Title: Savage Joy and JOHN KIRIAKOU
Show: Savage Joy Marie Mann
Date: 2023-02-18
URL: https://youtu.be/WWsbNCBI434
Duration: 64:00

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[00:01] foreign [Music] to Nowhere come on inside [Music] taking my ride to nowhere we'll take that right

[00:33] I'm feeling okay this morning and you know to Paradise here we go [Music] in my mind come along and take that ride and it's all right baby it's all right and it's very far away but it's a

[01:06] growing day by day it's all right baby it's all right do you like to come along and you can help me sing this song and it's all right maybe it's all right there's a city in my mind come along [Music] and it's very far away but it's growing deep out there it's alive baby it's all

[01:38] right they could tell you what to do but they'll make [Music] foreign hello everyone thank you so much for tuning in um as you guys know I'm kind of a little excited for tonight's show um this is so rad and I'm so honored and excited um to have Mr John kiriaku um you are a journalist and author

[02:12] um and a Former Intelligence officer um so I know I actually I thought of this while I was um prepping well first let me let me uh why don't you introduce yourself on a deeper level than I just oh thanks there's not much more to say uh I'm a former CIA officer um I've sort of become something of a CIA dissident I suppose um

[02:42] my claim to fame is I blew the whistle on the cia's torture program something I've never ever regretted doing uh the price was high but uh but that's okay glad that I was able to do it and uh and happy to be with you thanks for the invitation absolutely so something I was thinking about while I was um you know coming up with my questions and such it it struck me funny because a lot of us on Twitter who you know people

[03:13] disagree with like every time they disagree with someone they call them an OP or CIA and I was just wondering if you've seen that and like is that weird to you you know people still call me CIA people say stupid things like once CIA always CIA and it's like oh I'll be sure to mention that to Ed Snowden next time I talk to him right or or to uh to uh Jeffrey Sterling or somebody like that you know it's it's just you get that

[03:45] nonsense all the time and it's always from people who just are so intellectually lazy that they um that they have nothing else to argue right absolutely that's exactly what I say they're lazy absolutely to bring on the pejoratives I have no uh no discussion in me um so I want to kind of give people I'm sure most of my viewers know at least somewhat of who you are but I want to kind of go back

[04:16] um and actually it's really interesting um you were actually recommended for the CIA job through your college professor in grad school yes he recruited me into the CIA I was in grad school at George Washington University getting a master's degree in legislative affairs I just kind of figured that I would end up on Capitol Hill someday or maybe in the Foreign Service maybe as a lobbyist and uh and I was taking this class called

[04:46] the psychology of leadership by uh doctor or with Dr Gerald post and um he was an eminent psychiatrist he he's he used to be on TV all the time he had written a dozen books like deep kinds of books and um and one day after class it's kind of a longish story but I'll make it very very short but one day after class uh he asked me he has to see me in his office

[05:19] when I went down there he told me that he was not really a professor there he was a CIA officer undercover as a professor there and he was looking for people who might fit into the cia's culture and this was on the analytics side he actually had founded one of the cia's analytic divisions and would I be interested in uh in joining the CIA the truth of the matter is that I was getting married just six weeks later and

[05:51] I had no job and I had no clawspecs for a job and so I said sure I wanted to see the world anyway I was interested in public service I hadn't given it a whole ton of thought but I said sure and uh you know it's not it's not that simple you have to pass a whole bunch of tests written oral Financial polygraph security uh but eventually I found myself at the CIA

[06:22] wow so and you you definitely did work with different countries so where do you primarily serve in DC or did you get to travel oh the CIA sent me to 70 different countries and I lived in a half a dozen different countries but my specialty was the Middle East my bachelor's degree was in Middle Eastern studies and the CIA taught me to speak Arabic fluently and so um my first overseas assignment was

[06:53] uh was working with Equity royal family during the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait so I was with them in Saudi Arabia I went into Kuwait with the Marines on Liberation day and um and served there that I spent two years in Bahrain went back to headquarters to work on Iraq and then I got bored about seven years into it like very bored and so I did something that was very very unusual I I switched from analysis to counter-terrorism operations and

