Title: Discusses Ukraine Phone Call
Show: Rob Kall Bottom-up Show
Date: 2019-10-03
URL: https://youtu.be/RCZWqXneXfY
Duration: 30:00

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[00:01] and welcome to the Rob called bottom up show available on Pacifica Radio Network progressive radio network I Heart Radio iTunes stitcher SoundCloud and a top n news.com sled / podcasts big conversation is is about the whistle blower right now the anonymous whistle blower who reported on Trump's conversation with the president of Ukraine and there are some interesting debate over what the story is with this

[00:32] guy so I invited former CIA agent John Kiriakou who I know because he's a whistleblower and he blew the whistle on torture by the United States which ended up putting him in jail which is the way the United States treats a lot of people who cast light on the truth who are whistleblowers so it's great to have you back on the show thanks good to see you again oh it's a pleasure so there there's an interesting collection of

[01:02] conversations around this and one of the reasons I had you on was because some people are really criticizing this guy yeah and I just would like your take on this whistleblower is he really a whistleblower if he's working for the CIA and whistleblowing on the president people are saying that whistleblowers are people who whistled make blow the whistle on their employer you know I'm of two minds on this whole issue first

[01:33] of all the guy does does meet the definition of whistleblowing which is bringing to light any evidence of waste fraud abuse illegality or threats to the public health or public safety if you become aware of a violation of the law and you go to whomever your chain of command the Inspector General the congressional oversight committees yes that's the definition of whistleblowing but we don't really know anything about this guy and I'm not entirely convinced that it's one person and I'll tell you

[02:05] why in 1996 I was serving overseas and I became aware of a very large but illegal campaign contribution to the Dole presidential campaign and so I reported it I reported it to the CIA Inspector General they took the information they did an investigation they deemed it to be credible and they sent it to the Federal Election Commission end of story that's a normal whistleblower disclosure

[02:36] what we have here is a guy who became aware of the information we're not really sure how now it appears to be secondhand which is perfectly fine he went through his chain of command and then this Pandora's Box opened where from the chain of command his immediate supervisors it went to the attorneys at the General Counsel it went up through the the leadership it went to Gena has full it went to the IG it went to every

[03:06] Tom Dick and Harry it seems at every senior level of the CIA and then it went to odn eyes inspector general the odni inspector general according to the law is supposed to investigate it and if he deems it truthful he's supposed to send it to the oversight committees that's what the law says and that's how these things are investigated but it wasn't sent to the oversight committees it was sent to the Justice Department well the law doesn't say investigate it and then

[03:36] send it to the Justice Department for political advice and so you know on the one hand this seems to be inappropriate behavior on the part of the president on the other hand I will not jump onto the CIA bandwagon and and declare that it's the CIA that's the guardian of our democracy we just don't have the facts and I know what the CIA's like they lied about torture they lied about rendition

[04:07] they lied about secret prisons they lied about hacking into the Senate intelligence committees computer system they lie about everything so why should we take their word for this we've had this conversation before as a CIA agent you're trained to lie exactly everybody in the building is trained to lie you get promoted based on how well you lie so why in the world would I now believe them on this but you believe the whistleblower but not damn her I'm not even saying that I I mean if I take it

[04:38] at face value I'm really conflicted about this if I take it at face value and I concede that there was an analyst who had served at the White House at the National Security Council and this analyst believes that he came across this information okay then then I believe that he did the right thing by reporting it but then I believe that the agency as an organization did exactly the wrong thing by taking over the whole process you

[05:10] know I don't care what the CIA says that there's no such thing as a deep state that they have no beef with Donald Trump I don't believe any of that you remember you remember Chuck Schumer warned Donald Trump in 2017 of exactly this you can't mess with the intelligence services because they have nine ways from Sunday to ruin you and I think that's what we're seeing here so it's now I'm not clear that you you said that you thought

