Title: The Ripple Effect Podcast #129 (John Kiriakou — CIA-Whistl
Show: The Ripple Effect Podcast
Date: 2017-05-31
URL: https://youtu.be/QkuwsEURRGw
Duration: 1:08:00

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[00:13] [Music] believe in the ripple effect [Music]

[00:55] pap [Music] what's up another episode R podcast I'm your host Ricky verandis today we got xcia John kyaku really interesting podcast really interesting story he was one of the first people to expose the enhance interrogation program for what it really was which was a torture program and end

[01:27] up doing two years in prison because of it while in prison really interesting he actually used his CIA training and the methods and techniques that he learned while in the CIA to survive in prison so basically got spies to work for him he manipulated people he did all types of things that just survive um and so he wasn't [ __ ] with and he goes into detail on our show about that so really really interesting so we'll talk about his book we talk about uh also I think we we talk about a little bit about the

[01:59] documentary silenced which he is one of the uh subjects in the documentary it's three whistleblowers they fall their lives they show you how being a whistleblower and exposing these unethical things end up basically ruining their lives lost their jobs in many cases lost their pension and money ruined their families everything so it it's really heart-wrenching and I really highly recommend people to check it out I believe it's still on Netflix and probably available everywhere you can

[02:30] find uh videos or films so um check that out uh what else this weekend UFC 212 there's a pretty good chance we'll be doing a live fight with friends if you guys don't know what fight with friends is it's my version of Joe Rogan's fight companion we watch the UFC event and we stream live we hang out we talk we drink sometimes we drink a little sometimes we drink a lot sometimes we talk about the fight sometimes we talk about everything else so uh every show is a little different but definitely tune in if you guys guys want to send some questions you can

[03:01] always tweet us while we're doing it live or if you have any suggestions or anything like that so please check that out you can follow us on Twitter at rv6 you can go to my YouTube channel RV the6 and now I am also on Instagram which I don't know if does social media Overkill but I figure it's a free way to uh get the word out and to share some of my uh Journeys and things that are going on in my life and one more place for free marketing so uh why not so everybody else is on it and I figured I'd join too

[03:32] so that's it I'll uh see you guys on the next one and [Music] peace [Music] the hey how are you hey what's up John not too much how are you doing not bad can't complain thanks for being with me appreciate it very happy to do it very happy to do it I've been uh a fan of uh your yourself and a lot of just

[04:03] whistleblowers that I I uh I give a lot of credit to because especially when I watched that movie silence years ago and uh and and actually funny enough I just kind of started watching it yester yesterday for a little bit because I'm like oh let me see uh that film a little bit uh again just to see if it reminds me of some stuff I could bring up to John and then Peter Van Beren was in the credits and Peter Van Bean was on yesterday and I'm like oh that's I'm so it was pretty cool I'm like hey Peter I I'm like I have John kyaku on tomorrow I'm like it's funny cuz I didn't know that you were part of that project I

[04:34] think at the time when I watched the documentary I wasn't familiar with Peter's work but uh but yeah but re really just pull to your heartstrings because you see how it personally ruins people and you know I've been trying to get Thomas Drake on forever and we go back and forth and he's you know busy or something comes up or or whatnot but he's another guy that I've really wanted to talk to because I think people need to hear these stories I mean so often they only see your faces and your names and and hear like portions of your story

[05:04] on the news on the media but it's like just sliver you know a little sliver of the whole story and they don't really get the perspective that you get from a documentary when they really see how not just yourself but your family's affected I mean in Thomas Drake's case I mean he he went through a separation I mean lost his you know house or whatever I mean he just went through he sure did yeah he lost everything lost his pension lost his family yeah was aw yeah I mean at least Peter he was one of those few whistleblowers that uh actually kept his

[05:35] pension and and you know we end up retiring and and you know end up uh at least you know hope it was a good thing he got his pension and he retired with with some money and then wasn't completely just left out a stranded but when you hear stories like like yourself and you're looking for work anywhere and everywhere and you're you know you go from with all these skills this highly skilled you know what could be a highly skilled employee you know you're trying to find work at Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks or wherever take you and it just it's mindblowing because it's just you know the especially yourself because

[06:05] hearing your story and how patriotic you were and how your heart was about you know doing the right thing and that's kind of what motivated you to even get in this field of work and then the same people that you were supposed to defend and and you know turn on you it's just they do they do they turn on you yeah and not just turn on you but they turn on you to the point of of ruination you know it's one thing to say okay I just agree with kiraku I disagree with what he did it's another thing to say I'm not going to rest until kiraku is completely

[06:36] ruined you know yeah it it's just it's crazy but for people who aren't familiar with your story and or maybe are know your name no no PO portions of it but how did you get into working for the CIA how what motivated you to want to get in that field of work I know you're uh you're are you a Greek immigrant or your parent or your parents were born in Greece my my grandparents were immigrants all all four of them came from the island of roads and to hear my my grandfather my dad's father tell the story you know Franklin Roosevelt was

