And do the shittiest read. That's terrible. >> I tell you, just in the last 8 weeks, I mean, on my own podcast, I I've been doing a lot of, you know, do you have gold in your IRA? Go to johnloves.com or >> um running low on ivormectin all family pharmacy.

[2:47:28] You get 10% off the deal, man. >> What are you gonna do? So when >> lights don't pay for themselves. >> Exactly. So eight weeks ago when things started going nuts for me, all of a sudden I'm getting calls from, you know, Tom Ford eyeglasses and, you know, this company and that company and a vineyard in Napa. It's very cool. There was one I turned down out of hand. It was for a generic maker of Viagra. >> Mhm. >> Okay. No big deal. People take Viagra. I don't, but maybe some people do. But

[2:48:00] they wanted me to do this commercial with an only fans model. And they wanted Tell me more. >> They wanted me to say being with her is not torture. And I said, hold on. How much were they offering? >> Don't actually say I'm joking. I said I said, "Am I a clown for you? That's what you think this all boils down to? I'm here for your amusement." >> Yeah. >> To them, it was a joke. The >> Yeah. It's all a big joke. >> The moral stand that you took to them. >> Yeah.

[2:48:30] For clarity, I did do some funny ads for blue chew dick pills because they gave me full creative license and I did like a 13minute ad read one time. I wo it into his story. >> 13 minute it was like the end of it was it was like oh and then an Amazon guy rung the doorbell like ding-dong. I'm like if your dong isn't being the ding that you want it to be was awesome. >> It was based in real life. It was the opening of it. I just completely lost myself in the story and I just left it in there. That's a gift. That's a gift. I will say this Kashmir sweater is by

[2:49:00] Quint. >> Yeah. >> And Quint is one of my sponsors on John Kuryaku's Deadrop, which you can find on Apple Podcast. I'm proud to say I am in the top onetenth of 1% of all of the 2 million podcasts on Apple Podcast. >> It's fantastic. I don't know how it happened. >> Um, in fact, this this >> you kept getting your message out there and you kept being yourself. >> Thank you for that. >> I mean, honestly, that's the answer to it. So Quint reached out to me and said, you know, we we want to give you $150 to

[2:49:31] buy whatever you want on the Quint uh web page and then just be honest and just talk for 60 seconds about about what uh what you think about the product. So I go online. I didn't have this color of olive green. This is the nicest cashmere anything that I've ever owned. Sometimes Kashmir is very thin. There's not much to it because it's so soft. This is substantial. It's thick and it's the softest thing I've ever owned. I wear it all the time. And now

[2:50:03] I've gone back to the Quint website with my own money and spent another thousand bucks just because I can't believe how high quality these these clothes are. Plus, when you think cashmere, you think CIA officer. >> Well, I'll tell you what, a lot. >> You need to have some other >> Yeah, the patches. That's only if you're an analyst. A lot of Kashmir around the world comes from Pakistan. And so when I was in Pakistan, I'm getting, you know, emails from everybody in my family like, can

[2:50:34] you get me a Kashmir sweater? Can you get me a Kashmir scarf? So I come home with a suitcase full of just Kashmir to give away to people. Well, I can't go to Pakistan and buy Kashmir. I got to pay, you know, US prices. I'm happy to pay it if it's this kind of quality. >> Yeah. When brands reach out to me like that, what I always do is I never take their 150 or whatever it is. >> If it's a brand that I'm interested in, I'll make my initial purchase with my card just because I want to be clean. Yeah. >> And then I can actually give them legit feedback. And now later on, if they want

[2:51:05] to enter into an advertising relationship, I'll take your money. >> That is a very good idea. >> It's like, I'll take your money, but I I'm going to enter into this like, let me let me be a paying customer first. Let me get that experience. How's the last eight weeks been when it just like did you just wake up one morning and you're like I I somehow I'm sitting on a rocket ship >> quite literally. I happen to be in Dubai and um and my niece called me from New Hampshire and she says, "Uncle John, you're blowing up on TikTok." I said, "Why?" And she said, "I don't know." And