[05:41] there may be more than one person behind this whistleblower yes let me explain that I do not think this is one person I think this is a group of people being fronted by one person and it's because you read the whistleblower complaint and it does not read like a whistleblower complaint I went through the same analytic training at the CIA that this guy went through there's a certain writing style that the CIA beats in to you I still write in that style even though I've been gone from the CIA for 15 years and I've been out of analysis

[06:12] for 22 I still write in that style because it is just beaten into you this whistleblower report is not in the CIA writing style this whistleblower report was written by a committee and that leads me to believe that the lawyers had their chop on it the CIA leadership had its chop on it and that it was a group of analysts that each contributed to it so I believe that there is not one whistleblower I believe that there are many people who work support now yeah did you get a look at

[06:44] Caitlyn Johnstone's article yeah I sure did what's your response to that I mean she basically is brutal she she basically says this guy is the CIA guy CIA is horrible all intelligence agencies and people are horrible I mean pretty much and and and the other part of the article is we should be paying attention to the good whistleblowers like Chelsea Chelsea Manning and Ed Snowden and and those folks and you but but and Bill Binney and Tom strike and

[07:17] and and Jessica around it's jesselyn Radack yeah uh but she's brutal I mean she's brutal I tweeted the piece when it came out just because she said in so few words what so many of us have thought I had a I had a an experience at MSNBC two days ago that was it's just indicative of the situation that we face now where I went on MSNBC on to the re Melbourne

[07:48] show they never ran the clip they ended up Killian they killed it for a reason first of all they introduced me as former CIA officer and convicted felon John Kiriakou not a word about whistleblowing it was utterly irrelevant that I'm a convicted felon when they invited me to come on and talk about the whistleblower so what they wanted was for me to criticize the president and say how great the whistleblower is and how great the CIA was for going forward

[08:20] with this information and I told them what I just told you that we really don't know what the situation is yet we're getting bits and pieces some released from the White House some released by the Oversight Committee and some of it probably leaked to the press by the CIA so I said we really don't know if we should trust this whistleblower that didn't fit into their narrative another complaint that I had was following my arrest it took my lawyers especially jesselyn Radack one year from January of 2012 to

[08:53] Jay weary of 2013 to get CNN and MSNBC to stop calling me CIA leaker John Kiriakou and to start calling me CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou now see is CNN ever since then has called me a whistleblower and Fox for whatever reason has always referred to me as a whistleblower MSNBC still calls me a leaker and on the Rachel Maddow Show she referred to me as John Kiriakou who styles himself a whistleblower we've got

[09:25] the mainstream networks here that have their own agenda and are trying to promote that agenda regardless of what the facts are and regardless of what the information is when the facts change Wow yeah and then there's Adam Schiff now the word is that this whistleblower spoke to shift before we reported yeah that's the latest what's your take on that the whistleblower is certainly entitled to do so if you feel that you

[09:59] are not getting satisfaction in your home agency the law permits you to go to the oversight committees that's why the staff members have such high level clearances in the case of Tom Drake at NSA Tom went to his Inspector General he went to the General Counsel he went to the DoD Inspector General he didn't get any satisfaction and so he went to the Oversight Committee you can do that and a lot of whistleblowers do do that you know I thinking about Tom I I've had Tom

[10:29] on a couple times he went through hell on yeah terrible experience and I and I believe he's still really struggling he I do you think this whistleblowers gonna go through hell it doesn't I mean I I wonder I mean I mean if it Trump has his way he will but if Trump has his way the whistleblower is gonna be executed on a gallows on some military base somewhere of course that's never gonna happen but if this is a legitimate whistleblower

[11:00] yes I think his career is finished because look at it this way if you're a CIA manager what's to keep you from saying this guy ratted out the President of the United States what's him to what's to keep him from ratting out me or us as an organization you know he doesn't like a conversation that the president has with Ukraine right now what if he doesn't like the rendition program tomorrow what if he doesn't like you know something akin to a torture program what if he doesn't