[07:09] personally waiting for him at Ellis Island with a passport and a job at a steel mill in Pittsburgh um I'm exaggerating of course but but my grandparents were were so honored to be in this country and so grateful to become American citizens that they always instilled in us both their their children and and grandchildren the notion of public service that this country had been so good to us that we needed to pay it back

[07:41] somehow and so when I was in college in grad school I really only considered uh jobs in uh in public service really so you it was just you you kind of I I I get it because I'm a immigrant myself my my kids are actually the first generation born here of I was I'm from Portugal and uh same thing you know it's like you get you do get incredible opportunity here and you do but it always makes me wonder because I I don't know if you like my parents for example they they came to this country

[08:11] uh there were farmers in in Northern Portugal and they came to this country and you know we always have this idea this uh this American Dream idea of if you work hard you you you you'll have opportunity you'll accomplish things but when you really look at the statistics there's not a whole lot of people that go from like poor to rich you know like it's not it's not as that Rags the Rich's you know kind of fantasy really doesn't exist or doesn't happen as often as we think like for example my parents they saved every penny like my remember being a kid and just having um I mean

[08:42] even when when my parents came over here uh my me and my brother stayed in Portugal for a year because to come to a country that you spoke you didn't speak the language you didn't write you didn't do any of that stuff uh toine work get settled in and have at that time you know me and my brother were like 3 years old um we're twins actually and we're we're three years old and to to have two twin K boys it's like it would have been impossible so a lot of my relatives that were in America is like Hey listen unfortunately you're going to have to leave the kids in in Europe and you're going to have to come on your own and and really just get settled in which I

[09:14] couldn't even imagine the sacrifice that that is I couldn't imagine my my dad's father was one of 18 children wow yeah including three sets of twins and you know people were starving to death and so he had he had two brothers who were living in Cannonsburg Pennsylvania who had um immigrated several years earlier so when he turned 20 um he got on a ship in steerage and made the track uh to the states went to Canonsburg Pennsylvania

[09:46] just south of Pittsburgh his brothers told him that there was plenty of work in the Mills that was true and he worked from 1920 to 1930 he saved um something like $110,000 I put in my first book I think it was $10,000 which in today's money is like $225,000 and then went back to gree bought some land which is still in the family and um got married but then one of his brothers wrote him a letter and said hey they're going to change the law

[10:18] over here and so if you want your wife to be an American you're going to have to come back now and so he literally just walked out of the fields he left his tools in the fields and and got my grandmother they packed their things they came to the states arriving in uh February of 1931 and then he never left uh the states ever again from 1931 until he died in 78 oh so he never went back to Greece he never went back to Greece no it's funny my grandmother used to go

[17:04] when you know that and I could see from you know I always try to see things from the other people's uh other person's perspective even if I I don't agree with them but I can see how it could be really hard too just from her perspective like taking your word for it we the Mind plays tricks on you you know it's it's very easy to start getting paranoid and start you know that's why I always tell friends of mine I'm like listen you can meet a girl with flaws but if you don't trust her it's never going to work like other flaws you can work on those things you know you can you can accept them you can kind of uh

[17:34] work on them improve on them but if you don't have trust there's no there's no fixing that because the second you guys aren't together your brain's Playing Tricks on you like why didn't he call me back yet what you know why do you take so long to text message me you know so he told me he was going to be here and somebody told me he saw him over here you know and it's like all it is is just this paranoia that's just you know re really creating what you know what you think is happening right yeah you're exactly right and that's you know that's the demise of so many marriages in uh in the CIA they

[18:06] just can't survive that not knowing and that uh that mistrust it makes sense because I actually have a cousin she's uh my first cousin and she's a a retired FBI and her husband's also retired FBI and I'm it makes perfect sense I they met at the bureau but uh and let me say that they're still very good at not saying anything cuz we will have family get togethers they just start grilling them about stuff and and they're just like oh we really don't know what's going on and there's probably some truth to that I'm sure the CIA is very similar where it's everything's like need to

[18:37] know basis so even if you're yeah so even if you're really good friends with somebody or in this case dating or marrying somebody uh unless they have any reason to know what you're doing you don't tell them they don't tell you and and that's how you keep things secret that's why a lot of times when you hear these stories about like well how would they keep that secret you know it's like well they do and often and they do yeah they do yeah they keep everything secret it's just the nature of the job yeah yeah I mean you look at like Area 51 I mean there's tons of speculations on

[19:08] what happens nobody really knows what's going on you know people bring in uh uh you know scientists or whatever researchers and they go there they do their one specific job they leave nobody knows what anybody else is doing the Manhattan Project you know that was hidden from the public for a long time so when people say oh you know how do they get away with this you know somebody would talk and a lot of times when you do your research you realize people do talk like yourself and and others you know people do talk but a lot of times that voice gets muffled and people uh you know the media will will will suppress that information so to to

[19:39] get back on your story so you end up joining the uh the CIA did you before you join the CI did you have a idea of what you thought it was like did you think it was going to be something like the recruit or or did you not kind of went in with kind of no no the only the only connection that I had in any way uh with the CIA was friends from college or grad school whose parents worked at the CIA or who had graduated and had gone into analysis so I was pretty certain

