Title: EXCLUSIVO: Parceria Lava Jato-EUA foi movida por ódio e dinh
Show: DCM TV
Date: 2021-11-21
URL: https://youtu.be/m6YVXC1HGsw
Duration: 69:00

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[00:00] foreign

[00:47] in operations it's a pleasure to have you here I'm delighted to have you in Brazil the Brazilian audience thank you very much for having me so John I think it's you're you have a very unique path in your life you were a CIA agent you were very identified with the

[01:20] institution by looking at your career I'd say you were someone who assimilated the values of that institution and they enjoyed your job I did and you did a 180 degrees change in your life and I want to talk to you about that I want to talk to you also about what the CIA does in Latin American we want I like to also touch upon Bannon Stephen bannon's prison and a little bit of the Brazilian

[01:51] situation right now which we understand America played a huge part in the recent coup against Dilma Rousseff in the form of an impeachment so um John I want to start very simply I want to know how can you can you tell us how you became a CIA agent ah sure it's a funny story funny strange uh and it's not uh legal anymore and I'll explain that but when I was in graduate school I was at George Washington University in

[02:22] Washington DC working on a master's degree in legislative affairs and I was taking a class called the psychology of leadership and it was taught by a very important uh psychiatrist he was he had a PhD in political science a PhD in Psychology and a medical degree and he called himself a political psychiatrist very interesting class on how foreign leaders make their decisions and so he

[02:53] gave us an assignment to write a paper one day where we had to follow our bosses for a week and at the time I was working for a trade Union in Washington the United Food and Commercial Workers Union and I had to follow my boss for the week and then write a psychological profile about him well halfway through the week he and I got into a very serious argument and I called him a racist which he was and he got very angry he balled up his

[03:25] fists to punch me and I put my hands up to protect myself and his face got red and he said my penis is bigger than yours and I said what he said my penis is bigger than yours and I said you know what you're insane and I quit and I walked out and I I actually did quit so I wrote my paper and I told this story and I said that I believed he was a sociopath with Psychopathic Tendencies

[03:55] and I gave examples and I turned the paper in well a week later I got the paper back and I got an A and in the margin the professor wrote please see me after class so I went to see him he closed the door of his office and he said to me look I'm not really a professor here I'm a CIA officer undercover as a professor here and I'm looking for people who I think would fit into the cia's culture I think you would fit into the cia's culture do

[04:25] you want to be a CIA officer the truth was I was getting married in six weeks I had no job I didn't know what I was going to do so I said sure I'd like to be a CI officer and the next thing I knew after I passed all of the tests I was in the CIA now they can't do that anymore in 1993 we passed a law called the um the Equal Employment Opportunity Act and so it's much less sexy you have to go to

[04:58] www.cia.gov and click apply now but that's how I got in it was it was through that that private network of contacts did he explain to you how you would fit how he thought you would fit in the CIA yes sir he did he did and he recruited me into the analytics side of the CIA and so for the first half of my career I was the intelligence community's classified biographer for Saddam Hussein I was the one who coordinated all of the psychological

[05:29] profiles on Saddam Hussein and the reason they gave me that job at such a young age I was only 25 years old was because nothing ever happened in Iraq it was the same government since 1968 the same leadership we had a very small Embassy there we really didn't have any national interests in Iraq until Iraq invaded Kuwait and that act made me a star at the CIA [Music] and

[05:59] is it just do practice today that a CIA professors or agents are on the cover as a teachers in in institutions to Recreation people no they don't they don't do that anymore um because of this Equal Employment Opportunity Act but but what they did they still have professors at universities All Over America but it's called The Scholar in Residence program so now they come and say I'm a CIA officer I'm going to retire in three

[06:30] years so for my the final three years of my career I'm going to be a professor here so it's all very public and out in the open they don't do it secretly anymore you told you became a star all of a sudden can you can you elaborate on that oh yeah it was the morning of August 2nd 1990. I had been at the CIA for about nine months and I had just started to feel like I really knew what I was doing and I really knew what I was talking

[07:00] about and um you know the night the night before we all expected Saddam was going to cross the border into Kuwait and he was going to attack the the Kuwaiti uh uh government and so I got up early and sure enough during the night Iraq had invaded Kuwait so I showered and shaved and got dressed as quickly as I could I got into the office at seven o'clock and my boss said as soon as I got there my boss said don't take your

[07:32] jacket off we're going to the White House I had never been to the White House before and again I'm only 25 years old so we take a car to the White House and the Marine escorts us into the Oval Office I've never been to the Oval Office and so here I am sitting with the president the vice president the Secretary of State the Secretary of Defense the National Security adviser the director of the CIA my boss and me