[07:25] worked uh then at the cia's counter-terrorism center so then I served in Athens for two years I served as the the chief of counterterrorism operations in Pakistan after 9 11 and then I um finished up my career at the United Nations in New York wow incredible I 70 countries wow that's did you have time to even

[07:56] like explore or was it work 24th of it oh I always made time to explore which used to drive my colleagues crazy you know if you're going to be for example if you're going to be in Damascus and you don't know if you'll ever be in Damascus again then for God's sake take a day hire a private tour guide and go see all the stuff that you should see in Damascus you know otherwise you know I I

[08:27] knew guys I knew guys who would who would never leave the hotel room except to go to work and then they'd go back to the hotel I'm like are you crazy so yeah you know every country has weekends right everybody wants to be off for the weekend so if you happen to find yourself in some country you know let's say you're in Jordan for the weekend rent a car and drive to Petra or if you're in Cairo go see the pyramids or go on a safari or do

[08:58] something you can't just sit in a hotel every Hotel looks exactly the same yeah absolutely um you know your your story is so interesting I think one of the the things that really stood out to me while while first hearing about your story and doing initial um additional research is I didn't and maybe I'm the only one but I didn't know that the CIA allowed people lack of a better

[09:32] term um with them to go on news channels I didn't know that happened no they don't ever right unless unless you're the director uh yeah you can't you can't be an activity active duty CI officer and go on uh the news you can't be an active duty CI officer and speak to the media in any capacity unless you're the director or deputy director or in the office of um of public affairs

[10:06] so you know that oh what what you were disclosing could absolutely get you well first of all fired and also imprisoned oh no no I was never fired I left the CIA in 2000 foreign and I went on ABC News in 2007 in December of 2007. so I was already in the private sector you know I knew it

[10:38] was going to be controversial but I didn't think it was going to be life-altering and I'll tell you what it shouldn't have been life-altering because well for a couple of reasons first it's actually illegal in this country to classify a crime if something is a criminal act like torture it is illegal to classify the program for the purpose of keeping the information from the American people I believed then I believe now that the

[11:09] torture program was a crime not just a crime in the United States as a violation of the federal torture Act of 1946 or even internationally as a violation of the United Nations um conventions Against torture but it was a war crime and a crime against humanity and so it was clear to me that this program was illegal I waited for five years five and a half for somebody to come out and say something and nobody did

[11:42] and so finally I did in December of 2007. now as you might imagine the CIA the very next day filed what's called a crimes report against me with the FBI saying that I had um disclosed classified information the FBI investigated me from December of 2007 to December of 2008 and then determined that I had not committed a crime so I mean I kind of knew that I was gonna I was gonna win because I hadn't committed

[12:14] a crime but three weeks later Barack Obama became president and he brought John Brennan on as the deputy National Security adviser for um uh counterterrorism John and I always hated each other and none asked uh Attorney General Eric Holder to secretly reopen the case against me I had no idea that they had reopened the case I had no idea that my phones were

[12:46] tapped that my emails were being intercepted that I was being followed by teams of FBI agents and then finally four years a little bit more than four years after I blew the whistle I was arrested and charged with five felonies including three counts of Espionage now I hadn't committed Espionage and they eventually dropped those charges but to make the whole thing go away I had to take a plea to a to a lesser

[13:17] charge wow they um yeah good question good question and there's actually background to that so when I was first when I was first um arrested uh they were seeking 45 years in prison and I said I'm not going to do 45 minutes

[13:47] I didn't do anything wrong and then they came back it was on a Monday and they said take a guilty plea to to uh an Espionage charge and you do 10 years I turned it down on Wednesday they came down to eight years I turned it down and on Friday all in the same week they came down to five years my lead attorney was the legendary Plato Contreras and he said that he had been an attorney in

[14:19] Washington DC for 52 years an attorney for some of the biggest names in modern American history and he had never seen them come down in time in their offers and I said well why are they doing that and very quickly he said to me because they have a [ __ ] case and they know it's [ __ ] we're going to trial and I said okay we're going to trial they waited like I'm gonna say 10 more months and then

[14:49] they came down to three and a half years and I said no and then they said all right best and final officer or officer best and final offer two and a half years you do 23 months and I had until noon the next day to uh to make the decision my wife and I um now my ex-wife we stayed up all night long talking about this and I decided to turn it down I said naively as it turned