[2:51:37] then one day later, I get a call from a major global talent agency and the guy says, "Tell me you're not represented." And I said, "I'm not represented, but I don't understand why this is happening." >> Mhm. >> And then a couple days after that, I get a call from a reporter at Wired magazine, and she wants to interview me about my new new found Tik Tok fame. I said, "How did this start?" I don't

[2:52:08] really understand why it's happen. >> It's tough to go upstream and actually figure out that origin as well, too. >> She figured it out. It was Diary of a CEO, which is funny because, well, first off, they could make his facial expressions to some of your answers are memes in and of themselves. It's like Stephen pick the job just a little bit. He was so much fun. First of all, he is he's so incredibly bright. and had such insightful questions. It wasn't just John telling stories. He had he he posed

[2:52:41] questions that I had never been asked to answer >> before. It was much more philosophical than a normal, you know, John telling stories kind of podcast. Um, but there was a kid, there's a sophomore at the University of Texas who took that interview and chopped it up into shorts so that each short was a story. He gave me an Alvin and the Chipmunk's voice and then the punch line would be in this ogre's voice, you know, and then I

[2:53:12] killed the janitor. That kind of thing. And then laser beams are shooting out of my eyes. And you know, for a second I thought, should I be offended? Offended that they're like they're turning this into something so light-hearted. I was talking about serious issues here. Torture. This whole thing about hummus. This was about a torture technique. And then I thought, now I've got a sense of humor, too. I'm going with it. >> It'll lead more people to your actual messaging. >> And that's exactly what has happened. >> Yeah. >> And then I I was approached literally

[2:53:43] the next day by Cameo. Um it's an app where, you know, you can commission D-list celebrities like me uh to say happy birthday or, you know, I have endorsed more kids for 11th grade class president than you can shake a stick at. Do you have do you end everyone with remember the agency is always watching? Sometimes I just go if they only knew the truth. But I gotta say it has been so much fun.

[2:54:13] It has opened up doors for me that I never imagined would ever open. And I, you know, I like to write books. I my ninth book is coming out in uh in uh June. And how do you enjoy the I just had a book come out April 14th. Congratulations. >> It's hard work. >> I was going to say, how did you possibly enjoy that process enough to do it nine times? >> You know what it is? I stopped writing for other people and started writing for myself. My first That makes a lot of sense. >> My first seven books were about the CIA

[2:54:44] and a whole bunch of them were commissioned. I wrote the first two. The first two was The Reluctant Spy, My Secret Life in the CIA's War and Terror. Did really well. Made number five on the New York Times bestsellers list. The second one was doing time like a spy. How the CIA taught me to survive and thrive in Prison. And that won two literary awards. I wrote it in longhand on on legal pads at prison. And at the end of each day of writing, because the guards would tear them up and throw them in my face, I would mail them back to my attorney and mark them legal mail so

[2:55:15] they couldn't intercept them. >> Um, >> the agency was definitely reading them before you >> 100%. 100%. That's why I always >> It would look like a clean envelope by the time it got to your attorney. Well, you know, a couple >> there's going to be some eyes on those things. >> A couple of people wrote back to me and said, "Hey, your last letter was discreetly slit on the side of the envelope." So, I went down to the lieutenant's office one guy one day and I said, "You guys, you act like you're [ __ ] geniuses and you're not. You're dopes." I said, "Listen, if you want to read what I have to say, you don't have to slit the side of the envelope open and then tape it up like nobody's going

[2:55:45] to notice that. What you do is you unfold a paper clip. You put it in the top of the envelope so that it hooks the paper and then you just turn the paper paper clip so that it it's a nice tight roll and then you pull it out. Then you can read it and then you roll it back up and put it back in the envelope. I said, "Seriously, I have to explain it to you." >> Yeah. These these are rookie techniques. You guys are trash. >> Rookie day one [ __ ] >> But you know what? That reminds me of something I wanted to tell you. Saturday,

[2:56:17] I'm driving. It's early in the morning. I'm driving to George Washington University. It was a day of TED talks. And I love TED talks. I did one there years ago. It was so much fun. So, I'm going to the TED talk. My phone rings and it's kind of early. It's like 8:00 or just before 9, and it's a it's a number I didn't recognize. So I answer it and the guy says um he gives me his name and he is a he's the head of a I'll just say it. So