[08:04] and so I remember thinking if my friends could see this they wouldn't believe it in a million years and we're sitting there and the President says well now what do we do and everybody turns and looks at me and I thought this is my chance so I said well Mr President Iraqi forces entered the country at 2 A.M they moved here they moved there this is what happened the royal family fled to

[08:35] Saudi Arabia I gave the full briefing because I really did know what I was talking about and I had just coincidentally there was there was a Kuwaiti uh physician who was very political and was one of the founding members of the popular front for the liberation of Palestine and I had written a paper about him the week before just because he was interesting to me and during the night the Iraqis announced that he would be the new president of occupied Kuwait so I was an

[09:07] expert on this guy I knew everything about him and uh yeah I mean it it changed the course of my career I became a star that day you you held after that day you became a star but your career didn't end there you had a very senior position as a CIA what exactly was your role as a senior analyst and case officer what do you do that the first seven years that I was an analyst I I was promoted over and over

[09:40] and over again uh working always on Iraq and so just to give you an example I was one of the co-authors of un Security Council resolution 986 which created the sanctions regime on Iraq it allowed Iraq to purchase food and medicines but pretty much nothing else uh I didn't like that job you sit at a desk all day you think the big thoughts and you write papers that most of the time nobody

[10:11] reads and every day for years and years it was Iraq Iraq Iraq all the time and I got bored and so as you might imagine I spoke uh fluent Arabic and fluent Greek and as it turned out I was the only person in the entire CIA that was fluent in those two languages and then a job opened in Athens in counter-terrorism operations

[10:42] and they were looking for somebody who spoke either Greek or Arabic so I went to the officer in charge of hiring for this job and I said look um I'm an analyst and I have literally zero experience in operations but I speak fluent Greek and Arabic and he said are you kidding me and I said no he said are you willing to be tested I said of course so they tested me and I tested fluent

[11:13] and he told me the job is yours he said it's easier cheaper and faster for us to hire a linguist and teach him operations than it would be to take an operations officer and teach him how to speak Greek and Arabic so they gave me the job I went through all of the operational training weapons explosives driving recruiting spies to steal secrets and they sent me to Athens and I worked against

[11:45] um one specific terrorist group called revolutionary organization 17 November and against a myriad of Arab groups uh Abu nidal the libyans pflp pflpgc dflp they were all all in Athens and so that's what I did for the next two years and as your spy you moved as you say you moved several times abroad you flew in an Arabic you were almost assassinated by leftists

[12:17] yes or as I know and you were part of the operation that capture Abu Dubai zubaida which is currently held in Guantanamo yes and and you led a secret life working for the CIA in the war on terror and but in December 2007 you decided to blow the whistle and disclose this class classified information officially confirming that the US government was using torture to interrogate Al-Qaeda

[12:49] prisoners and you were then the first office to denounce in this practice and to say goodbye to this goodbye to your entire career yes so can you tell us about the process that led you to such a 180 decision in your life yes um I have always been a very firm believer in the rule of law and in respect for human rights and civil rights and civil liberties that

[13:19] made me unusual as a CIA officer I I had been the chief of CIA counterterrorism operations in Pakistan after the 9 11 attacks and I was responsible as you said for the capture of Abu zubaida who was the you believed at the time the number three in Al Qaeda he was the first high-value Target that we captured and when I got home from Pakistan a senior officer asked me if I was interested in being trained in what he

[13:50] called enhanced interrogation techniques he explained to me what this was and I said this sounds like a a torture program he said no it's not a torture program the justice department approved it and the president approved it and it's legal I said this sounds bad I'm not interested was it legal or he was just telling you stories oh the the justice department said that it was legal uh there's a famous memo written by John you and Jay Bybee to officials at the

[14:20] justice department who essentially turned the law on its head and and they they claimed that it was legal but we had a long a long history in the United States with the 1946 torture act with our signature on the uh United Nations convention Against torture so to me it was quite clear that this was an illegal operation you didn't cross your mind that maybe the CIA did this well the CIA didn't do it until August

[14:53] 1st 2002. see in in 1975 the CIA caught was caught um overthrowing governments and assassinating world leaders and the the Congress created two oversight committees the Senate select committee on intelligence and the house permanent select committee on intelligence and from 1975 thanks to executive order 12333 assassinations and covert actions to

[15:23] overthrow governments were made illegal well 911 changed everything the president secretly revoked executive order one two three completely revoked it and so the CIA put together teams that they were flying around George Bush George W bush the CIA put together teams that they flew around the world to to murder you know whoever they wanted to to murder and they just decided that the torture act didn't exist and I said if you're