[15:22] out that if if I just can get in front of a jury they're going to see how ridiculous this is and how punitive it is and I'm gonna win because I hadn't done anything wrong so I emailed my lawyers and I said I'm turning it down let's go to trial they emailed me back I had 11 lawyers three of them emailed me back saying we're coming to the house so they came to my house it was seven o'clock in the morning very upset that I had decided to turn this down and so one of them the

[15:54] one who I actually liked and respected the most got right in my face like right in my face and he said you know what your problem is your problem is you think this is about Justice and it's not about Justice it's about mitigating damage take the deal so I said all right if I don't take the deal and I'm found guilty what am I realistically looking at and he said 12 to 18 years

[16:25] and then he said listen I like you you're a nice guy this could be a blip in your life or it could be the defining event in your life make it the blip and so I took the deal now later on of course I read studies and investigative reports showing that the federal government wins 98.2 percent of its cases so so do you roll the dice knowing that

[16:55] you have a 1.8 chance of winning I had five kids I couldn't take that chance wow and wouldn't um it would not have been a jury case oh sure see and that's another thing I'm glad you brought it up my best friend's wife has an uncle who happened to be O.J Simpson's jury consultant so as a favor um he agreed to consult on my case so we

[17:28] got him a security clearance through the justice department he flew up to Washington from Dallas he went through 15 000 pages of classified discovery and I'll never forget the meeting that we had with him and all the lawyers together he said listen if we were in any other District in America I'd say let's go for it we're going to win but the eastern district of Virginia your jury is going to be made up of people from or with relatives from the CIA the FBI the Pentagon the

[18:01] Department of Homeland Security and two dozen intelligence and defense contractors he said you don't have a prayer take the deal and so I took the deal absolutely what I mean what it's it's so vague but what was prison life did you have people in prison who knew why you were in there and thought you know what you're a [ __ ] traitor like how what was it

[18:32] like the guards the guards were the only ones who called me a traitor but they had their heads up their asses anyway um you know what what saved me was there was one guy in the prison Mark lanzelotti God bless him he's still one of my best friends in the world Mark was Italian I was gonna say it sure sounds like it yeah Italian who was friends with people who had last names like Gambino and Luke Casey and banano and

[19:04] Columbo so um mark for whatever reason Mark followed my case and he saw four days before I arrived in the New York Times that I was going to be sent to the federal prison in Loreto Pennsylvania and Mark took it on himself to go to every single one of the Italians and there were say two dozen of them and explain to them the difference between an FBI agent and a CIA officer

[19:37] FBI agents are cops and rats CIA officers are overseas keeping us safe from terrorists and so when I arrived in shock because I thought I was going to go to the minimum security Work Camp and instead just to screw me they put me in the actual prison which was two levels higher security um the Italians welcomed me with open arms one of the things that I learned early

[20:07] on and I wrote a book about this called the Rel the um called doing time like a spy how the CIA taught me to survive and thrive in prison um one of the things that I learned very very early on just in the first couple days is that prison is just a collection of gangs and you if you aren't in a gang and I wasn't in a gang but um you have to learn how to negotiate your way through these gangs well I was sort of adopted

[20:38] by the Italians and so you know when word got around that I was with the Italians yeah I was I was in good shape that's excellent um one of our viewers uh vegan succubus um we are Healthcare organizers and activists and we were speaking earlier um because I do um you know me I've interviewed several prisoners and and you know

[21:10] um and they all have complaints about how their health issues are ignored things like that so I digress but how how you're not you're not digressing you're not digressing this is a very very important issue very important um your health is going to worsen in prison period there's almost nothing you can do to stop that now if you go into prison with pre-existing conditions you're going to get worse in some cases

[21:41] dramatically worse I went into prison with um with controlled Diabetes Type 2 diabetes I came out of prison with uncontrolled type 2 diabetes 35 pounds heavier and it's because you're given this all carb all the time diet whether you like it or not and I'll give you some examples too I wrote about this uh from prison and and smuggled it out and Ariana Huffington who at the time owned the

[22:12] Huffington Post uh published it but um my my first full day in prison was a was a Friday and Friday's fish day and one of the Italians said oh today's Friday it's fish day and I said oh that's good I like fish and he said buddy you're not going to want to eat this fish we call it um sewer trout and I said oh okay I'll stay away from it well when I got down to the cafeteria I saw these boxes that were stacked up