[2:56:47] he's the he's the director of the Bureau of Prisons and I said oh I said to what do I owe the pleasure of a call from the director of the Bureau of Prisons? He says you have been talking [ __ ] about the Bureau of Prisons for 10 years. And I go, "Correction. I've been talking [ __ ] about the Bureau of Prisons for 13 years." >> Yeah. Get your number straight. >> I know, buddy. >> Yeah. >> And he says, "Thus the reason for my call." He said, "When you talk [ __ ] you always follow it up with a proposed

[2:57:17] solution." And I said, "Yeah." I said, "You're corrupt and your people are stupid and your entire uh bureau is broken." and he says, "The president has mandated that I completely uh recreate the Bureau of Prisons. I want to reorganize it. I want to revamp it. And I want to know if you would be willing to be a uh a member of an advisory committee." >> I think we call that coming full circle.

[2:57:49] >> I think so, too. I jumped at it. I said, "Absolutely, yes. When do you want to see me?" He says, "Wednesday." I said, "Done. I'll be there." And then he says,"Can you recommend somebody who would be really good?" And I said, 'Absolutely, yes. I said, 'He's got an Italian last name that is going to be easily recognizable, but he did 17 years and he shouldn't have done 17 days. And how he's been able to maintain his humanity, I have no idea. I said, he'll he'll set you straight. Yeah,

[2:58:19] man. What do you want to do with the notoriety as it builds? like what what are you looking at in your runway in front of you? What do you want to do with the attention? Having a platform is an amazing thing. >> It's amazing. I can't believe it. >> Yeah, >> thanks for that question. Um, a couple of things. Number one, I've been talking about these same issues since 2007. >> Yeah, >> they're really, really important to me. Human rights, civil rights, civil liberties, transparency, and government.

[2:58:50] This stuff traction. >> I think so, too. So, number one, I want to keep talking to to increasingly large audiences. Um, I really love writing. I I love it and I love that people enjoy my books. I I love that people enjoy hearing the stories. The stories are all true, which is why they've gained traction, I think. So, I want to continue writing for bigger and bigger audiences. Since 2007,

[2:59:22] I've had a hobby where I write television pilots. It's fun. And I've been blessed since 2007 to have sold eight of them in Hollywood. Yeah. >> And so now I've got I've got meetings scheduled over the next two or three weeks with household names. >> Well, now that you have representation >> And now I have representation. I mean, these are like multiple Oscar winners. >> Oh, that's amazing. reaching out, exchanging ideas. I'm all in. I love it.

[2:59:54] Uh and you know, I'm not ashamed to finally, for the first time in my life, make a couple of bucks. I I I'm tired of being poor. I'm tired of renting. It's It's time to It's time to ramp up my my level of existence. I don't think anybody out there is not involved in that struggle too. >> Some of them talk about it a little bit more than others, but yeah, everybody is trying to make as much as they can >> in a world that seems where the scarcity

[3:00:25] model is uh approaching for everyone. >> Yes. Yeah. I'm tired of it. >> Yeah. It's uh Oh man, people think, you know, to say don't join the military. I mean, financial stability, yes. For the 1st and the 15th, like your check is going to come even when the government shuts down. >> Yeah. >> But that check may not be as big as you want it to be. >> Exactly. And you know these [ __ ] Obama people, they confiscated my pension in 2012. So I I've got nothing. I have literally nothing. >> Yeah. >> And so I've got to make that up now. >> I think you're on a trajectory though

[3:00:57] where you might look back at the number of that pension. >> Yeah. >> And even if they offered it to you. >> Yeah. Maybe it's better that I don't take it. If you're in a if you're in a place where it was offered to you, I think the more powerful move is to say, "Fuck you." >> Mhm. And you're measly $3,000 a month. >> You can I mean, it's one of the misconceptions or the things that I maybe not a misconception, but people don't realize, especially coming out of