[15:56] going to torture prisoners I don't want any part of it none whatsoever but I waited for somebody to come out and say something I thought certainly this is so illegal it's so egregious that somebody's going to come out and say something and nobody said a word so from 2002 early 2002 until December of 2007 nobody said a word and then in December 2007 I decided that I would say something and I

[16:27] I had a request from ABC News one of the major broadcast networks here in the United States and I decided that I was just going to tell the truth that I thought the American people had a right to know what the government was doing in their name and they had a right to know that the CIA was violating both U.S and international law besides the fact that torture just simply doesn't work and did you know there was just uh how how you were so certain because you need to be

[16:58] so certain that this is actually happening to go in the live TV in American television to go and blow the whistle you must have seen things well have you yeah when I got home from Pakistan I was promoted and I became the executive assistant to the cia's deputy director for operations and as the deputy director's assistant I had access to literally everything that the CIA was doing around the world and um they were reporting from Secret

[17:30] prison sites all around the world what they were doing to these prisoners and there was just no question in my mind that this was an illegal program and how did you go can you I don't know if you're able to say this but how did you get all those documents that could prove that you were not a crazy a former CIA agent because you would be certainly stigmatized coming from the CIA and blowing the way so you would be the one who's crazy and they will try to pin on something else they certainly say this

[18:00] guy is has any problems and he's trying to make up things they will want to see proof how do you get disproved um I did not take out any documents from the CIA that would be Espionage and so I actually have a really great memory for detail and so I was able to provide detail of these illegal programs the secret prison system uh-huh the the international rendition program where

[18:31] they would kidnap people and then take them to other countries to be tortured and uh and the torture program and I was able to provide the journalists at ABC news with the names of former CIA officers who could confirm what it was that I had said psychologically what happens to you after you went and blew the whistle where were you expecting the entire weight of the U.S government falls on your head what happened was within 25 24 rather

[19:02] hours the CIA filed what's called a crimes report against me with the FBI saying that I had committed Espionage by revealing the program and so the FBI investigated me for a full year from December of 2007 to December of 2008 but then in December of 2008 they they closed the case and they said that I hadn't violated the law uh what I did not know was that three

[19:33] weeks later when Barack Obama became president uh John Brennan who was an old colleague of mine and was named first Deputy National Security advisor and then CIA director he asked the justice department to secretly reopen the case against me and I didn't know that for the next three years the FBI was following me everywhere they were tapping my phones they were intercepting my emails and then finally in January of 2012 I was

[20:04] arrested and charged with five felonies including three counts of Espionage in in the United States as in most countries Espionage is one of the gravest crimes with which an American can be charged National Security and in many cases it carries with it the death penalty and so um yeah psychologically it's very hard so when we receive that do you did you have a lawyer do you I I hired a dream

[20:35] team of the best defense lawyers in Washington and and to tell you the truth they came to me because this was such a major case on not just a national security issue but on constitutional issues I have a constitutional right for example to freedom of speech and if a program is illegal by by definition it can't be classified you can't classify a crime for the

[21:06] purpose of keeping it from the American people you told you you told us in the in the uh in the program that chasing Justice that I had the pleasure to be to share the panel with you you thought about American laws that do not accept that you classify documents as illegal when you try to hide crimes which law is that that would be interesting to oh it's a lot that's been on the books for a very long time since actually since 1975 since the the revamping of the of the CIA in fact George W Bush's

[21:39] uh classification Czar was was his unofficial title I guess he was the chief classification officer at the Pentagon um has said in court that as much as 80 percent of classified documents uh in the U.S intelligence Community should not be classified they shouldn't have been classified in the first place that leads to my next question so um you are the first CIA officer to be

[22:10] convicted for passing classified information you served two years in to the press in in federal prison it seems that you're just telling me that it would not be correct for them to hide their crimes under the cloak of confidentiality so the US justice system seems to work to corroborate the cia's illegal practice and illegal version when they indicted you yes yes and to it seems

[22:40] accomplished of the U.S justice system to hide torture as as a exactly right about this yes in fact what tradition do you think the CIA has in the U.S judicial system and in the legislative it's very very deep and I think that we see examples of that every day in the Julian Assange case in in my own case in Discovery we received memos from the justice department and these memos

[23:12] included a series of three one was from John Brennan at the CIA to Eric Holder the attorney general and it said charge him with espionage and holder wrote back and said my people don't think he committed espionage and John Brennan wrote charge him anyway and make him defend himself and that's what they did and they waited until I went bankrupt and then they dropped all the Espionage charges

[23:42] because they knew I hadn't committed Espionage but this is what they do oh yeah it was Revenge with the justice system yes and and the justice department does what the CIA tells it to do it's been like that for many years oh so can you explain a bit can you explore a bit with us the doj Department of Justice day connection with the CIA yeah it's quite important for us to understand sure the the specific connection and and I'll apologize to your viewers in advance because this is a little bit bureaucratic

