Title: Ep. 5740 - John Kiriakou on Vault 7, Robert Grenier and Bi
Show: Scott Horton
Date: 2022-07-09
URL: https://youtu.be/4GQPPZRxxQY
Duration: 1:11:00

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[00:03] [Music] all right shall welcome to the scott horton show i'm the director of the libertarian institute editorial director of antiwar.com author of the book fools aaron time to end the war in afghanistan and the brand new enough already time to end the war on terrorism and i've recorded more than 5 500 interviews since 2003 almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scotthorton.org

[00:35] you can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at [Music] horton youtube.com all right you all on the line i have got john kiriakou he used to be a cia analyst and then he was a cia officer operative type and then he went to prison for saying some true things about their torture program they don't like that if he tortured people he'd had full immunity you know but talking about it

[01:06] that'll get you in trouble and he's a writer now um oh i i forget i'm sorry uh correct me in a second about your show um and and where it's on and when um i should get but um he is the author of surveillance and surveillance detection a cia insider's guide how to disappear and live off the grid a cia insider's guide i sure hope you're not just entrapping people on that one they say that you're once you're cia you're always cia even after they betray you and put you in prison um

[01:37] lying and lie detection a cia insider's guide very very interesting doing time like a spy how the cia taught me to survive and thrive in prison i know a couple people who've read that and really liked it and then here's the one that no i've read a few of these um i read this one reluctant spy my secret life in the cia's war on terror and the cia insider's guide to the iran crisis of course gareth really wrote that one um all about iran which is beautiful and perfect um and uh not as good as

[02:08] manufacturing crisis but pretty close and then uh the convenient terrorist with the american heroes certifiable american hero whistleblower uh another whistleblower joseph hickman um about abu zabeda or should i say the abu zubaidas um right involved in our terror war uh and man uh here we are sticking up for another whistleblower as you ought to be and this guy's name is joshua schulte and i think we've covered him on the show at least once or twice

[02:38] uh he is accused of leaking the vault seven cia league right to wikileaks so welcome back to the show first tell me about your show since i screwed that up and left that out of your bio and then let's talk about joshua schulte here sure um i've got a show monday through friday on sputnik radio uh it's called political misfits it's from 12 to two you can hear it at sputnik news.com or on rumble we're banned everywhere else so you can't hear it anywhere else 12 to 2. now

[03:10] well i'll go ahead and ask you because i know how people are with their silly little feelings and emotions and stuff like that have you sold your soul to vladimir putin in exchange for some paper federal reserve notes here no um i haven't you people ask me this all the time and i'm always happy to to answer the question when when sputnik first approached me now five and a half years ago to ask if i wanted a show i turned it down and then they came back six months later and they offered it again and i said look if i work for you guys i want the freedom to say anything i

[03:42] want no holds barred and i want the freedom to to criticize anyone i want including vladimir putin they said done i said would you be willing to put it in the contract they said yes and they did and so i speak freely in fact on the day of the invasion of of ukraine i said that i was opposed to cross-border operations that any country launched if the united states had invaded a country i would protest that i understand why they did

[04:13] it i disagree with them doing it and i urge the russian military to retreat back to russia so they let me speak my peace nobody ever makes any complaints well that's good and good for you for you know standing by your principal there and you know obviously you're interested in telling the truth to the american people and you got to eat too and i think it's fun that's just as you said as long as you're willing to sit here and virtually well in audio form look me in the eye

[04:43] and tell me i don't give a damn dude i say whatever i feel like just as i always did and that's good enough for me for sure and you know i never hold it against anybody who goes on rt or goes on sputnik i used to go on there when i lived in la about 10 12 years ago i used to do rt sometimes i would do press tv a couple of times and then well press tv censored me when i talked about iran's role in baghdad they didn't like that so that was the end of going on there and then with rt like i always appreciated the fact that they would give a voice to american

[05:14] political dissidents who deserve a voice who absolutely should have a chance to be interviewed on mainstream tv news all the time and just are not allowed to at the same time though they ain't doing it because they care about us and no no no it is kind of it is tainted in a way that like you know all my anti-american imperialism is not on russia's behalf believe me it's on america's behalf and i don't like the appearance of the conflict of interest there but but as i say that's only just for me and also to drive my wife