[3:01:28] the world that I was in in the military. This is all I'm going to do. This is all that I can do. And that's a very self-limiting ideology. >> Yes. Oh, you're exactly right. >> But then you get out and if you can break yourself from that ideology, >> the opportunities that present themselves to you, you would I of all the things I do now, literally, people don't believe me. If if you had given me an unlimited amount of time in the years before I exited the military, not a single thing that I do now, the coffee shop, what I didn't even drink coffee till I was 27 years old. That was seriously the best mocha I've ever had

[3:01:58] in my life. When I took the first sip, I was like, "Oh my god, this is fantastic." It's Montana. So, we do a sprinkle of meth in there just to get you coming back for the second one. No, it wouldn't have been on there hosting a podcast. The world I came from, just like the world you came from, be like, "I'm sorry. I'm going to willingly put myself on camera and put my thoughts out on the internet to be destroyed by Nope. You are exactly like I was where at the agency they the part of the culture is that they convince you that your skills are so specific that

[3:02:30] you can't do anything else. for us, you move from the agency into a defense contractor. For you, you move into, you know, Blackwater, some kind of contracting, and that's just simply not true. You and I, when we were walking over here, um, I mentioned that, first of all, God bless Cameo. Seriously, I I actually, this is how nuts it is. For the last 8 weeks, I have set my alarm every morning for 4:00 a.m. Every morning. >> Take it easy, Joo. And I I I answer cameos from 4:00 to 7. And then starting at 7:00, I do my normal day because

[3:03:02] otherwise I can't catch up. Yeah. And I'm afraid of, you know, this all just going away one day overnight like flipping a switch like somebody flipped a switch to start it in the first place. So my sister and I bought a laundromat and uh now I won't be completely uh you know poor even if it does go away. This is what I have realized in my life through the technical term would be excessive amount of failures that I have stumbled my way through voluous if you will. You figure

[3:03:32] out a way. Yeah, it did. I I've finally at a place in my life where I worry less about the opportunities that are going to come because I know that they will and I find that I'm more receptive to them by just kind of letting go of the res >> and playing the field as it presents itself to me instead of trying to mold the chess board into the which I've been wrong. You're right. I've been wrong every time. I've tried to force the world into the chess moves that I think >> yeah I mean it took me 48 years to figure this out and for clarity I haven't figured it out completely. Maybe

[3:04:02] I'm just learning a little bit more from my mistakes, but dude, you're going to figure it out. >> Even if it turns off tomorrow, >> you're still going to figure it out because you've put the volume of work in. And that I think is >> that's the difference between >> people who are truly success. There are of course black swan events where somebody will become instantaneously famous for something. Good luck scaling that across >> any generational. >> Look at this Hakua girl, right? She >> didn't go too great for her. No, she was a giant for like 2 weeks and then gone.

[3:04:34] >> I don't know why anybody would take advice from her financially. Like the memecoin thing, you didn't you really thought that one was going to be like a solid 401k investment strategy? >> That that's where you want to put your hard-earned dollars. >> Yeah. I mean, life is self-critiquing in many ways. It's like numchucks. If you're not ready for them, you're going to break your nose. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly right. >> You're it's you're going to figure it out, man. The more work you have put in, it's the overnight tenure of success. You're going to start getting people now like, "Oh, must be nice, John. Must be nice." And it's like, first off, a if

[3:05:05] you really want to piss them off, say, "It's actually nicer than you think it could be." And then B, it just that twists them off a little bit. Like, you actually don't even have the imagination to understand how nice it is, but they're never going to see the hard work. No, >> they're just going to see that you have arrived at a place where they want to be, and they want to knock it down a little bit. Several friends of mine have told me that that they've never met anybody who works as hard as I do. And it's actually the key to success. >> It is the hack culture that we live in. You can hack a lot of things, but you

[3:05:36] can't hack hard work. >> You can't. And I I don't sleep very much. I don't really have any hobbies. All I do is work. >> Mhm. And it this started off during CO. Well, I mean, I've always worked hard, but especially during CO, I had a lot of trouble sleeping. And I thought, well, I can lay here in bed and stare at the ceiling, or I can go downstairs and write an oped and make $400. And so, I started with the op-eds. And then, oh, I started saying mo most of my books, my