[24:13] but there's a specific office at the justice department called the office of legal counsel olc the purpose of olc is to decide if things that the CIA wants to do are legal or illegal so let's say the CIA says we want to overthrow the British government olc will say oh you can't do that that's not legal so the CIA says okay we want to

[24:44] overthrow the Libyan government okay that's legal you can do that but what happens is that olc becomes really little more than a rubber stamp so that if the CIA really really wants to do something olc will justify it legally so for example the CIA wanted to create a torture program so they went to olc and said we want to create a torture program olc said well you can't do that

[25:14] because torture is illegal we have the federal torture Act of 1946 and we're signatories not just signatories but we were the the actual drafters of the United Nations convention Against torture and they said well at the CIA we really really want to do this torture program so just figure it out so what they did in this series of memos called the you baby memos um was they said that well yes the law says that you can't torture people but

[25:45] what is torture really if it doesn't leave a mark on your body is it really torture we think it's not so torture is legal and because this was all classified it was all top secret nobody could sue them in the federal courts and say wait a minute the law is very clear torture is illegal and this ubib memo is wrong nobody knew there was a You by B memo because it was

[26:16] classified so that's how the CIA exerts its influence now fast forward to Mike Pompeo Mike Pompeo in 2000 whenever it was nine not nine 2017 decides he wants to kill Julian Assange because of the Vault 7 Revelations he's so angry he says let's kill him they go to the office of legal counsel and they say we want to kill this guy

[26:46] well you can't because he's an Australian National and you can't kill a citizen of an Allied country especially a five eyes Country Canada Australia New Zealand us UK you can't do it but olc said well what we can do is we can say that he's a representative of a hostile non-state intelligence service that would make it legal

[27:17] well it wouldn't actually but they would argue this was not just rhetoric or dramatic license to qualify him this was a technical term that he employed to authorize so that nobody realized that nobody realized that at the time in fact we laughed about it I even wrote an article about it like why is he saying something so stupid that this is a hostile non-state actor well there was actually a very serious reason why he said it because then it allowed olc to legally justify the assassination of

[27:49] Julian Assange so why was Julian not assassinated because what happens is it goes from the CIA to the office of the legal counsel and then from the office of the legal counsel it goes to the general counsel the attorneys at the National Security Council at the White House well whatever the CIA and olc want to do they just approve it they never say no then it goes to the National Security advisor if he signs it it goes to the president and

[28:19] the president signs it and be it becomes something called a presidential finding what happened in the case of Jillian Assange is it got to the National Security advisor H.R McMaster General H.R McMaster and he said are you people insane we're not going to murder an Australian National and he's the one who killed it that's why let's say Pakistani oh again he would be dead he'd be dead today

[28:50] what do you think is going to happen to Julian Sarge if he's extradited what do you see the perspective if Julian Assange is extradited I think he'll die in an American prison but I really don't think that he will be extradited uh certainly this is going to take some time because there are several more levels of appeal uh available to the United States uh the latest appeal was just heard in the court of appeals I think Julian's going to win there um if Julian wins the United States

[29:21] could elect to uh to appeal to the British Supreme Court and if they lose there they could appeal again to the European Court of Human Rights but there are three precedents at the European Court of Human Rights where where European Nationals who the United States was seeking to extradite one their case is against extradition because of the way that the United States uses solitary confinement as a punishment

[29:52] Nils melzer the UN special repertoire on torture has said repeatedly over the years that the U.S practice of solitary confinement is a form of torture the international standard is that you cannot be held in solitary confinement for more than 15 days well in the United States we have prisoners who have been in solitary confinement for as long as 44 years I know he'd just be one of them just being released yes now how in the world is that person

[30:23] supposed to come out of prison with his mind in order after not having human contact of any kind for 44 years of of course it's torture and so I'm confident the Europeans are not going to force Julian Assange to the United States so help so help us God you've been you've been imprisoned yourself in in can you explain to us a bit this experience because you've been not only in prison but you've been prison for doing the

[30:54] right thing yeah you've been breathing before it was a little tough saving lives I think it's if you I think if you kill someone you went to prison it must be La it's not this heart but when you do the right thing and you are stigmatized and sitting there alone that is another level can you and you told me that you sympathize with Lula with Mandela that you took strength from those kind of people uh I just want to hear a little bit about that yeah let me make two comments about that first of all um yeah I went to a real prison I didn't

[31:27] go to a country club where I could play tennis and you know read books all day I went to an actual prison with bad people drug kingpins and Mafia Dons and fully one-third of the prison population was pedophiles so this was a tough place um I decided that the CIA had trained me to live in some of the worst places on Earth and God knows that I had served in