[05:45] completely crazy because she hates russia so much um but um but i don't hold that against anyone else who goes on russian media including people who i know like you are american patriots and don't give a damn for russia other than an a decent respect for all of humankind but that's it you know that is it you hit it on the head good and look um i i remember you telling me about being in prison how you got along with the mobsters because well they get along with the cia they hate the fbi but they've got a relationship going back with the cia but

[06:17] it's not just that it's that they're very patriotic and they look at cia officers as really be in the front line and protecting the country in that sort of naive way that most americans do and that's why they loved you so much is because yes you know that is what you personify to them is that you're in it what's your interest in this is protecting the life and liberty of the american people same as in your oath as always you know there was a there was a a line in the sopranos way back when where uh they were asking tony to

[06:48] provide some counterterrorism information and he was reluctant and one of them said your daughter she goes to colombia does she get there using the bridges and tunnels and you know that's really what it comes down to i'm still in touch with those guys you know they've invited me to a couple of parties we met up in atlantic city uh there there was a mutual respect that uh that continues it was it was eye-opening yeah man um all right and of course it'd be the if anybody's blowing up the brooklyn bridge in new york we all know it's the fbi robert mueller and his

[07:20] thugs you know exactly um they're the ones that run all these false flag operations that's why we need the cia to protect us from the fbi and that's why we need the marines just to protect us from the cia that's right um anyways so listen um let me ask you about this vault seven thing because you know it's funny the way this has gone um not unreported but you know mostly uncovered and it hasn't gotten quite the controversy about it even though yesterday really if i remember it right this is a huge revelation even to

[07:52] you know um people like myself who you know i've been interviewing the likes of james bamford since long before ed snowden you know what i mean i'm interested i've always been interested in that kind of thing but this showed that the cia is essentially just as capable or at least just as well equipped as the nsa or the fbi when it comes to violating the privacy of the american people which is really incredible like we did not know that did we or you did maybe we did not know that the cia was as

[08:23] deeply involved in technological development um as they are we did not know that they could rival darpa or nsa in the development of new cutting-edge technologies that can be used against american citizens until the vault seven revelations yeah so tell us what's in there remind us yeah you know vault seven wow where do we even begin what was in this information these were really the crown jewels of of the cia mike pompeo

[08:53] called the vault 7 revelation a digital pearl harbor that's how serious the cia or seriously the cia took this revelation and they they've zeroed in on joshua schulte who was a kind of a he's probably on the autism spectrum he's a he was a cia hacker you know somebody that the cia employed to hack into foreign systems he didn't get along with his co-workers he didn't get along with his supervisor and so they they

[09:24] zeroed in on him as the suspect he has always denied that he was the guy that released vault 7 to wikileaks and in fact he was originally put on trial last year um the jury hung on most of the counts on two of the counts something that we call process felonies or throwaway felonies like making a false statement or or obstruction of justice he was acquitted of those and so

[09:55] he's being retried right now in the southern district of new york and in fact i believe that the case is going to the jury on monday i've been trying to follow this on on twitter because like you say scott almost nobody is covering this you you have to really seek out reporting and um and it's these you know bloggers and and minor independent journalists that are covering this thing uh schulte schulte i think is making a serious mistake in that

[10:26] he's representing himself he got rid of his public defenders and he's been representing himself now i'm going by only what i'm i'm reading coming from it's called inner city press on twitter at inner city press and what they're reporting is that he's actually done pretty well in holding his own but i'm not seeing the other side i'm only seeing schulte's side for example the judge said today that he was going to

[10:56] finally issue jury instructions and schulte asked for the judge to order the cia through the prosecutors to say whether or not they have what is called closely held information um that includes recipes for hot chocolate for example because at the cia all of us and i mean literally all of us had a very bad habit

[11:28] of classifying literally everything so if i sent my wife who was also a cia officer a text a classified text through the system or a classified email and i'd say hey do you want to have lunch today i would classify that at the secret level secret no forn why because because everybody does it and then she would say yeah let's meet in front of the deli and she would classify that secret well everything's classified so schulte is saying look because everything is