[3:06:07] first seven books were about the CIA or something having to do with the CIA. And then during COVID, um, I thought, no, you know what? I've ever since I was a little boy, I've loved cemeteries, exploring cemeteries. I love the architecture. I love the symbolism of the stones or what's on the stones, but I especially love the fact that literally everybody has a story. So, I'm not talking about the most famous people. I'm talking about interesting people. Um, I was 9 years old. I told my mom one day, we lived about a mile from a cemetery, and I said, "I'm going to go

[3:06:39] down to the cemetery and look for salamanders." So, I took an empty shoe box. So, I went down the cemetery. I found a salamander under a rock. I put them in the box with some grass. And when I got home, she said, "Did you find any salamanders?" And I said, "Yeah, I found one under a rock. It was next to a gravestone that had a badge on it." And she said, "What kind of badge?" And I said, "It said Congressional Medal of Honor." And she said, "Oh, that's a hero. We should go to the library and see what he did." So, we went to the library and we we were regulars at the library anyway, but

[3:07:12] we found that he was a farmer from my hometown and in the battle of u oh shoot Battle of the Wilderness. Was it Battle of Petersburg? He captured the Confederate battle flag. >> Damn. >> And got the Congressional Medal of Honor. Came back home, farmed until uh 1878 and died. And she said to me, I'll never forget it. She said, "You see, everybody has a story. You don't have to be famous to

[3:07:42] have a story." So, I've been to 73 countries, and probably 70 of those countries, I've been to a cemetery. And I decided to write a cemetery book about the cemeteries of Washington, DC. So, I go online during co I'm looking and it's there were like two dozen books about Arlington National Cemetery. And I learned that nobody had ever written a book about the cemeteries of Washington DC. >> Well, there are fascinating people buried in Washington.

[3:08:13] >> Yeah. >> So, I wrote the first book and it comes out in June and then I followed it up. A funny thing is I sent it to my publisher. It's uh Simon and Schustster. And I said, "Look, I know you guys don't normally publish books like this, but this was important to me. Could you take a look at it?" And I told him what it was, the editor. and he's like, "Yeah, we don't really do books like this, but all right, I I'll pass it around." He calls me two weeks later and he says, "This is the best book you've ever written." And they want to commission four more. I said, "Oh, what do they

[3:08:44] want?" So, I finished, it's in editing now, um, Whispers in the Dirt, the Mafia Graves of New York City. >> Oh, damn. >> I think that's going to be a good one. And they went one on America's most notorious serial killers, one on the historic cemeteries of Chicago, and one on the country western graves of Nashville. That's a real broad spectrum there. >> Mhm. >> I like the serial killers one. >> I think so, too. >> My wife is slightly disturbed by the number of documentaries that I'll watch about serial killers.

[3:09:14] >> I'm addicted. And she's like, "What is it that you addicted?" >> She's like, "What is it that you get out of these?" I'm like, "I'm not sure, but I really can't turn it off." Buddy, there was a serial killer in my housing unit uh when I was in prison. We called him Truck. He was a long-distance truck driver. >> And in the days before DNA testing, he would pick up prostitutes at truck stops and have sex with them and then strangle them, drive another hour and then just throw their bodies out of the out of the truck. >> So, he strangled a 16-year-old

[3:09:44] prostitute and she survived and she identified him and the truck and he was arrested. that he got 40 years for reasons that will never be clear to me. He constantly sought my approval. He started off like, "So, you were CIA?" And I said, "Yeah." He goes, "I was CIA, too. I was I used a shrimp boat to smuggle a shrimp." He specifically said, "A shrimp boat to smuggle weapons to the Angolan rebels." I go, "Get the [ __ ] out of here." A shrimp boat forest gump.

[3:10:15] >> Yeah, exactly. A shrimp boat. I go, "Get the [ __ ] out of here." And that just made him like seek my approval more. He had these rotten nubs for teeth. >> So, he would say stuff like, "Hey, John. Uh, I know that you like the Steelers and the Steelers are are on TV this Sunday. I saved you a seat in the uh in the TV room." I'm like, "Okay, thanks, Truck." "Hey, hey, John. I I know you like classic rock. There's a new classic rock station, 1600 a.m." I'm like, "Thanks, Truck."