[22:42] uh behind the uh the line and the uh the the food line and the boxes were all clearly marked they said Alaskan cod Product of China not for human consumption feed use only and they were flopping it on everybody's plates that was one incident another incident was we um every Wednesday was was taco night

[23:16] and I'll tell you after two years of these so-called tacos I've not been able to force Mexican food down my throat ever since and I mean like 10 years now so it was the most disgusting the most disgusting thing you can ever imagine eating well one day we got an all hands Memo from the warden saying sorry everybody but it turns out that the tacos we

[23:46] served you six weeks ago um were mismarked uh they were it was marked ground beef it wasn't ground beef it was dog food the mistake was made at the meat packing plant it wasn't our mistake they've been fined and the money went to the National Treasury okay disgusting but the shame is not even that we were fed dog food the shame is that we didn't even have

[24:18] any idea that it was dog food because it tastes the same as it did every single Wednesday one other thing um if you go to breakfast you have your choice between this lukewarm Brown water that they call Coffee or a glass of milk and lunch and dinner you have a choice between water and Kool-Aid well people were I never touched the Kool-Aid because I had diabetes but

[24:49] people are drinking Kool-Aid Kool-Aid Kool-Aid Kool-Aid and finally as the level of the Kool-Aid is going down in the tank there's a dead rat at the bottom of the Kool-Aid that people had been drinking for days and you know we're just one of 110 federal prisons across America this happens everywhere it happens all the time the food is not human grade

[25:19] food it's animal grade food but it's cheap and so if if they're trying to cut costs not just at the federal level but but at in state prisons and in local jails where do they cut costs they cut food and they cut medication that's how they save money and and then because we've given ourselves this for profit prison system they cut it that

[25:50] much more you know there's a there's a maximum security penitentiary here in Virginia that's used as a transportation point for both state and federal prisoners called Red Onion uh prison and um they haven't even had toilet seats in 10 years because it it costs ten dollars to buy a new toilet seat so why spend ten dollars on a toilet seat when the company can put it in their pockets do you what do you think would change if

[26:20] if and when we ever got rid of a for-profit prisons how do you think that would change the system as a whole I think it might make prison Healthcare slightly incrementally better um which is great but it's not going to cure anything what we need to do is learn a lesson from some of our Western European friends and allies you know like like Germany and Norway and Sweden where they know they know

[26:50] that in order to reduce recidivism you have to offer Education and Training well we phased we phased out Education and Training 1979. and so you know time used to be when you go to prison and you're like okay well I can learn to be a plumber or an electrician or to fix engines or or something and we don't do that at all anymore so you know if you're a drug dealer and you go to prison for two years or

[27:22] five years or or 20 years and you're not given any educational training and you finally get out of prison well what are you gonna do you're gonna go right back to your neighborhood and sell drugs because that's the only thing you know how to do and so nothing is going to change you know why why did the Germans and the Norwegians for example have recidivism rates of about 15 percent and and ours are 50 percent they're the ones doing it right where

[27:52] they put you not in a prison cell but in a secure apartment with a kitchen so you live like a human being you know and then go to school during the day or learn your skill now we do have this thing called uh called prison Industries there was a there was a prison industry uh I don't even know what to call it a company at my prison they made fiber optic cable for for the U.S Navy well you know what there's a private

[28:24] company that makes fiber optic cable for the US Navy but if the prison is paying prisoners 10 cents an hour and the company's paying their people 20 an hour whose fiber optic cable is is the Navy going to buy they're going to buy the prison fiber optic cable but guess what it's all degenerates and pedophiles and drug dealers and and you know people like this making the cable and they don't give a [ __ ] if the cable works or not it's not like what they're gonna get a

[28:56] cut and pay from 10 cents an hour and so these prison Industries Drive legitimate businesses out of business and then turn out substandard products for companies to buy it's scandalous right wow absolutely um what are what are some of the things you well I'm being presumptuous but what are things that you learned while in prison in in retrospects I'm I'm sure