[11:58] classified then nothing is classified everything is overclassified are you classifying a hot chocolate recipe if so is that considered to be national defense information remember the espionage act under which he's being prosecuted is so old it was written in in 1917 that it doesn't even mention the term classified information because the classification system wasn't even invented until the 1950s it mentions only national defense information and

[12:30] nowhere in any statute is the term national defense information uh uh uh is explained or described right we don't really know what national defense information is and so uh this is what schulte's saying that that he didn't do it first of all is is argument number one second of all even if he did do it the government has never really explained what national defense information is and so the statute is

[13:01] unconstitutionally broad so i guess we'll see sometime next week what the jury thinks about this uh in the meantime this guy has been held in absolutely absolutely inhumane conditions uh at um well do you know i'm sorry john but do you know if they have demonstrated that he was involved in this at all i mean it sounds like the way you frame it there is quite different from many of these other whistleblowers it seems in doubt whether he's the guy or not like we knew thomas drake did something and we knew that

[13:31] bradley manning did something there you know yeah and i went on tv and did it for for everybody to see sure but he claims that he's um that he's not the guy in fact there was an fbi agent on the stand for for much of the week this week um saying you know he was asking this fbi agent did you take this hard drive off my desk yes uh did you look to see what was on the hard drive uh i tried why didn't you see what was on the hard drive it was uh encrypted or password protected we couldn't crack it okay

[14:01] well then that's it so there's no proof that he actually did this but they're saying that he was such an [ __ ] and he was such a malcontent and couldn't get along with anybody and then they fired him that out of anger and spite he went and did it now scott they also did something else the prosecution did something else that i think is part of a a strategy um they charged him with multiple counts of child pornography

[14:33] and those charges are not being heard in this trial they've kept them aside and i think they've done this for a couple of reasons first of all they charged julian assange with sex crimes of course and those charges were eventually withdrawn they charged matt to heart with child pornography and then when when matt de hart's attorney said to the judge look we've not received any uh discovery at all about these child pornography charges then the justice

[15:04] department said well there actually wasn't any child pornography but what they do now they did wait wait they did say that they conceded that oh yeah no we don't have any evidence for that we were just making that up yeah and in fact he was never he was never tried on any child pornography charges well i mean him not being tried is one thing but them saying to the judge ah yeah now we were just bluffing about that essentially is something else entirely and they tried to cover themselves by

[15:34] saying that when they had first confiscated his hard drive they had reason to believe that there was child pornography on the hard drive and then there wasn't and so they needed to update the charges so they ended up dropping those child pornography charges okay so that's i mean that is different than them saying well we're not sure if we can get a conviction on this for one reason or another and saying that actually no we have no evidence of that thing that we said that's a pretty big climb down from them you know he i talked to him last weekend and he told me that they that they literally ruined

[16:06] his life with the accusations oh yeah dude that's the worst thing you could falsely accuse somebody of man absolutely somebody's guilty of that then they deserve whatever you can do to them but if they're not oh man that's so unfair to do to somebody when he was first arrested this is matt to heart um his attorney reached out to me and said look you know i know your feelings on pedophiles you you've written about pedophiles but he goes matt to heart needs your help and i can guarantee you he is no pedophile and it was only because of that that i

[16:37] reached out to the guy and then i started to really follow the case and um they just lied about him they just lied and and now i'm sorry who's to heart that's his lawyer no no matt de hard is the uh the army whistleblower oh okay i'm sorry i forgot which whistle did he blow there oh now you put me on the spot and i don't remember uh what got him what really got him into trouble was at the first sign of of a problem with the military he ran to

[17:08] canada and then the canadian sent him back here and so he was held without bond because they said he already fled once and they were afraid he was going to flee again i see but he's still he's still engaging with attorney he's finished his prison sentence he's home but he's still engaging with attorneys to try to clear his name but this is what the justice department does that there's this whiff of sexual impropriety right oh well julian assange he forced himself on these women matt to hart uh had uh child

[17:41] porn on his computer uh great sorry uh josh schulte had child porn on his computer well did he because he denies adamantly denies that there is any such thing on his hard drive and if they had child porn then why didn't they try him why why break up this case yeah it doesn't make any sense well and sure it is uh great character assassination there beautiful because what it does is it separates you from your natural allies