[20:09] that if I were to end up at the CIA it would be an analysis not an operations and and my first wife she just did not want to live overseas and because my area of expertise was the Middle East she especially didn't want to live overseas so when I went through the process and finally got an offer um in analysis I snatched it up and she was happy about it too nice nice so and then you're working for the CIA it was typically what you thought it was going to be did you oh yeah I mean it was just so exciting and I I my first assignment

[20:41] was Iraq I I was Saddam Hussein's biographer I was the um Iraq analyst in the office of leadership analysis and so just at the point where I feel like I know what I'm doing and know what I'm talking about Iraq invades Kuwait and the next day you know the the morning of August second 1991 I find myself in the Oval Office with the president the vice president the National Security advisor the director of the CIA my boss and me and then the president asks a question

[21:13] and everybody turns and looks at me and I thought oh my God my friends if they could see this nobody would believe this like I couldn't believe it myself but then I realized you know this this isn't just something cool and fun this is really really important and the stakes are very high and I can't get this wrong and so the the first golf War kind of made me a star there I ended up going into full-time Arabic training a couple of years L later and then I was

[21:43] the economic officer at the American Embassy in Bahrain for two years I was on loan to the state department came back to headquarters in 96 went back to work on Iraq and then I just got so bored because it was clear to me that the Clinton administration had no real Iraq policy and so that was when I switched to counterterrorism operations H yeah that's that's what made you uh intrigued with the whole just re Middle East and and was it just because of all the conflict there and you know what it

[22:14] was when I was in high school um that's when the Iranian Revolution took place and um Americans 52 Americans were taken hostage and held for 444 days and I was just obsessed with the Iran hostage crisis you know that's that's when ABC News created Nightline the purpose of Nightline in the beginning was just to give a daily update of the Iran hostage crisis really and it morphed into a standalone news show so I would I would stay up every night watch Nightline get

[22:45] all the latest um I I was just fascinated by the whole thing and decided that whatever it is I ended up doing I wanted it to have something to do with the Middle East yeah yeah that's interesting it's it's funny how little people know in America of the Middle East I you know I tell people all the time I'm like you know how many Muslims you probably interact with on a daily basis and you don't know they Muslim and because they don't look like the Muslim that they're selling you on the media you know the crazy guy with a rifle on the back of a truck you know it's like it's just we just we're so disconnected

[23:15] from other cultures and stuff and and I think that we have this huge issue where we do dehumanize especially Muslims you know now I mean not to you know I'm not talking about islamophobia so much but really and when you learn history and I talked about this with Peter Van be yesterday you know the fall of the Ottoman Empire and how you know I've had a lot of historians on you talk to them it's like it's very hard to understand what's going on today without going all the way back to World War I creating countries that shouldn't have been countries um you know and all the things from you know in in the what was it 52

[23:45] or 53 when we took down the first democratically elected president of Iran like all these things so with the hostage crisis you know people know about the hostage crisis but it's like a lot of people don't know about the you know the the coup in in the ' 50s you know and it's like like so we've had our hand in the Middle East in a for a long time and and we did that for British Petroleum yeah you know it was the Brits came to us in the early 50s when Muhammad madak was elected uh prime minister of Iran and the whole point of it was that the British wanted to keep their their oil they were essentially

[24:16] stealing from the Iranian people and so uh they talked Kermit Roosevelt who was uh Teddy Roosevelt's um son and a senior Cia officer they talked him into um overthrowing madic and and we did and our relations with the Iranians have never recovered I mean that's over a half a century ago and we've never recovered yeah it's it's crazy that's why I history is so important because you kind of understand how you got to this point when you follow the road back backwards you know you you follow the stream upstream and you kind of see

[24:47] where it's all coming from and I think I think it's easy just to kind of look at things and like oh they hate us because we're American and we're free you know they love our they hate our freedom I hate when I hear that nothing could be more ridiculous yeah actually most of them love our culture I mean they music you know American I mean that's basically our biggest export is like our entertainment it's like our music our shows our celebrities you know so it's um yeah I mean that it's it's so ridiculous when people say that they hate us because we're free and I mean it's a great little just kind of uh way

[25:18] of get convincing people like yeah that seems simple enough that's why they hate us and and you can digest that and you don't have to read any history books to understand anymore but yeah I mean everything from oh it's just it it is it is crazy but historically yeah we a lot of these countries we have had a hand I mean in Iraq Afghanistan I mean all way to giving weapons to money to Bin Laden through the isi and Pakistan to help them fight the Soviets and um like I was telling Peter yesterday you know and a big part of that too was I remember reading that a way of motivating um Bin

[25:52] Laden at that time was basically uh describing the Soviets as these anti- anti-religious people you know these Communists and now it's like oh look these are religious extremists but at the time it's like when they're working for us then it's okay for them to be religious extremists so yeah it's interesting yes yes there was I know in in I I don't know if it was interview I saw with you or in the documentary where you talked about uh meeting I or I think at the time it was what they thought was like the third top leader of