[31:58] places that were far far worse than this prison and so I just decided to rely on my CIA training to make sure that I stayed safe and stayed at the top of the social Heap were you afraid of your of your existence of your physical existence oh yeah in the beginning but one of the things that the CIA taught us to do in training was to make strategic alliances

[32:28] and so I took that very very seriously the the Italians and when I say Italians I mean the the members of the five organized crime families uh in New York uh adopted me for two reasons number one because I'm Greek and the Italians and the Greeks are very very close yeah and number two um I hate the FBI as much as they do I see and so they pulled me into their Circle very quickly uh a rumor got started somehow that I

[33:02] was an assassin for the CIA and the Nazis loved that and so so I had no problem with the Nazis the Aryans um at the same time the week that I went to prison uh Louis Farrakhan the the leader of the Nation of Islam uh a black Muslim group here in the United States uh wrote a newspaper article in his own newspaper uh saying that I was a hero of the Muslim people because I gave up my

[33:32] freedom in the name of Human Rights and so the blacks were okay with me and then the only ones that I was a little more worried about were um the Mexican cartel members oh really yeah because they're violent just for the sake of violence and and so um one of them was in my cell he was one of my cell mates and he asked me one day if I was educated and I said yes and he asked me if I would write his appeal

[34:03] and I said well I'm not a lawyer and he said yeah but you're educated and I said you know what you're right how hard could it be to write an appeal I said sure I'll write your appeal I didn't have anything else to do but but sit in my cage all day long okay so I did some research and I wrote his appeal and um and he lost but uh but I didn't charge him anything which surprised him and I said no no I I have people on the outside I I don't I don't need any money what are you gonna give me ten dollars

[34:34] worth of tuna fish you know or or or Diet Coke or something it you don't owe me anything so he spread the word among the Mexicans that I was a good guy and and so I never had any problem with anybody so that was the first thing the second thing was that I have great admiration for people like Nelson Mandela and president Lula and uh Martin Luther King and these these were people who in my view were Gravely

[35:05] wronged by their governments wronged in far worse ways than I was you know people who went to prison for for decades people like Martin Luther King who was assassinated because of what he believed in and so if they could forgive the people who wronged them I could forgive the people who wronged me I only lost two years of my life not 35 years and uh and so I just decided that the future looked brighter than the past and

[35:36] I was going to treat it as as water under the bridge and so that's what I did and and it shows it totally serious thank you John you told me that you have a Brazilian partner I do I do my girlfriend is is a Brazilian uh National we've been seeing each other for three years she uh began as a journalist and then uh finished a PhD in anthropology so she worked as an anthropologist for many years

[36:06] studying uh the tribes of the Amazon it's funny when we first started dating she would disappear for six weeks eight weeks at a time because she was so far up the amazon that there was no cell phone connectivity and she would come back with wonderful pictures uh and then she got a job uh with the inter-american Development Bank uh helping to do large-scale development in Brazil Argentina Uruguay and Paraguay

[36:37] um because really the the issue that's most important to her and her life is fighting poverty and so that's what she's dedicated herself to but yeah we've had a fun time together three years is kind of a long time and things are going well great and I hope you can come to Brazil soon and look forward I hope to be there to receive you thank you so much Jonah I have more questions and this question is about a bit what's going on in Brazil as you know as you say Lula was Gravely wronged uh digma

[37:08] Rousseff as well she was teached and but the good thing is that you know Glenn Greenwald received the throw of information and they intercept licked conversations which are Now official court documents and they revealed that the former judge and Minister former Justice Minister narrow Sergio Moro and he's prosecutor in the former prosecutor darlingong they had a secretive extra official and collusive collaboration

[37:40] with the U.S Department of Justice Joseph doj they just mentioned he has insertion with the CIA and in this anti-corruption everything under the name of anti-corruption which was the car wash operation the same operation that led to Lula's imprisonment prevent him to run the election in 2018 and what's opened the way for the bolsonaro era so um The Intercept I'm going to read it here revealed that they

[38:11] secretly hosted a delegation I'm I'm going to quote The Intercept quote they secretly host delegations of the U.S officials and coached and facilitate U.S efforts to secure cooperation of Witnesses in corruption investigation into state-controlled oil giant petrobrass with the approval of car wash prosecutors the U.S negotiated deals with some witnesses without following any of the procedures on the treaties

[38:42] which you would have given Brazil gave the greater control over the process so they went to the extra official way of collaboration whatever that might have been so can you explain to us in general line how the US what is the U.S government role in such foreign operations in how they Co-op these figures like tomorrow and darlingo people in Brazil have a lot of difficult to understand that this is not conspiracy theory that is yeah oh no what no this is this is not a conspiracy