[18:12] and supporters right all right well man i i found this uh this twitter feed which apparently i already follow inner city press um and i can see where this guy you know is in the courtroom tweeting all of this out yeah it's very impressive actually i i paged down too quickly i should have looked more carefully at what the last thing was he says um okay he he dismissed them until monday yep yep so it's over for today

[18:44] uh at least as far as that goes now and on the vault seven i mean this is where we learned about marble cake which was you know i'm sure they changed the name of all these things but sure this is where the cia can hack into a computer and also i guess automatically right there's with a couple of clicks they can try to frame somebody else and make it look like it was somebody else who left their fingerprints behind yeah and i mean they could watch you through your smart tv which sounds just like either orwell or bs but it's true it's true you took the words right out of my mouth they can hack into your

[19:14] smart tv more frightening is they can hack into the computer system of your car and they can actually force the car you know off the road into a tree off a cliff all different kinds of things and you know andy greenberg i believe is his name yeah from forbes magazine brilliant computer genius he went and put all that to the test and showed that it was correct wow that they could do it and of course look i got to bring it up because what the hell man i ain't trying to be sensationalist about it frankly i really

[19:46] am not but it there's reason of course to suspect that that was what happened to michael hastings and you know there could be something to that now i have to say i mean just a lot of people were automatically suspicious about that now i'll fast forward to the end my conclusion is that that's not right and that's because his brother gave an interview to their family friend who was a journalist that's like an hour and a half long interview that you can read where he just explains everything about what was

[20:17] going on and he had severe ptsd and was having a meltdown at the time and his brother didn't think for a minute that it was murder his brother just thought that right he kind of went out there and did it and and death by speeding you know suicide by speeding is a thing especially if you're from central texas then you know that you know veterans up at colleen fort hood uh get on their crotch rocket and hit 150 and hit the bridge and whatever you know happens all the damn time right and so anyway um so i got to settle for

[20:49] that however like i have to say it is true and i believe the man and pretty sure he told me this himself i don't know on or off the air and it's years ago now but it's absolutely in the book that the sas guy that was palin around with stanley mcchrystal and michael flynn and their team in the afghan surge that he told hastings right to his face if you trash us in this article i'm gonna kill you jeez and that hastings did not take it as a joke at all and that like in the

[21:19] room walked the crystal and hastings said hey this guy just threatened to murder me like just now and the crystal said all right i'll take care of it walked him out of the room and then gave the guy a dressing down supposedly for his ears anyway or something like that and then it blew over and that was it but it was a credible threat man you'd have to take that as a credible threat and boy did hush get them good in that article that was the one where he quoted them directly trashing obama and biden which meant that

[21:50] mcchrystal had to resign and and leave the war and and and flynn had to go become head of dia and leave the war ii and all the rest of them got scattered to the wind from that or whatever so there's certainly motive there and he was a badass and he was always on the case of the cia and the national security state and he was working with the likes of barrett brown and all that project pm and all those things where they're trying to go after the private contractors that are you know these shadowy pseudo-intelligence outfits that sort of

[22:21] like the vice president's office just help them get around the law and do whatever they want and so like man yeah was was there and you know you correct me if i'm wrong cia man but it's not usually the american tradition that they kill journalists they'll kill sources they don't usually murder journalists no it would be exceptional but he was exceptional man and it's worth bringing up you know i hate to say it but it is you know i've heard rumors that his next story was about john brennan too for what that's worth i don't know if it's true

[22:52] or not but that's what i've heard yeah i've heard that too they don't they don't kill journalists um they they will try to entrap journalists to humiliate journalists you know it goes much farther to convince the public that somebody's a pedophile than it does to kill them and make them a martyr right yeah that's true and and now i'm sorry just to clarify again when i just want to make sure that i didn't uh space out and miss your point when you were talking about that other army guy that you brought up when you were saying the justice department has

[23:22] admitted they have no evidence you were talking about schulte's case correct yeah or you're talking about the other guy i was talking about schulte's case yeah yeah okay i just want to make sure that that was right yeah well my point was was that it seems like you know after essentially losing the tom drake case and in my case i've heard from several people one at the justice department and two at the fbi that they were furious that i ended up with such a short sentence that that once they got through our cases they started adding these