[11:31] like hacking into the Senate intelligence committees computer systems whatever the the issue happens to be can they trust this guy they told me that one of my problems was I couldn't keep my big mouth shut when I went public with the torture program is that what they're gonna say about this guy but wait a second you you just a couple minutes ago premise that maybe this was a committee project and that other people that were talking back even earlier this is what I was saying we don't know is this a legitimate

[12:02] whistleblower is this a whistleblowing by committee or is this a CIA operation against the president we truly don't know now if it's whistleblowing by committee or a cái a CIA operation against the president he's probably not gonna be in much trouble correct unless they I'm sure they've got lots of black funds available so they could pay him off for the rest of his life and oh no but they do that kind of thing what they what I could see them doing is what

[12:33] might my guess is if he's already served at the White House he's either a gs-15 or he's an sis one senior intelligence service one so he probably already has the time in for retirement but what they can do is what they do so many people as a reward for a good long career is you make him a scholar in residence at whatever college or university he graduated from and you let him do two three four years there then he takes the full pension and he goes away quietly they do that all the time all the time

[13:06] okay but but so let's let's take a step back now and Trump is trying to destroy this guy and his backers and supporters are yes and some people on the left are too like I think Caitlyn Johnstone is is basically pretty negative about him yes what effect does that have on other whistleblowers I mean I've been involved with the whistleblower community for over ten years now and it's hard enough

[13:36] for somebody to make a decision to do what it takes to be a whistleblower which generally means destroy your life lose your job maybe go into debt for million dollars or more as you did look at it yeah so what if I mean all this media attention on this whistleblower it is it gonna intimidate is it gonna scare off whistleblowers we desperately need whistleblowers absolutely I agree with

[14:07] you on all those points Scott Cheney at the New York Times said that on the day of my arrest every one of the New York Times national security sources went silent and that's exactly what the goal is in 99% of these whistleblower cases that's why the prosecutions are so difficult I mean difficult for the whistleblower because the point isn't even necessarily take to have you sentenced to a long stretch in prison the point is to ruin you so that it acts

[14:40] as a deterrent for other people who might be thinking of blowing the whistle I can't tell you how many people former CIA people have told me that you know they thought about reporting on X Y & Z but then they saw what happened to me a million dollars in debt my wife takes off I lose my house I lose my job I lose my clearance I'll never work in government or national security again it's taken me all these years to get back on my feet nobody wants to live like that they actively ruin you that's

[15:10] all that's a part of the program nobody wants that so is there anything that can be done to flip this around so that this whistleblowers report and the response to it can actually encourage whistleblowers well it's kind of hard to say with a president who likes to just throw grenades into the middle of the room I will say that again I'm going to preface it if this is a legitimate whistleblower the CIA did the right thing in reporting

[15:40] the information Odie and I did not do the right thing by sending the information to the Justice Department it should have just sent it directly to the Oversight Committee and the president should have kept his big mouth shut so the the the mo for for reporting this kind of thing actually didn't work in this case and it didn't work because both odni and the White House decided that they didn't want it to work for though for the system to work it has to

[16:12] go exactly the way that the law calls for it to go otherwise there aren't going to be whistleblowers because people aren't going to want to take the risk so when the odni violated the law and went to the DOJ instead of Congress are there consequences for that no no the the acting D&I said that that this was unprecedented territory which is true and you know this is one of those laws in the books that will never

[16:44] be prosecuted just like over-classification is actually a felony and it's never ever been prosecuted nor will it ever be so no it's one of those things that's just going to be ignored and lost in the in the greater context of of this case what would you expect to see happen as this story unfolds in terms of the whistleblower the whistleblower I think

[17:16] is going to have to testify at some point and I would bet my next paycheck that it would be in a classified venue in a closed session that's the only way to get the information all of the information all of the background including what led to the writing of the report in the first place on the record with that said the Republicans are extraordin Merilee hostile to this whistleblower and i wouldn't be surprised if the whistleblowers identity is leaked that's what I would think if it's leaked then