[26:24] al-Qaeda I I think it right when one of the guys that uh got to and and the one that I that I captured I Wasa yes and and I remember you talking about how most of these guys hav't read the kurran they're they're young guys that that just don't have options I mean I I always use the example like why do you think there's gangs in poor areas of of the US and cities and stuff like that because when there is no options when there is no other place to go there's no way out of where you are um like it's really easy to recruit people into

[26:55] getting together becoming you know a gang becoming a group feeling a part of something a part of a family I'm like so a lot of these countries that's why I'm like there we destabilize them they're a mess I'm likee and it's the best way of recruiting people I me if everybody was was working and had safe environments and good schools and paved roads I'm like you think anybody would want to join a terrorist group you know what you know I I say this in interviews all the time um the the answer the answer to this this whole terrorism problem in the

[27:26] Middle East is not sexy and it's not quick it's education and Public Works projects because if people have an education and a job skill and the infrastructure in their countries to spur on economic development then there's no reason to turn to extremism but that's not a that's not a quick fix and people don't want to talk about stuff like that yeah and but from your opinion do you feel like stabilizing the Middle East is even a concern like do

[27:58] you think it's ever their true intentions or is it just this this idea that we're sold so we can constantly get involved and and take resources no I I think people really do want a stable Middle East because it's better for business I mean we'll make far far more money um trading with stable Middle Eastern countries than we would just selling arms or or you know war is very expensive I I remember even during the the first Gulf War President Bush being utterly shocked that it was costing us

[28:30] something like $10 million a day to be in the Gulf well it's 10 times that now and and we can't afford that so yeah I think people really do when I say people I mean leaders I think they really do want stability and peace in the Middle East if only for selfish reasons of of um of trade and business H but I mean for example like Peter vanan story about going to Iraq seeing all the private contractors that are making all you know most of the money was going to uh I mean

[29:00] they they all have lobbyists they have a lot of PLL they have a lot of influence uh it it almost seems like yeah keeping things destabilized and keeping things a mess only justifies more spending I mean it's always easier to get the public to to spend money on on Military and defense when we feel feel unsafe when we feel like you know this idea you know we talked about September 11th and and when the anthrax thing happened it's like it was just one more thing to add to us feeling unsafe like so everybody just

[29:30] felt like we had to do something they weren't sure what we needed to do but it was the best way of getting people to you know when people are afraid they're they're making uh knee-jerk reactions emotionally they're not really thinking things out and that's how they could connect Iraq to September 11th even though there was no connection and get people to to before invading it and you know when you look at Iraq for example like do you really feel like there was ever a true intentions of of or look Libya now look at you know we talked about Iran in the 50s um no but see this

[30:01] is this is a bigger problem in the overall policy and that is that we don't have an overall policy you know it was it was as though I was working on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the time of the Arab Spring and it was as though as though Obama and Clinton and even John krey over at the committee just caught got caught up in the Euphoria of of change and people power and didn't give five seconds of thought to what happens afterwards and so what happened

[30:32] afterwards was chaos and Anarchy because if there's no plan for for a post-revolutionary era there's no plan to to Institute a democratic uh government or something that even if it's not Democratic if it's at least representative and and peaceloving then you're just going to you're going to have the situation devolve into chaos and that's what happened in Libya that's what happened in Syria it's what was happening in Egypt before the military

[31:02] uh hun took power so all in all we're far worse off now than we were in 2009 before the these these uprisings began oh absolutely I I completely agree so you're working for the CIA things are you know going pretty well when when was the change of heart when was the change when did things start looking like the the intentions of the the agent you thought were pure and good maybe weren't so about 6 months after 911 you

[31:35] 911 was so traumatic that changes that I thought were temporary in response to the attack I later learned were not temporary they were permanent and that the CIA leadership had no intention of going back to the way things were in the old days and that's why the CIA now has transitioned into a paramilitary organization or even a a cyber Espionage organization you know the original point

[32:06] of the CIA was to recruit spies to steal secrets and then to analyze those secrets to provide the best possible intelligence for the policy makers and that's not the purpose of the CIA anymore purpose of the CIA is to hunt people down and to kill them if we think that they could someday pose a threat to the United States and that's just not what I signed on for and and what made you realize that what what what specifically was it the you know the exposing it was the torture program torture yeah it was the torture program

[32:37] you know because of my own personal experience I I have trouble complimenting the FBI but if there's one thing that the FBI is really really great at it's interrogations and the FBI was collecting actionable intelligence from abuu beta that saved American lives and disrupted attacks the CIA then took over only because it was a bureaucratic pissing match not for any other reason and began torturing him and uh and the

[33:10] rest is is an ignominious history the the CIA was was wrong they were wrong legally they were wrong ethically they were wrong morally and I realized that that this is not this was not an organization that I wanted to be a part of anymore yeah there's there's a documentary called doctors of the dark side and I think it's about uh yeah yeah are you familiar with it oh yeah yeah the the guys who uh who who kind of designed the enhanced interrogation