[23:55] either either sex crime charges or or allegations of sexual impropriety because it makes people that much easier to prosecute you know if you've got if you've got no supporters willing to go on the record for you because you're an accused pedophile or or to go to court and you know give interviews outside the courthouse because you're an accused pedophile it makes their job that much easier yep hang on just one second hey y'all

[30:42] the fact that it's so cold in the winter time that the water in your toilet freezes uh but they've got him in a cage an actual steel cage and then they placed the cage in a concrete cell the size of a parking space uh he's so cold at night that he wears five layers of clothing and um the the place is full of rats he's constantly chasing rats away

[31:13] uh full of cockroaches they don't give him enough food to eat i mean it's they're they're trying to break him really that's what this comes down to uh and and judges repeatedly have sided with him in his complaints to the bureau of prisons and the b.o.p just gives him the middle finger and says you know what are you going to do what are you going to do about it man it's just nuts the way that the well it's because of so many years in a row of no accountability whatsoever

[31:44] oh yeah whatsoever um for me um for these uh justice department officials and they just get away with bloody murder it's like when i was a kid they talked about i have to go to a turkish prison or whatever no you could say all that stuff about an american prison oh yeah that's just as bad well you're absolutely right absolutely right um and special administrative measures i mean that sounds very german right there i can't do the translation but um can you explain to me what that sounds like yeah

[32:14] well yes i hate to say it sounds either german or israeli i'm not sure which more seriously uh man so tell me um when were those things even invented like that's a pretty new thing is that just from the terror war or this century yeah it's it's just post 911 um so and that's that's where this comes in with the the parking space sized slot and all that correct yes um what they do in in a special administrative unit a sam unit

[32:45] is um several fold you're essentially in solitary confinement you're allowed out once a week sometimes twice a week depending on the prison to take a shower some of the prisons have exercise time one hour a day but what that means is at the back of your cell there's a small steel door and it opens up to the outside and you go through that small steel door into

[33:16] an outdoor cage that's that's ten by six or ten by eight and you can walk in circles in that cage like a dog for an hour and then you have to come back inside you're not allowed to you're allowed to receive mail but not physically what they do is is they'll open your mail and they'll scan it and then they'll put it on a on a tv monitor that's mounted to the to the ceiling in your cell so it's too high

[33:46] for you to get to it's out of reach and they'll they'll put each letter on the screen for five minutes you can stand there and read it for up to five minutes and then it disappears it's gone you can't respond to any of that mail you are allowed to have as as visitors only your attorneys and even then only once a month you're allowed to call your only your attorneys and depending on the prison it can be once a month or twice a month

[34:19] in the supermax you're not allowed to have books you're not allowed to have magazines or newspapers nothing nothing you know and these special administrative units are supposed to be for the most dangerous most murderous psychopaths in the u.s prison system and and they're not just for those people you know at the one where where the women they even invoke code words right it could be like al qaeda could

[34:50] say get me my lawyer but if you scramble it it means blow up the mall and so we can't let them talk at all right exactly right exactly right crap always based on a bunch of crap in the first place it's all crap yes you're exactly right i was in a modified sam that's what they called it so i was in gen pop but then my letters both my outgoing and incoming

[35:20] letters were read in advance and there was a five day delay on my outgoing and incoming emails and um and then people would send me books and magazines and instead of allowing me to receive those books and magazines i would get a a form letter from the warden saying that uh to allow me to have access to this reading material would disturb the smooth operation of the institution that was always the language that they used right you write in here about the process

[35:52] where if you try to complain they have the right to then respond you have to respond to their response but they always back date yeah they're responsible and never give you enough time to sabotage i mean look you're in prison right they could do whatever they want with you anything they want and if you appeal and by the way this guy's not accused well they they they did accuse him then they dropped the accusation that he was involved in any innocent person being hurt in any way he's accused of telling the american

[36:23] people the truth that we had the right to know that the cia is staring at us through our guiding tv set in real life i say that all the time the the american people own this information we have a right to know what the government is doing in our name and we also have a law in this country that makes it illegal to classify a crime and so if something is a criminal act the government is not permitted to classify it so revealing it in the media is not a