[17:49] we we move on to an entirely different plane you know when I went public on torture in December of 2007 I got hundreds literally hundreds of pieces of hate mail and hate email but the FBI called me one day and said that they had three what they described as three credible threats on my life and and one of them actually mentioned my children and my address and so they urged me to leave town so I took my family to Cancun

[18:21] for a week and the FBI called and said that they had taken care of everything that they had interviewed these people they were just you know local lunatics and there was no real threat we came back well we're in a far far more politically charged environment now than we were in 2007 and if this guy's identity is revealed you know how many Pro Trump nuts there are out there I mean we see at campaign rallies Trump supporters beating up journalists and

[18:53] beating up protesters and the president egging them on what's you know you I watched your or listen to your interview with Kevin ghost Allah overshadow FX a great interview and Kevin's a great guy former editor at op-ed news by the way and you said that there's enough information already that probably people down at the CIA know who he is in five minutes you can figure it less than five minutes there are only so many oh my wait so it's it's not if we find

[19:27] out who he is its web yeah in fact I had a call last night from a CIA friend of mine who told me the name and I said my god is it is it out already and he said no but everybody in the building figured it out it only took but a minute right the New York Times article last week that described the guy was was easily enough information to identify them it just hasn't been leaked yet and I hope it's not leaked good luck yeah and so it's a him yes Wow

[20:00] well I'm not even I'm dying a curiosity but I don't want to mess up his life any more than it's he's got in store for him this was a major decision that he took to do this I mean he had to have known the risks before he went into it because there's precedent I'm sure he saw what happened to Tom Drake and Bill Binney and Chelsea Manning and Ed Snowden and me and you know I I spoke with an Israeli journalist years ago who wrote a book it was a psychological profile of

[20:32] four twentieth-century whistleblowers and he came to two conclusions that were fascinating to me one was that whistleblowers have a far more highly developed sense of right and wrong than the general public of general population right very clearly defined sense of right and wrong the other thing is that whistleblowers never make a financial comeback they believe in their hearts they do the right thing but then they're ruined financially and they never recover from it that's I

[21:04] would say that's true for government whistleblowers so I mean there are some whistleblowers in corporations for example where I can get rewards actually for damaged percentages of damages and things like that Protection Act yes yeah now Chuck Grassley has added his words what's your take on what he had to say you know you can count the number of you can count

[21:35] the number of Pro whistleblower members of Congress on one finger and that is Chuck Grassley the senior senator from Iowa Grassley was the author of The Whistleblower Protection Act he was the author of the National Security Whistleblower Protection Act he speaks every year at the national whistleblower Center's annual luncheon he's the only guy that's serious about protecting whistleblowers and you can't keep people safe with the support of one member of Congress well I mean I know I've been to a number

[22:06] of these luncheons and events and and he's not the only one but they're very rare you know there are one or two junior members of Congress I submit of the house but in terms of legislative authority only Grassley can push some of these things through the system and and get him signed into law that's why we have these whistleblower protection laws then what he did was he made an announcement getting behind this whistleblower but yes he did I mean he

[22:38] had to it it's his law the whistleblower invoked his law to protect himself so Grassley was sort of pushed into it now Grassley is not a member of the Intelligence Committee so Grassley doesn't have the the answers to the questions that we are asking as to whether or not this is a legitimate whistleblower he just has to sort of go with it until proven otherwise okay so I want to continue on the line of questioning that I had with you about what's going to happen with this guy you started off by telling us about what happened with you and that it'll be

[23:10] worse with him in terms of threats oh I think what else what what is the what's going to happen to him in terms of the media in terms of government in terms of in terms of government I think he's going to be okay because he did what the law called for him to do he went through the chain of command he's not going to lose his pension he's not going to get fired from his job if he's outed he's going to have some personal problems but I don't think he'll have professional problems with that said as I noted