[29:28] you did a lot of analytical thinking and um what are some of the things that you really um kind of focused on and feel like you learned during that time well none of it's good like I say I wrote this book doing time like a spy what I found is actually it's the same conclusion that um that uh Professor Peter moshius uh of John Jay College school of Criminal Justice wrote

[29:58] about in his book in defense of flogging which is a uh it not to be taken literally the title he said that prisons in America are really nothing more than employment agencies for otherwise unemployable uneducated white men there's a reason why almost all of the country's prisons are in rural areas it's because uh there's no other industry there it's

[30:29] just Farms or mines and if you are you know former military and you couldn't make a go that and you either flunked out of the little local police academy or couldn't get into the local police academy in the first place by God there's a spot for you in the Bureau of Prisons and so you get these guys I I met prison guards who literally could not read they couldn't even read and and their barking orders at people

[31:01] and they're abusive you know and one of the other things that I learned was almost to a man if you can get these prison guards to start talking to you they'll tell you essentially the same story they're losers who have nothing to do nothing that they can do to make their lives better um their parents or at least their dads were prison guards in many cases their grandfathers were prison guards and they were bullied as children

[31:31] and so now it's their turn now they're gonna be the ones calling the shots you know what there was one guard who used to get in my face all the time and finally I said to him dude you're gonna spend way more time in this prison than I ever am you're the one that should be thinking about changing your life how do you dig that not well not no you know they always try to be Joe tough

[32:01] guy too I can't tell you how many times they threaten me with solitary and I you know I said to one of them I have gone nose to nose with Al Qaeda with Hezbollah with the Iranians and I'm supposed to be afraid of you please give me a little credit and that's always back off did you have to ever do solitary uh no they never had the guts they never had the I told them I have lived in far

[32:34] worse places in the world than your solitary unit not afraid of your solitary besides I could lose I could stand to lose a couple of pounds I I'm not afraid of your solitary you know one of the Italians was talking to a guard he was one of the notorious guards he was the only one that wore a stab vest because he was afraid because he knew he was such a dick he was afraid people were going to try to stab him so the Italian said this guy went by the name blue the nickname blue and he he

[33:04] always covered up his real name with a piece of masking tape so um he said blue where are you gonna be next quarter and blue said oh I'm gonna be in um in the central one housing unit and he said oh my friend John's in central one blue says oh the CIA guy I never mess with that guy and the Italian laughed and said yeah why not and he said because that's all I need he said I work my eight hour day and then I go to my car and CNN's waiting for me

[33:34] and I said yeah exactly Jake Tapper came to the prison to interview me I was on I was on NPR three times I was in The Economist and and Playboy and people and Time Magazine and the cover of the Week Magazine and I wasn't afraid of those guys they were afraid of me I actually I actually uh filed a Freedom of Information Act request on myself with the Bureau of Prisons just to see out of

[34:05] curiosity what it was that they had and they sent me back 220 pages and 200 pages of it was just junk it was my my medical records and my visitors list and stuff like that but 20 Pages was clearly marked at the top and the bottom in red it was stamped foia exempt do not release to inmate so either somebody was so stupid at Bop headquarters or they took pity on me on purpose

[34:37] but it was these memos that the that the warden was sending out before I got there warning the guards that I was coming and the best memo it wasn't even a memo it was just like like a flyer in these big block letters it says caution inmate has access to the media and that really set the tone for the whole 23 months they would make their threats and then I would make mine you know they would

[35:09] threaten me and I'd say yeah well let's see what Jake Tapper has to say about it how about that why don't we give him a call and see what he has to say and then they would back off did you have the ability to um contact journalists or did you have to wait till they contacted you no that's a good question so the the Bureau of Prisons regulations which I familiarized myself with the moment I arrived in prison were very very clear that prisoners have unlimited access to

[35:43] their attorneys and to the media it's very very specific and in fact even if you're in a Communications management unit or in my case a modified Communications management unit which is supposed to restrict your access to the outside world all you have to do um is on the envelope write legal mail exempt from exempt exemption exempt from inspection or medium mail exempt from inspection

[36:18] and so journalists know this right so they would write to me and put on the envelope um journalistic correspondence and then I would respond and say journalistic exemption media exemption so yeah I was in close touch with with journalists when I was in prison close touch the New York Times came Scott Shane from The New York Times uh Joby Warwick from The Washington Post I told