[39:15] theory this is this is a prime example of the United States interfering in the internal affairs of another country now this is something that in any other situation would result in a very strong diplomatic protest right because it really is interference and it's not just the the justice department I would say I would warn people that it's also the state department in fact I would go so far as to say that it begins

[39:45] with the state department it includes the justice department it includes certainly the treasury Department because in many cases money laundering charges just appear out of nowhere or corruption charges that's the treasury Department and now we we have to worry about the Department of Homeland Security as well and the whole time you also have the CIA working behind the scenes so this is a this is not a conspiracy this is a concerted effort by the most

[40:17] important elements of the American government to essentially install leaders overseas who they like and who are going to support the American agenda and to destroy not just to push out but to destroy those leaders who don't support the American agenda also you and I were talking uh offline a little before we started filming and I said how in the United States we have two parties we have the Democrats and the Republicans

[40:48] and the Republicans called the Democrats the radical left and the Democrats call the Republicans the radical right the truth is they're both right-of-center parties right the Democrats are a little bit right of Center and the Republicans are very right of Center there's nothing radical about the Democrats there's nothing left-wing about the Democrats but with that said overseas anybody whose ideology is to the left of the Democrats is communist and communism

[41:19] is a threat to the United States that's the mentality here here we are all these years after the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union broke apart people are still obsessed with the idea of progressive political movements overseas here in the United States people are up in arms right now that Daniela Ortega won the presidency of Nicaragua again for example the Biden Administration that's supposed to be so Progressive and so radically

[41:50] left-win refuses to re-establish diplomatic relations with the government of Cuba well look at Brazil look at president Lula look at Dilma Rousseff they had no uh ill intent against the United States right they were democratically elected officials of their country and the United States decided now we don't like them we want somebody far more right-wing so instead of interfering in the election or maybe

[42:23] I should say just interfering in the election a a program was hatched to destroy them and so poor uh president Lula ended up in prison uh president Rousseff ended up with her with her uh reputation destroyed and uh the world ended up with jair bolsonaro I want to add few to this conversation if you allow me to please you you talked

[42:54] about the CIA and that's not a conspiracy theory I mean those leaks well those leaks showed for anyone who has ears and could read could see the leaks and could say informed in their own mouth and their own admission that they have been involved extra officially with investment of justice but not only that there was more like messages where this prosecutor darlingo referred to the Lulu imprisonment as a gift from the CIA

[49:49] because you know all you have to say is Terrorism yes 911 terrorism right and so um so everybody is liable to being spied on you know it's not just against the law but it's a part of nsa's Charter their founding Charter that they are not allowed to spy on U.S persons that is an American citizen or anybody in the United States on an immigrant Visa but they do that every day

[50:19] and the courts refused to stop them so take that and couple it with the idea that the FBI's job is to surveil everybody right it's a law enforcement organization and the cia's job is to is to at least electronically surveil foreign Nationals you know we know for example thanks to Ed Snowden that the CIA was intercepting Angela merkel's cell phone for years well she's one of

[50:49] our closest friends so that just confirms the idea that that we spy on everybody everybody do you think just a lot of a scenario should be afraid of the CIA I don't think he should be afraid because I think the CIA loves him they love strong men and fascist you know right-wing politicians um but I would also assume if I were bolsonaro that

[51:20] um all of his Communications are being monitored all of them and you know you might ask why uh you would ask why tradition yeah it seems like yeah yeah but uh you know The information collected isn't just for to sit in in CIA files it's to share with American companies to give them a leg up on trade on banking on finance you know you can use this this close

[51:51] hold information in any number of ways and and usually at the end of the day the reason is a financial one very interesting I want to touch upon a bit a bit of a different thematic um I myself as a lawyer I consider that one of the biggest threats of brazilian's democracy those Christian fanatic charts from the charismatic charismatic movement originated in deep south of the United States yes we call

[52:22] here neopentecostal churches and they introduced deliberately and a strategy from Washington as a way to reduce the influence of the left leaning Catholic Movement Like The Liberation theology that's right and today they constitute a ascending political power in Brazil they left those small churches all the garages um they have an incredible political influence they predicate anti-democratic ideas they spread hate speech defamation

[52:53] of the progressive Force they deny science they control really minds and hearts in a very in a way that they cannot be liable for and Gerald fought from a U.S president admitted that the CIA used missionaries as an agent she is can you confirm this and is this still practice um I can confirm it and um officially they stopped the practice in 1975 during the Ford Administration