[33:40] techniques and I believe they're like psychologists right or some type of um yeah they were they were uh clinical psychologists they came they reverse engineered the uh military's Seer program and uh and used it to as the basis of their tour program they charged the American taxpayers $81 million for it which they collected and uh again the rest is history yeah that's it's crazy how

[34:11] recklessly we spend our that's why I always say I'm like anytime a politician says oh we need to raise taxes or we I'm like no we just need to I mean they need to do what like you and I do if money gets tight we have to cut corners and balance our own budgets like how politicians never have to do that they just ask for more money it's just it's ridiculous they don't have a income problem they have a spending problem yeah it's true yeah absolutely true so when when did you decide okay so you end up you're working for the CIA you you end up uh obviously having this

[34:43] change your heart because you saw what was going on when did you decide to go public with it well I kept my mouth shut for five and a half years I was one of um I was one of 14 people who were who were asked if we wanted to be what they said uh what they called trained in enhanced interrogation techniques I I was the only one who said no that I had a moral objection to it uh but I kept my mouth shut just because you know that's what you're supposed to do it's part of the

[35:14] job you just you mind your own business and you do as you're told so I I left the agency in um 200 4 um still kept my mouth shut and so in late 2007 Brian Ross of ABC News approached me and said that a source of his had said that um I had tortured abua I said that

[35:46] was absolutely untrue I was the only person who was kind to abua well you're welcome to come on the show and defend yourself so um I foolishly did did but in the meantime the president had made a couple of very provocative statements just out andout denying that we were torturing any prisoners and I knew that was a lie so uh I decided to to do Brian Ross's show and I decided that whatever he asked me

[36:16] I was going to tell the truth and so I did I said that the CIA was torturing its prisoners I said that torture was official US government policy not the of a rogue as the president had said and I said that um the the program had been personally approved by the president himself so and you went I let the cards fall where they may and and you said that because you assumed that lot of that information was ready to public knowledge because some people well it

[36:46] actually it actually was public knowledge in 2005 Human Rights Watch published a report saying that the CIA was torturing its prisoners in 2006 Amnesty International did the same thing and in 2007 it was the international Committee of the Red Cross so I was the first current or former CIA officer to confirm it but I just didn't think that that was that big of a deal and uh I I was wrong it actually was a very big deal so after that then did the

[37:18] CIA contact you and I mean oh no no no not at all what they did is within 24 hours they filed what's called a crimes report against me with the FBI saying that I had um I had uh illegally leaked classified information so the uh FBI investigated me from December of 2007 to December of 2008 and then closed the case and determined that I had not committed a crime so three weeks later Barack Obama is

[37:48] inaugurated and the CIA secretly asked the justice department to reopen the case against me I had no idea they had done that and the justice department then secretly investigated me for three more years and then in January of 2012 I was charged with five um felonies including three counts of Espionage that came out of that uh that interview wow yeah it I think Obama charged more people with Espionage than like the history of the United States yeah three

[38:19] times more than all previous presidents combin yeah that's that's crazy because that was a big part of his website I remember talking about you know supporting whistleblowers protecting them and all that stuff and then he completely retract that's why it seems everything just seems like theater it doesn't matter who's in power the policy doesn't change that much but you being behind the curtain and kind of getting I mean working behind the curtain and kind of seeing the what really happens in in closed door conversations there's a lot of people who are influencing what I mean by the time we

[38:49] get information by the time we get or whatever they want us to believe is is accurate information uh there's a lot of influ influencing people from I'm sure people that represent corporations people who represent uh think tanks and I mean so how much like because we always have from the outside looking in somebody like myself who's just a a typical civilian we we wonder what happens to a person when they become president is it like the the Bill Hicks joke that they become that's a that's a good question

[39:19] and I think I have an answer I think that he didn't change once he became president there was a book written by Mark Halper and John highman called double down about the 2012 election it was a sequel to their book about the 2008 election New York Times number one bestseller and Obama agreed to sit for an interview for that book and he said two things that were just so shocking to me that they still stand out first he said very matter of factly I never said

[39:49] I was a liberal and man nothing could have been more true he never said he was liberal and indeed he was not a liberal and then speaking about the Drone program he said I never had any idea that I would be so good at killing people which was also true and that's not that's not a progressive talking yeah that's that's a that's a neocon or a neoliberal yeah yeah no that that's like uh remember that speech where he talked about what

[40:20] was it the Jonas Brothers and you know dating his uh his daughters and he's like oh you know I just got one word for your drones or something like that and it's yeah and he was just fun yeah he was just making a joke about it and it's like you read stories from I think it was like vice.com that had like a story about how in Yemen uh they're afraid of cleared skies because you know because the that's when the drones come out I mean it's it's scary man I mean to live like that to live in that type of Terror and panic and anxiety I and then the fact that when you research how how

[40:53] unaccurate they are there's a there's actually a good uh app on your phone that I actually have it called uh metad dat and it's this have you heard about it it's a completely free app and what he he actually I think Apple like shut him down for a while but now he's back and um but you basically it gives you updates on every drone attack and it gives you a map and it's like I do it I I I downloaded it for the purpose of like I wanted to see how often this was happening and how often this wasn't reported and uh and just you know to to