[36:49] you Jake Tapper from CNN came I gave three interviews to NPR Ariana Huffington came with two young journalists so I I was I was talking to the media a lot of surprise places CNN wanted to talk to you because you considering what you did they're usually not very anti-war no they're not they're very very mainstream very neo-liberal neoconservative but but

[37:20] Jake Tapper Jake Tapper was different Jake Tapper even asked President Obama in a in a press conference why he had insisted on Prosecuting me when I exposed a crime and Obama just walked away from the podium so Jake was different we've actually stayed in touch since I since I got home from prison he was one of those guys that he he told me he just thought it was wrong and so he wanted to reach out and stay in touch and and I got that I got that a lot I got that from Scott chain at the New

[37:51] York Times as well Scott wrote to me all the time and then Joby Warwick both before I went to prison and after I got home um said the same kind of thing this is conjecture but do you think if Obama was not elected that those charges would have been brought uh I do not John McCain uh got up on the floor of the Senate six weeks before I got out of prison and said that I had provided the country with a great national service and that the country owed me a debt of gratitude and then I I

[38:24] was home from prison only a week or two and I got a call from a guy from McCain's office saying um Senator McCain wants to know how he can be helpful and I said well President Obama confiscated my pension my federal pension I had 20 years of proud you know government service I really would like my pension back and McCain started the plan was to put an amendment in the National Defense authorization act and then he got brain cancer and

[38:56] died so it never happened but you know the funny thing is I'm a lifelong Progressive I mean I I was a third generation Democrat I'm no longer a Democrat I think the Democrats are are a war party the same as the Republicans are so um so I'm independent like independent independent same and um you know so I I wasn't the natural uh McCain voter I didn't vote for McCain and uh I didn't vote for Obama either but uh but

[39:28] McCain saw this for what it was it was a cover-up and uh and he wanted help wow that's pretty incredible um you don't know when you're gonna where you're gonna find allies you know this is something that I've known for a later in life you have to form strategic alliances with people with whom you might disagree uh you know 90 of the time I'll give you another example um I think that Fox News is um is the channel the news channel of insanity

[40:00] and I think that ninety percent of the time Tucker Carlson has views that are repulsive to me but by God Tucker Carlson is right on this issue and Tucker Carlson is right on Julian Assange and I've been on his show a dozen times and he can't possibly be more helpful to me than he has been so you never know where you're going to find allies yeah absolutely knows something that

[40:33] I'm talking to their audiences too like we don't have the same audiences so if you're passionate about something everyone should be exposed to it and talking to people who agree with you all the time is boring because and what are you going to accomplish when you're just talking to people who already agree with you yeah that doesn't make any sense yeah absolutely well I'm sure you know I kind of like you know forgot the obvious part let's talk about what you actually

[41:05] disclosed um and you did you were the first person in the CIA to um acknowledge that waterboarding was in fact a thing yes President Bush had um had said several things that were just they were just bald-faced lies and I knew he was lying um he said that there was no torture program period

[41:35] if there was torture he said it was the result of a rogue CIA officer I knew that that was just simply not true and so like I said you know I waited five and a half years for somebody to come out and say something and nobody did so I told ABC News and the New York Times three things I said that the CIA was torturing its prisoners I said that torture was official U.S government policy it was not the result of a rogue and I said

[42:07] that the policy had been personally approved by the president himself and so everything just kind of fell apart from there so they didn't um they took they took a word they didn't ask for any kind of tangibles whatsoever they just kind of took you at your word do you or no well no not really um I I wish that I could say that you know I was the first person ever to utter these words uh but I wasn't uh in the

[42:38] two years before I I went public the international Committee of the Red Cross issued a report saying the CIA is torturing people uh Human Rights Watch came out with a report saying the CIA is torturing people and Amnesty International came out with a report saying the CIA is torturing people and so I came out and I said they're right the CIA is torturing people now there was another whistleblower and we've never learned who he or she is I

[43:08] think I know who it is but I'm not going to say who went public before I did to say we have a secret prison system that there are prisons in a half a dozen different countries around the world nobody is supposed to know about it and they're so secret that in many cases the leaders of those countries don't know that there are secret CIA prisons in their countries these are handshake deals between the head of the CIA and the head