[23:43] earlier there are going to be people inside the CIA that are going to question whether or not to trust him because he ratted out the President of the United States and otherwise you know the the the path of the whistleblower is a very very lonely one like I said any of us have gone bankrupt many of us have lost our families we've lost our pensions we lost our security clearances we lost our ability to work in

[24:13] government and that's with or without convictions that's just by virtue of the fact that you went public in the first place so I think that he desperately would want to see this remain within the chain of command and within the Intelligence Committee the Oversight Committee and that his identity never be exposed you know when you talk about it remaining within the chain of command that just doesn't feel like the regular whistleblower process though not at all it doesn't at all feel like the

[24:45] whistleblower process people ask me all the time why I didn't go through the chain of command they asked me this on MSNBC just the other night and the answer is an easy one you know on torture my chain of command created the torture program my chain of command implemented the torture program well why didn't you go to the Oversight Committee because the oversight committees approved of the torture program and then financed it so my only alternative was to go to the media so it's just impossible to go through the chain of command

[25:15] now you've speculated that he's probably a gs-15 or an sis one yes because of his placement yes any more about what kind of CIA operative or agent gets placed in the White House what are the criteria what is the experience what is the job there good question so the National Security Council has several slots in every geographic area that are reserved for CIA analysts they also have several

[25:48] slots reserved for for high-performing State Department foreign service officers and it's because the NSC is both a policy and an intelligence organ and so if you are a respected high-performing gs-14 or gs-15 you go to the White House for two years you might be able to extend it to three years and you generally come back to a promotion and that promotion would be to gs-15 or to the senior intelligence

[26:19] service sis level 1 it's a job that many many analysts aspire to and to make the senior intelligence service the internal rule is that you have to do a rotation in another Directorate and a rotation in the policy community so this is the policy rotation and it brings you into direct daily contact with the National Security Advisor the deputy national security adviser and frequently with the president himself and what's the job there it's coming up with policy it's

[26:49] using the CIA's analysis to better inform policy its the Nexus really of intelligence and policy and who would this agent be working with what other people well there are a lot of political appointees certainly at the NSC but generally he would be working with a pretty even mix of CIA State Foreign Service and DOD uniformed personnel and

[27:21] what kind of policy would it be working on would be some examples foreign policy I mean it's as simple as that so everyone has unique foreign policy and you got a you got to come up with it and come up with intelligence to support it no matter what it is now we've heard that there were 20 people in that phone call and I don't believe that I saw that and and I don't believe that for a minute usually there are four on rare occasions there are five people on that phone call

[27:54] you're going to have the Secretary of State the National Security Advisor the chief of staff the the NSC expert for whatever the issue happens to be and maybe if it's if it's somebody like Vladimir Putin somebody that important you might have the CIA director on the line as well but you know these routine calls they take place every day all day you can't have 20 people wasting their time on a call with a prime minister of

[28:25] XYZ country that doesn't make any sense and we're told that he so so basically somebody else who was on the call had to inform him I think so you know this is another thing that nobody's really discussing these memos they're called men cons memoranda of conversations they're write-ups of the call the president said this the Prime Minister said that and the president said this and the PM said the other thing these are usually very tightly

[28:57] held and they do not leave the NSC so the fact that a CIA analyst had access to one of these memos tells me that somebody at the White House gave it to her because when I was an analyst we never ever had access to write-ups of the president's conversations with anybody those were internal NSC documents not to leave NSC okay.i he told me you had to go to another yes forgive me it starts in

[29:28] three minutes any any final words you know this is a story that is literally breaking by the day it's hard to keep all the details clear but we really need to we need to read all these articles we need to come to our own conclusions somebody's lying and I'm wondering if it's multiple people who are lying so far it's gonna be a while before we get to the truth John Kiriakou former CIA agent whistleblower American Hero

[29:59] thank you for being on the show again appreciate the rock bottom up though thank you thanks for having me it's a pleasure it's always a pleasure to have you thank you thanks buddy take care