[3:10:47] So there was this other guy at the same time we called Cat in the Hat cuz he had this oddly elongated head. It was like a birth defect. This crazy like you could project a film on his on his forehead, you know. >> And um I had an empty bunk in my cell and you have to get everybody's agreement to move into somebody's cell. And we had a rule in my cell. No pedophiles. Pedophiles are banned. So I said to him, he wanted to move into the bunk. I said, "You a pedophile?" And he said, 'N no, I'm not a pedophile. I

[3:11:17] said, 'What's your uh what's your crime? And he says, 'Murder for hire.' I said, 'I don't think I like that anymore than I like the pedophiles.' I said, 'What were the circumstances of that crime? And he said, I owed the mob 100 grand. I couldn't pay it, so I took out a life insurance policy on my business partner and I hired a hitman to kill him and I got caught. And I said, "Let me guess. You ratted out the hitman." He goes, "Well, it was either life in prison or 20 years." I said, "No pedophiles, no

[3:11:48] rats, so we wouldn't let him in." Well, he was mad. One day, I hear my name on the uh on the PA, Kuryaku, Lieutenant's office. Usually, that means you're going to solitary. They didn't have the balls to send me to solitary. So, it turned out Jake Tapper wanted to interview me and he had come up to the prison and I had to sign a waiver and sit for the interview. So, I'm sitting next to truck later that afternoon in the uh TV room.

[3:12:18] I am 2 feet away from Cat in the Hat. He does not see me sitting immediately directly behind him. He's standing at the computer. There's an internal email system. I'm sitting there. Truck is here. I'm here. Cat in the Hat's here. And he says, Cat in the Hat says to the guy next to him, "Did you hear that [ __ ] Kuryaku? He got called down to the lieutenant's office." He goes, "That guy's a [ __ ] rat. He went down there to rat us all out." And I just sat there. Listen, if you call somebody a rat, >> that's a big deal. >> Oh, blood's going to be spilled.

[3:12:49] >> Yeah. >> And I didn't react in any way. And Truck says, "That [ __ ] guy just called you a rat." And I go, "An hour ago, I heard him call you a pedophile." Of course he didn't. I just made it up. Without saying a single word, truck got up and beat this guy almost to death. And this is why, John, you were an excellent case officer. >> They had to land a helicopter in the yard to lifellight him to Pittsburgh.

[3:13:22] Truck got five years added to his sentence. >> Cat in the Hat was in intensive care for like six weeks. He finally comes back to the prison. and he's all [ __ ] up like, you know, >> and somebody had told him what had happened. So he comes up to me like this and he goes, I I just wanted to say I'm sorry that I called you a rat. I should have never said that. I'll never do it again. And I go, hey, hey. I said, look at me. I said, so help me, God. If I ever hear my name cross your lips ever

[3:13:53] again, you're dead and you're never going to see it coming. And nobody messed with me. I think we call those soft skills. I got called down the lieutenant's office cuz I just continued watching the Steelers game like this as as truck is beating him to death. >> Yeah. >> So I get called down. They were like, "What the [ __ ] were you doing at that fight?" I go, "What fight?" >> Checking the score. >> The fight you were sitting right next TO THESE GUYS ARE GUYS BEATING the other

[3:14:25] guy to death. I said, "I'm watching the Steelers game. What are you talking about?" Oh, you're going to tell us that what we saw on four different cameras didn't happen. I go, "Yeah, maybe you were the ones fighting. Do you ever think of that?" Admit nothing. Deny everything. Make counter accusations. >> He's like, "Get the [ __ ] out of my office." >> So, you ever miss your old job? >> Very much. >> Yeah, I can tell. So, that's the thing, though. Millions of dollars spent on people, you can't always put it all down. that stuff will

[3:14:57] be with you for the rest of your life. And again, they were looking for a particular type of person that they could hone and sharpen those skills in. >> I'll tell you, man, the the Italians adopted me literally the day I arrived. And I mean, Italians named Gambino, Lucasy, Genevese. These are serious guys. Yeah. I I love them all. >> I saw two of them last weekend. We have dinner together. They're awesome. And I said to one of them, I said, "This [ __ ] guy, Cat in the Hat," I said, "I'm taking this guy down." and and a very senior guy in the Banano family. He said, 'Are you crazy? He said, 'They're