[41:24] zoom into the Middle East and obviously a lot of it's in isolated areas and it just it's crazy that people are D and then it tells you like you know four boys died and a girl you know it's like it's like this is happening every day and when you wonder why they hate us it's not because of our freedoms because this second you kill like I remember right before a podcast uh I remember reading the story about how we accidentally killed a wedding party and I think it also was in Yemen not not just one we used to drone wedding parties all the time if if the Drone

[41:54] operator saw a tall Arab looking guy wearing weight we would drone them really why that happened a half a dozen times and why why is that why why specifically wedding parties was it just because they figured it was Bin Laden he'd been invited to a wedding and this is our chance and we're going to get him that is crazy and and I say all the time like those people who are at those wedding parties those survivals uh those survivors those people will forever hate the country that just killed all their

[42:25] closest loved ones and relatives like if you think they hate us cuz our freedoms and you ignore that then you're delusional I mean it's it's obvious you're creating terrorists you know and and I think there's been yeah I mean you're creating who wouldn't it's no different than if a Soviet drone came over my house blew up my my house killed my two kids and my wife what do you think my life goal will be you know to get revenge it's no different than a thousand Hollywood movies that have uh you know a family that gets taken or

[42:56] some gang kills the wife or the kid or whatever and then the the father wants revenge I'm like you're really creating those real scenarios those real circumstances and it it just it it's it's scary I mean I think it's really easy and and I think we're so detached from Wars too we we hear about it we it's not like Vietnam where people were seeing pictures and there's real investigated journalism and people were were protesting because they knew what was going on but you know even during uh the Bush Administration the idea that you couldn't take pictures of the caskets you couldn't you know it's like

[43:26] we have completely the from what's truly going that stuff bothered the crap out of me CU I'm I'm like if you if people don't see what war is we hear the three-letter word we know uh you know we kind of know what it means but we're not seeing it so I'm going to work I'm going to work at the same time I go I bring my kids to the park I go to the mall with my uh family like we do all the same things my life doesn't change so it's like oh who gives a [ __ ] that we're in a war if we are if we are or we aren't my life doesn't change who cares but if people saw you know the dead bodies the

[43:59] that's why when they had that um that picture of that Syria boy who got uh washed up to see and I mean that's why it was so powerful oh my God and as a parent like it's I I'm assuming before I had kids it probably would be powerful but as a parent that just I mean it breaks your heart I mean you see something like that and it's just like you just picture your you know that could be your kid that could be you know and and that's the thing you know when you travel you realize like we have so many similarities I've had Mariana venzel on who uh she had this

[44:31] show called breaking borders on the Travel Channel and she would go to places like Palestine and and uh um the border of uh the US and Mexico and and and all these places where people didn't get along and take uh two people from each side of the argument sit them down he she bring uh a chef because the best way of bringing people together is food and and he would make he would make food from both cultures and and and whatnot and then s him down and get them to kind of small talk and eventually bring up some of these topics um you know why they dislike each other and you realize

[45:03] before they get talking about that specific thing that they don't uh maybe agree on which is you know if it's a Mexican and a Texan and it's like oh you know whatever then or you know um somebody from Palestine and and and somebody Jewish it before you talk about that one specific topic all the other things they talk about they're just fine and and they have everything in common they they talk about their kids they talk about the family they talk about you know um you know just sports or you know soccer or whatever and you realize that they have so much more in common than they do uh not in common and I

[51:51] it'll take two years before we get a hearing and you'll be home by then I'm sorry he said you're just going to have to tough it out and so it was that conversation that made me realize that I was going to have to rely on my training that I had lived in worse places than Loretto Pennsylvania I had dealt with more dangerous people than the people I was encountering in Loretto Pennsylvania and so you know I picked myself up by my

[52:22] bootstraps and said we might as well get started so and when you so what techniques what specific skills what what did seem to work what seem to help you survive make friends not I mean what's your purpose to to make friends not make friends were you trying to no no one should go to prison to make friends although I made some friends well I mean for survival reasons like in other words like you make friends because you know they'll protect you well I guess it's not that black and white um you make strategic

[52:54] alliances rather than friends and I'll give you an example the only thing that the cop said to me as he was processing me in was that if someone came into your cell Uninvited that was an act of aggression and I I would have to defend myself so sure enough I'm there for two hours and two neo-nazis come in to my room just walk right in one had an enormous swastika that took up the entire front half of his neck and so I jumped off I put up my

[53:27] fists I said what do you want and the guy says take it easy are you the new guy I said yeah he said are you a [ __ ] I said no are you a rat I said no I didn't have anybody in my case I'm not a rat are you a chomo I said I don't know what that means and he says chomo child molester I said no I'm not a child molester okay he says you can sit with the arens in the cafeteria and I I thought all right well

[53:57] I guess I'm with the Aryans now and then about 4 days later um two like totally knotted musclebound African-American guys come in again just walk right into my room and one of them's holding a newspaper turned out to be the Nation of Islam newspaper and again I jumped up and I put my fists up and um he goes hey take it easy are you the CIA guy I said yeah so and he said he like gingerly hands me