[53:25] but that's just the CIA now the FBI uh cultivates these these movements you're exactly right about uh about these uh these figures for example I was in Guatemala not too long ago and one of the things that I learned there are that the two fastest growing religions in Guatemala which of course is a traditionally Catholic country uh the two fastest growing religions are Evangelical this right-wing Evangelical Christianity and Saudi style Islam oh

[54:00] really where does that come from one of the biggest buildings in Guatemala City is a brand new mosque that the Saudi royal family has built and Guatemalans are converting to Islam now I'll tell you as a practicing Greek Orthodox and and we're very very similar of course to the Catholic Church going back to the time of Christ we don't even consider these groups to be Christian ity we consider them to be right-wing political groups and in many cases in most cases

[54:33] um their their biggest issue their biggest cause is um is the support of Israel they want all Jews to return to Israel because it'll hasten the return of Christ right they want to to push the second coming of Christ and the only way to do that is to get all Jews back to Israel so that's oftentimes what they focus on but you're exactly right these right-wing groups are very political far more political than they are religious they're dangerous uh and they um and they are

[55:07] actively in opposition to what they perceive to be uh uh left-wing Liberation theology and it's funny because in many cases the theology is not Liberation at all it's it's just mainstream Catholicism it is it is it's original it's just the Primitive christianism what we call it that's it air and it it's to it's very hunting what you you're telling me you

[55:37] were telling me the CIA is supporting such groups and through those groups they will dominate people right this is this is something that you would affirm it's not for sure in theory oh no you you put somebody on a salary you give them a thousand two thousand five thousand a month and uh you tell them what to do and they report back to you every month yeah and what about Latin America full CIA why CIA so we have a

[56:09] long-standing history with CIA when you were talking about the 75 this torture lore before that CIA agents trained Brazilian militaries for torture um Brazil Uruguay Argentina Mexico even all over the place why are they so interested in Latin America why are we the targets yes because this is our backyard right we have the Monroe Doctrine which is still an overriding concern in

[56:40] American foreign policy we see this as our area we don't want the Russians here we don't want the Chinese here we don't want anybody else I wrote an op-ed in 2000 eight for the Los Angeles Times uh talking exactly about this and how um the Iranians had invested in a bicycle Factory in Venezuela and you would have thought that they were building nuclear weapons to point at the United States

[57:13] the CIA was so so crazy angry that the Iranians would open a bicycle Factory uh we don't want anybody in Latin America other than us that's it and you telling me that um so the CIA it would be very interesting to understand how the CIA may change its culture whether you have a trump in power whether you have a bad in power do you see any changes just the business usual

[57:43] intelligence policy and foreign policy are almost always consistent now certainly if the CIA it's consistent across parties whether it's a Democrat or Republican nothing is going to change Donald Trump was an unusual pres president president because he was just so out of the mainstream he was such a right wing protectionist extremist that there were some differences in

[58:13] foreign policy but Donald Trump is gone and uh no matter who the Democratic and Republican nominees are going to be in 2024 I don't think there will be any significant changes in foreign policy defense policy or intelligence policy so Brazil Latin America seems we exist as such countries we have been colonized country in a way either by the Portuguese or the Spanish or either by the the American and North Americans

[58:45] do you see a way out for us to be so for our sovereignty I do how can we how can we go against this huge machinery that is in America this was something that I learned in Pakistan um if you want the U.S out of your business the only way to do it is to educate your population and develop your economy that's really that's really it otherwise you're going to have American meddling

[59:15] and manipulation and you know the United States is going to come down there with these giant sacks of money uh bribing your officials and essentially buying your foreign policy the only way to to get that to stop is is through education and economic development do would you do all over again absolutely would you do all of her yeah why was it worth it it was worth it somebody had to say

[59:47] something about the torture program I I just assumed somebody else would but I'm I'm glad I did the cost was high it was very high but um but it was worth it I can sleep at night my children are proud of me and uh and it was worth it it had to be done great John I just like to hear your final words from you and thank you for this absolutely amazing interview it will associate insights and I don't

[1:00:19] think how many people has the privilege to talk to ex-ci agent willing to say anything you know like any of us yeah I probably say Asia don't even say they're a proper name so it's such a huge privilege for all us here to this interview thank you so much openers your shiny personality and to know you it is very very interesting life and this Insight I don't think we got to see this

[1:00:51] in a lot in another time maybe another lifetime that's right I'll be so happy to to hear your final words oh thank you you know I we have to keep up the fight just remember I tell myself this all the time we're the good guys we're right and they're wrong and so if you believe in in what you're committed to um just keep fighting and keep pushing because eventually uh everybody else