[3:15:28] going to add years onto your sentence. You're going to end up doing all of them solitary. And I said, I would never be so crude as to do it with my own hands. Who do you think I am? Do you not know where I come from? >> Oh my god. You think I don't think about this stuff in advance? >> Yeah. There's a difference between brute force, >> that's right, >> and nonlinear problem solving. >> In my second book, Doing Time Like a Spy, I I start off with these 20 life lessons that I learned at the CIA. And

[3:16:00] one of them is let others do your dirty work. I would never do it myself. >> Yeah. >> Why would you? Why take the risk? >> It's a good question. >> There there was one uh >> Go ahead. I got to get you the airport here. >> Oh, yeah. I got a little airport. We got time. one of the Italian guys, he became my best friend and is still one of my best friends in the world. It's funny, you know, you don't go to prison to make friends, but I made a friend in prison that that he's like a brother, a brother to me. And um

[3:16:31] we were talking about, you know, having others do the dirty work. And he said he said, "That's some [ __ ] up kind of sociopath stuff right there." And I said, "Yeah, okay. Yes, you're right. But the thing is, if you want to stay safe, and you don't want to stay safe in solitary, you have to have others do your dirty work. And uh it took him a little while, but he

[3:17:02] understood. He mentioned to one of the guards, he said to one of these guards, this was the the only guard that was like universally reviled. He was the only guard that wore a stab vest because he was genuinely afraid somebody was going to stab him. >> Mhm. >> And he and my buddy said, "Uh, where are you going to be?" Uh, they would do these six months rotations in different housing units. Oh, I'm going to be in Central One. He said, "Oh, my buddy John's in Central One." And, um, the guard says, "The CIA guy, John." And he said, "Yeah." And the guard says, "I never [ __ ] with that guy." And my friend

[3:17:35] says, "Yeah, why not?" And he said, 'That's all I need. I work eight hours a day. I go out to my car and CNN's standing out there. No, thank you. I said, exactly. Yeah, it's a deep pool. Uh, last question for you. There are people out there who view your old job as their life's calling. Mhm. >> What would you say to a young person who wants to have an impact in the

[3:18:05] intelligence community given the landscape of where I think we both agree it is at right now? >> What would you tell them? >> I would give them the same advice that my first deputy office director gave me. He said, "You are going to see things during the course of your career that that's going to make your hair stand up. Things that you cannot abide. But understand that around year 10 of your career, you're going to realize that you're in a position of authority all of a sudden. You're a branch chief, a

[3:18:38] deputy group chief. If your career really takes off, you're going to be a group chief. And you can change those things. He said, "There's always going to be a CIA. There's nothing that anybody can do to make it so that there isn't a CIA anymore. And if you want to change it, you have to change it from the inside." He said around year 10, you can change it from the inside. >> It's a bottoms up approach as well. >> Mhm. I think that's the way. >> I think so, too. God, that's a tough journey, though. >> And there are a lot of very bad people

[3:19:08] in positions of authority right now. >> Yeah. I think there's more out there that are good though. That I agree with. Yes. And that's why I still have hope. There are good people out there. You know, it's funny, too. There are a lot of people that just want to go work their day and then go home, make dinner, and sit with their family. >> Yeah. >> They don't even realize that they're the kind of people that we need to affect those changes.

[3:19:41] >> Yeah. Sometimes an opportunity presents itself and you never saw it coming. >> Agreed. What do you want to leave people with? >> Final thoughts. You know, I've been the last eight or nine weeks, I've been able to connect with Gen Z. And so, my message is to Gen Z. It is to tell the truth because the truth really does set you free. There are some very contentious issues that they're going to experience, confront in their lifetimes. Be on the right side of those issues. In the long run, it's all worth it.

[3:20:12] >> I couldn't agree more. Hell yeah, John. Thank you for making the trip out. So good to see you. This was fun. Thanks for the invitation. >> Of course, man. My pleasure.