[54:29] the paper and he says Reverend farakhan says you're a hero of the Muslim people we just wanted to tell you you're not going to have any trouble with us I said oh all right thank you and then in my original cell four of my five cellmates were um members of of a myriad of Mexican drug gangs and one of them asked me are you educated and I said yes I am and he said would you write an appeal to

[54:59] my judge to try to help me get out of here so I said sure So I wrote this appeal he asks me how much do I owe you I said you don't owe me anything I I have money coming in from the outside I I don't need anything I'm happy to do it so he put the word out among all the Mexican gangs that I was a good guy and so I never had any problems with anybody and then finally it was it was the Italians that adopted me in prison

[55:30] it was the Italians to whom I was closest they were my closest friends I ate with them I hung out with them I exercised with them and um and once once word got around that uh I was with the Italians then it was easy it was easy after that well you do look a little Italian yeah yeah you know Greeks Italians were all the same yeah yeah the the Europeans yeah yeah all the dark features yeah but uh so you didn't have any

[56:01] issues so ended up seem seeming like a lot of the stuff kind of fell in place and worked out for itself you didn't have to do too too much right right yeah true and and so once you're in there what did you use any of the I mean to did you ever end up having issues with anybody or was um yeah a couple of times a couple of times and and I go into this in great detail in the book um I I won't spoil it for the for your listeners but uh there there were a

[56:32] couple of times when I I used these 20 rules that I that I write about to um to really mess people up you know I was I was nasty I was aggressive um I was difficult and I got what I wanted and then there was one time where I I nearly lost my temper and um and it was the Italians that reminded me of the rules and and they ended up taking care of the problem for

[57:04] me so wow yeah yeah I never had to use violence for myself there were others who used violence for me that's the way which is which is actually one of my rules yeah it's to let others Do Your Dirty Work yeah you should have told the Patriots player Hernandez that yeah seriously uh that's actually one thing you know when that case happened I'm like he should have learned from the Italians man you never get your hands dirty if you're you know on top of the food chain uh but yeah so

[57:34] you so what what are so are you are you willing to share some of your other rules that are in the book that helped you yeah sure I there were there were some that were tongue and- cheek like admit nothing deny everything make counter accusations is that also for marriage yeah yeah seriously at the CIA we we had that on t-shirts and coffee mugs in the CIA gift shop and it was kind of a joke but it was a serious rule for me in prison I used it a lot and um

[58:05] the most important ones really were if calm is not to your benefit chaos is your friend or recruit spies to steal Secrets or anything else you need or um trust no one there there was one that in the practical sense was probably the most important and that was seeking utilize available cover at the first sign of trouble get out get off the X because everybody's going to get rounded up and everybody's going to go to solitary

[58:36] while the cops sort it out and do their investigation so if you're just standing there watching two guys duke it out you're going to go to solitary with them until the cops are satisfied that you didn't have something to do with that fight did so there were 20 of these rules and I used each and every one of them do do you feel like it changed you a little bit that or you know being in that environment or was it not that different than you know like yeah it it changed me um I I have a visceral distrust uh of our

[59:07] government um but on the good side I'm far more patient than I ever was in the past I'm far more accepting of people who are nothing at all like me and I'm far more empathetic than I ever was in the past so your your opinions of of people who are in I me there's a good book I wish I I this morning I actually was trying to think of the title but it was a book about how every person commits three crimes on a daily basis yeah that that's three felonies a day by Harvey

[59:37] silverglate yep it's a really important book yeah and it it it it kind of and like and I've heard you say in interviews you think everybody in prison is this awful person who deserves to be there but I mean there's a lot of people I mean there's going to be people who are in jail for weed when marijuana is legal everywhere you know and and um so it just I I think we have to change our perspective on people in prison and you know you talked about Clinton earlier in the show I mean their minimum sentencing what you know three strikes year out all that stuff I mean that stuff just filled

[1:00:08] up our prisons and it did it and didn't make us any safer yeah no absolutely I mean how much of prison do you think is you know cuz obviously I mean what are we like 5% of the world's population and we're some ridiculous percentage 25% of the world's prison population yeah that's that's crazy to think about how many I mean I I've read uh statistics on you know they're talking about how there's more uh African-Americans blocked up today than there were African slaves you know and I mean it's almost like it

[1:00:38] seems like a and then you look at like the war on drugs and I've had Adam scorgie on who did the um documentary the culture high and it was uh all about the war on drugs and and just the failed War on Drugs I've had Rick Ross on who who did time for for uh selling cocaine even though it was the CIA who was bringing it in and yeah and uh so it seems like the whole war in drugs is really just a a class Warfare where it was just like you know the the the the rich and the powerful uh just justifying locking up

[1:01:09] and actually in some cases making money off locking up minorities and I mean is that kind of what you you I mean is that accurate you think oh yeah yeah the the system is racist the system is xenophobic the system is is uh anti-poor and to make matters even worse uh they treat mental illness as a disciplinary problem rather than as a medical one and so the prisons are and solitary confinement are are full of