[43:39] of those countries intelligence services and their own elected officials don't know that they exist so word was kind of already out there that there's some bad [ __ ] going down seriously wow it's kind of regret not coming forward sooner well yes all the time I I've thought about it from the very beginning I I should not have been as as careful

[44:09] as I was now there was one mistake I made it was it was a very big mistake I should have hired an attorney before blowing the whistle I should have had that attorney sitting next to me when I blew the whistle instead I I was forced to be reactive and I I waited until I blew the whistle the government fell on my head and then I went out and got an attorney that was a mistake and and I I worn other whistleblowers or would-be whistleblowers hire an attorney first

[44:39] have the attorney sitting next to you before you say anything so that was a mistake but otherwise yeah I should have done it sooner I wish I had done it sooner are there other things that you can share publicly that that was going on within the CIA well there were several things that were going on in the CIA that I believed were all criminal activities and they and they've all since been revealed uh of course the obvious is the torture

[45:09] program the the other thing is the secret prison system but one thing that that we really haven't had a national discussion about is rendition and extraordinary rendition there's a big difference between the two rendition is easy rendition is let's say you are from Egypt I'm just making this up you're from Egypt and so I catch you in Pakistan a rendition is I send you back to Egypt now

[45:40] they're not going to be very nice to you when you get back there right there you're going to have a tough time you may not survive that tough time but they're going to do stuff that is clearly illegal they're gonna they're gonna attach electrodes to your genitals they're gonna maybe rape your wife in front of you they're going to do all different kinds of things an extraordinary rendition is again let's say you're Egyptian and I catch you in Pakistan an extraordinary

[46:11] rendition is I don't send you back to Egypt I send you to Morocco or Israel or you know Indonesia and I don't tell representatives of your government that you're that I have you and that you're in another country literally nobody knows where you are nobody and you're probably not going to survive that either that's an extraordinary rendition wow and it

[53:09] until we sent a drone that killed their cousin or killed their dad or killed their sister and then they wanted to make Jihad Against The Americans sure wow happens all the time right wow um what are some of you know the things that you learned being an intelligent officer that you have taken

[53:40] to apply um in in life as of now oh yeah that's a great question the most important lesson is education education education and economic development listen every one of these guys told exactly the same story they were from some isolated Village in their country um most of them were illiterate um they they wanted to get married but what man would want his daughter to

[54:11] marry some uneducated guy with with no uh you know no job prospects I wouldn't want my daughter to marry some uneducated illiterate jobless homeless guy and so the local Imam told them what are you doing here in this Village you should go to Afghanistan to make Jihad against the Americans because we'll pay you 500 a month and if you're martyred we'll give your your parents a 500 martyrdom bonus

[54:41] you don't want to stay here and then when you come home you'll be a hero and then you can get a wife and they were like well I got nothing else going for me I might as well just go make Jihad Against The Americans and then John caught them in some safe house someplace in Pakistan so you know one of the things I learned was if we were spending money and I don't mean to sound like some air-headed you know peace Nick I mean this sincerely if

[55:11] we would spend some of the money that we spend on you know so-called defense which is really offense on things like like International education programs and economic development digging water wells or building electrical grids or something to put these people to work and put them through school then maybe we wouldn't have all these problems with terrorism and you know it's it's humorous when you

[55:42] were describing how they um lack of a better term get people to join Al Qaeda it kind of sounds like the same process as the Army honestly it that it's exactly the same process as the Army and I'll go on further it's exactly the same process as the Bureau of Prisons you know uh what do you want to do here if you want to stay in this isolated stupid Village in the middle of nowhere then at least you should come work for the prison you can beat people up and

[56:12] hit them with your stick and kick them and send them into little cages and solitary confinement and if the prisoners are women you can rape them and nobody's gonna rat you out come on we'll have a lot of fun it's the same idea wow absolutely well I I can't believe it's been an hour already this is I I feel like I could talk to you forever oh and I'm supposed to tell you um by one of my friends we are in

[56:45] Pennsylvania as well so she's that you're a Pennsylvania yeah yeah I am New Castle PA where are you located I'm in Harrisburg oh okay not far I was in FCI Loreto which is halfway between Altoona and Johnstown right right that's awesome we don't get as many uh pencil tuckians that are uh that that awesome I'll tell you one funny thing somebody just for fun during covid on uh on Facebook they they made this post