[1:01:23] will come around you know a clear majority of the American people supported a torture policy but I knew torture was wrong and now we've gotten to a point where torture has been outlawed in the United States that Gina haspel the former head of the CIA admitted that the torture program was a mistake Senator John McCain stood up on the floor of the Senate and said that the American people would never have known what their country was doing if I hadn't told them so if you believe what you believe

[1:01:55] then stick with it and keep fighting John actually I have two more questions sure do you have time sure a little bit more time so you sent me an article The Kite Runner which I couldn't open straight way from the your front page of New York Times for saving the lives or many children Afghanistan can you can you tell us about this after I left the CIA I was working for a private company and I got a call from Paramount Studios

[1:02:26] asking me if I would consider going to Afghanistan to rescue some children who had appeared in the film The Kite Runner apparently there were bootleg copies of the film that had made their way to Afghanistan from India Afghans are very simple people many of them and they couldn't tell that this was just a made-up story they thought that it was real and there were two objectionable scenes in the movie

[1:02:57] one where a boy was raped by another boy and another where a boy was forced to do a homoerotic dance for a member of the Taliban so um the studio told me go to Afghanistan assess the security situation assess the danger to the children and then if the children were indeed in danger to get them and their families out of the country so I took two weeks of vacation I went to Afghanistan secretly I went

[1:03:28] through India and met with a lot of people determined that these children really were in danger and to make a long story short I ended up getting 27 people the children and all of their family members out of the country I bribed everybody in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to give us exit visas and passports and then we rented Vans and drove to the airport and I went and I said I need 27

[1:04:01] seats plus one on the first flight out of here and I don't care where it goes and they they said well the first flight because my my goal was to get everybody to Dubai right okay I said we need to get to Dubai well they said well there's a flight to India in 11 hours and then you can go from India to Dubai I said no I we got to get out right now and they said well um there's a flight to Iran well I'm I'm an American and a former CIA officer I can't fly to Iran

[1:04:34] but I had no choice so I said I said give me 28 tickets to Iran so so we flew to Iran on care the Iranian it's an Iranian Airline and uh we got off the plane in Iran and I got 28 more tickets to Dubai I mean there were flights like every two hours to Dubai a friend of mine met us in Dubai and um we ended up enrolling the children in

[1:05:04] schools in Dari language schools we got jobs for the fathers and we got apartments for all 27 of them you know to live together as families and uh rescued them and then I flew back home and went right back to work to do my regular job when was that that was 2007 I was working at Deloitte in touch at the time one of the big four accounting firms and do you know what happened to those children

[1:05:34] yes I'm very disappointed to tell you that after a year the parents decided to go back to Afghanistan and uh the studio asked me to call them so I did and I said you're making a terrible mistake right a terrible mistake that you're going to go back we we gave all of you a brand new life in Dubai the emiratis gave them uh residency visas there's no reason to go back

[1:06:06] uh but they did they all went back all of them all 27 of them and then I lost touch with them would you so so now that we have the withdrawal from Afghanistan and we know the balance of this war what do you think of the withdrawing what do you think the Futures holds for Afghanistan and the people I think we should have withdrawn you know in December of 2001. uh our our legislative mandate in Afghanistan was to destroy Al

[1:06:38] Qaeda and we destroyed Al Qaeda by December of 2001. uh Al Qaeda for all intents and purposes no longer exists there are little tiny elements of it spread around Yemen uh the Sahel but in Afghanistan Al Qaeda doesn't exist anymore and so you know as soon as George W bush said the words nation building we knew we were in trouble we knew we were in trouble sure we wanted to capture or kill Bin Laden uh but there was no Al Qaeda left to to

[1:07:11] attack what do they want to do there why do you think they stayed I think they stayed for a couple of reasons um I think one because of the rare earth metals that uh that exist in Afghanistan they're worth a trillion dollars and now the Chinese are mining them but I think also we wanted to just kind of screw the Russians at the end of the day that we wanted to prove to ourselves and to the Russians that that we could succeed where the Russians failed and the truth is that historically nobody has succeeded in

[1:07:41] Afghanistan going back to Alexander the Great so you know another thing too and this is something that Americans never understood or at least they never appreciated the Taliban didn't come you know from the Moon and and land in Afghanistan the Taliban are the sons of afghans right every family in Afghanistan at least every every Sunni Muslim family in Afghanistan has members of the Taliban

[1:08:13] in their family these are not foreign Invaders they're not space aliens they're afghans and so who are these families going to side with they're going to side with their sons and their nephews and brothers are they going to side with an American occupation Force we never had any possibility of winning that war never amazing John thank you so much now I allow you your final words and thank you from the bottom of my heart for being

[1:08:44] here with us today thank you Sarah great to see you my pleasure speaking bye bye thank you bye thanks