[1:01:39] people who are mentally ill and have no true appreciation for what they're doing in there yeah and I think I saw a vice documentary some years ago about how they kind of stopped all the programs that help people um with mental illnesses so now like you said they just lock them up and they're really isn't any help there's you know there's nothing um to kind of get them on their feet or get them the help that they need and I mean I think we have to start looking at a lot of things differently we have to look at U addicts also like you know where I was born in Portugal they they decriminalized all drugs in 01

[1:02:11] and it it it was quite helpful in regards to uh lowering um well saving money because instead of locking everybody up for addiction you're looking at it as it a medical issue and if you had more than what they considered a personal amount of of any drug then uh they would kind of analyze you and see if you needed help or not but like you said a lot of these things like mental illness um drug addiction or all these things we should look at as it's it's a health issue it's a a mental illness it's a disease and get them helped not so much like the criminals

[1:02:43] because a lot of even if they do commit crimes I think it's it's a little different than somebody committing crime who's sane or doesn't have a disease that's uh fogging their perception or their motives or whatnot and I think that you know when somebody Robs a car you know because they trying to get more crack money you know then it is we have to look at it a little different than somebody who maybe uh Robs a car for the sake of robbing a car you know I think uh and you know and and you know this is

[1:03:13] a really interesting debate because it's like well technically they're both committing crimes and I guess are your Mo like now are we going to judge crimes based on motives you know and so it becomes uh you know it becomes kind of a a interesting conversation about it but I see but you can but you can judge based on motives and that's what's wrong with mandatory minimum sentencing because all it does mandatory minimum really means maximum so you know where one judge may give somebody six months and another judge may give somebody who committed the same crime 12 years you

[1:03:44] you create a mandatory federal minimum and the mandatory minimum becomes the 12 years not the six months we we we see that with all kinds of uh drug cases and just in the last week Attorney General Sessions reinstituted the bush administration's mandatory minimum policy and did away with the Obama administration's um work to to move away from mandatory minimums so the prisons are just going to fill right back up again and do you think we're going to head towards more private prisons oh yeah without a doubt without a doubt and

[1:04:16] that's shameful disgraceful yeah oh absolutely the only way for those for those prison companies to make money is to cut the amount of money they spend on food and medical services so we think we think the conditions are bad now you haven't seen anything yet wait till more and more people start dying in prison unnecessarily and there's going to be incentive for filling up the prisons there's that documentary was the children for cash cash for children whatever it was called when uh when all

[1:04:46] they basically were locking up kids for like skipping class or or being late to school just because there was a private uh juvie who was uh making money fing you know keeping it full so yeah I mean when there's profit in that and I think it was uh Colorado where they one of the uh the groups that were the most anti-legalization officer unions you know and it's like it it does you don't think about it but like once you create a system where people are are are profiting off something you know and in this case

[1:05:16] prisons keeping prisons full you know then next thing you know there's uh you know there's there's not really incentive in changing anything people don't want to change things so it's uh it's really interesting but um I know John you're a very busy guy uh I know you're just on watching the Hawks just uh not too long ago I saw I saw they they just ear that episode yesterday and it it was uh cool to see you on there and uh I've had Tabitha and Sean and and Tyrell on a few times so um but good folks yeah awesome people and you know

[1:05:48] obviously Tyrell is a good guy because he is you got to love his dad Jesse very outspoken and another guy who's not you know IDE doesn't motivate his opinions and perspectives and stuff so you got to love people like that and uh so thank you so much your book uh is Avail is it out already I know it's coming out in May yeah it came out uh Tuesday doing time like a spy how the CIA taught me to survive and thrive in prison actually right there there it is okay awesome and I'll have all the links in the the show notes and the show description I'll have the links to your

[1:06:19] your website to your uh your book I'm I'm sure it's available on Amazon and everywhere books are available and uh and you've written that's not your first book so you also have some other stuff that uh that if people want to check out you've written some other uh book books and uh thanks a lot John I mean Amazing Story also also check out the film silence that people want to watch uh you know a really it's on it's on Netflix Amazon iTunes all over the place yeah and I think it really gives people a really good perspective of how

[1:06:50] personally and and financially and and in every way affects uh just trying to be honest and trying to be a good citizen how uh how they treat people who do that and it's uh shameful and I think I think when you see when you can put faces and and and to your to the kids that are affected the wives are affected the people who are affected I think it really it's hard not to to sympathize with uh what you're going through so and and from my perspective you guys are all heroes and and and I really appreciate what you guys do and and hopefully you

[1:07:21] uh you know we need people like you and Ray McGovern and and people who are outspoken and and even Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson who worked at the White House who now is very outspoken he's been on my show yeah it's it's good because people people who have been in the inside and out are outspoken people are going to really respect your opinions and perspectives uh a little more than just an average Joe like myself uh stating it so thank you so much John hey enjoy the rest of your weekend and uh we hope we'll reconnect soon it's a pleasure thanks thanks John take care bye-bye

[1:07:52] [Music] believe in the Ripple f