[57:17] um uh say something about yourself that is controversial and is generally not cool you know something like that and I wrote All right I'll admit I am prejudiced against Amish people I am I admit it I grew up in a heavily Amish county and they're just not very nice people [Music] I know I'm by Lancaster I know I get it

[57:48] you know I get it um yeah I mean that's true that is very true um something you would like the uh viewers to take away from this interview oh thank you for that um I would like them to take away something that I learned ex post facto uh and that is that you know at the CIA and not just at the CIA but in many organizations and at many points in life

[58:20] our culture our society wants us to believe that that life is a shade of gray or it's Many Shades of Gray and in many cases that's just simply not true some things are black and white they are right and wrong at the CIA they're not going to teach you morals they're not going to teach you ethics you have to go in with your own personal uh set of ethics and you have

[58:51] to acknowledge that some things are black and white they're either right or wrong and if something is wrong you've got to say something you've got to say something nobody ever wants to be the first be the first it's worth it your children will respect you and you'll be able to sleep at night absolutely and and um is something about Assange I know

[59:22] you're a huge supporter and especially everything you've gone through I know it upsets us but I can't even fathom um what it does to you to see what is happening to this man right now um so yeah do you want to speak a little on on why you're passionate about Assange and this case against Julian Assange is a very very slippery slope whether you

[59:52] like Julian or not whether you agree with Julian or not you have to acknowledge that he is a journalist and even if you don't agree that he's a journalist you have to agree that he's a publisher right he exposed war crimes well if Julian Assange as a publisher is prosecuted for Espionage for doing his job and for for exposing war crimes to the American people then every journalist in America is going to be subject to an Espionage Act

[1:00:24] prosecution for doing his or her job that is not what our founding fathers envisioned it's not what the Constitution tells us so we have to stand up for him let me add one other thing about Julian Assange when Julian first was incarcerated at belmarsh prison which is a maximum security penitentiary in South London he would write me letters and he would say do me a favor call this lawyer and tell him that call this other lawyer and tell

[1:00:56] him this call this guy and tell him I need an article about that and it was just a list of things to do the last letter I got from Julian was one sentence long and all it said was please pray for me they have broken him to the point where I'm not sure that he can survive this so we've got to be militant in our determination to help Julian Assange not just for Julian but for the

[1:01:29] Constitution's First Amendment absolutely wow that's heartbreaking and please also we all need to stand by Stella give her our support um she's talked about the boys the other day and it was just absolutely heartbreaking it's heartbreaking it is yes I mean that's a whole another hour conversation about what the CIA did to him in the in the Ecuadorian Embassy and

[1:01:59] this nonsense he's held he's held in solitary confinement in belmarsh maximum security for the last three and a half years on a bail jumping charge it's just outrageous absolutely awful yeah we definitely uh solidarity with Julian all the way um and and also um why don't you give where people can find you and also be exciting um Assange event coming up thank you Joy um I'm on sub stack uh John kiriaku my

[1:02:32] full name I'm also on Twitter and Facebook uh but substack is where I try to put everything I just got back from Cuba a couple of days ago and I I've written a series about what uh how U.S policy is screwing the Cuban people to um on Sunday this Sunday in Washington is a big event an anti-war event that just by virtue of of Word of Mouth I think is going to be a very very big deal and then we had something called the

[1:03:03] belmarsh tribunal a few weeks ago uh about Julian Assange it was held at the national Press Club there's going to be a mirror event in Sydney Australia on the first of March or 2nd of March something like that anyway big big event in in March follow uh follow Stella uh Morris on on Twitter and Facebook she she has all the latest from Julian and um and take to

[1:03:33] the streets absolutely that is so exciting I'm looking forward to all your posts about that um in Australia as well that's so exciting um John I cannot thank you enough you've been on my like future top five lists for like over a year no I I appreciate the invitation very much thanks for having me absolutely absolutely and thank you guys so much

[1:04:04] for watching um smash the like button smash subscribe um so thank you guys so much uh tune in Monday for another uh postmortem breakdown and much love to everyone thanks again John thank you thanks everybody bye-bye