[36:56] crime right but they want to fight with us over that yeah and seriously like if this guy had held up the local tire store for 600 bucks i would be pretty hard on him you don't pull a gun on some guy man what are you doing right i can't do that lock him up i don't know how long but i ain't sad but this guy he didn't do anything at all no not not anything shameful that i could think of certainly not criminal no i agree i agree and you know this is why i i

[37:28] kind of feel bad i feel trepidatious that he's representing himself because i believe that his case is very very strong his defense is very very strong and you know there ought to be listen when i when i got arrested there were a-list washington attorneys just offering up their services for free one of my attorneys i had 11 attorneys and one of them was the head of white collar defense at aitkin gump and

[37:59] strauss the largest law firm in the world wow this guy was a genius and he never charged me a single dollar and i'm surprised and disappointed that there were not similar attorneys lining up in new york to represent josh schulte well you know what you'd made a real name for yourself and you have a very unique name and they didn't accuse you of the gravest sin of all right at the time so you're much less radioactive than this a little bit more

[38:29] of a cause celeb kind of a thing that they could get behind fortunately for you but it ain't fair the way that he's being ignored as you're saying here no i feel for the poor guy i really wish him the best hey and listen if we're talking about men you know what a sick police state the ayatollah comedies iran is you got this guy who's accused of being a whistleblower over there and he's got everybody knows he's got a congenital heart condition but they won't let him see a doctor

[39:00] you'd be like yeah the ayatollah is the son of a [ __ ] everybody knows that exactly but we're but we're talking about the united states of america here man exactly exactly you remember jeffrey sterling the cia whistleblower jeffrey sterling had you know a heart attack in prison he had ongoing serious health problems and they would not allow him to see a doctor yeah um they do i yeah it is it's it's

[39:31] as bad as it could be and you know i always say this and it sounds kind of trite maybe or something i don't know but like this is the way i think of it too is that it's like weird and ironic in a very dumb way in elementary school education kind of a way that like i am from here and also i really disapprove of the way things are going right now and and the decisions being made especially the ones being made in all of our name

[40:02] um the way that they do this stuff and and and how unnecessary all of this is and and frankly how easy it all should be to correct if people would all get on board with our same point of view on just a few issues like this it just doesn't have to be this way at all it's just crazy no let it go on like this no and you know it's it's not like this in most western european countries as an example where you know they they stress uh things like rehabilitation and education

[40:34] and then as a result they don't have the um the uh the levels of uh reoffense that we have the recidivism rates right it's nothing in europe like it is over here hey uh let's talk about gina haspel for just a minute here because um there's conflicting reporting and then there's your own experience and i was hoping for a little bit of clarity here um she had been accused in an article

[41:04] in um propublica yeah of overseeing the torture of abu zubaydah right and then they said oh man you know what sorry we got that wrong and we retract it cross that yeah and it was john kiriakou's fault that they got it wrong oh is that what they said well hold that thought for just one second hold that thought for just one second so then now there's new information that's come out in the trial of mitchell and jason or is it just mitchell or just justin or some kind of thing going on they're being sued um for their role in the torture here

[41:36] and they threw her under the bus one of them or the other did said uh that she was there during the torture of it's on the tip of my tongue nashiri i believe right uh-huh and so um that's not the same thing or maybe it is the same accusation and just one is tuesday and one is thursday i don't know the details but so and i'm glad actually that they threw you under the bus because that means that you're right in the heart of this story and have a whole story to tell about it and that's what i want to hear

[42:06] you know the washington post said back then that she had overseen the torture of abu zubaydah so i said in an article the washington post said she oversaw the torture of abuza beta then propublica wrote this article and said john kiriakou said she oversaw the torture of abu zubaydah uh and i had even missed that that started with the post yeah it's my eyebrow just went up when you said that i did not understand that

[42:38] was the yeah and and so i and i didn't know that you were involved i didn't remember that they said that you were the source i just i thought that they claimed that they had sources that they couldn't name that had told them that or something no and i said i don't have any idea who the washington post's source is that's why i said according to the washington post and you know i should have seen it coming because when i sent that article to the uh to the cia for clearance they cleared it and they knew it was false and they cleared it anyway and i think they did that to embarrass me but that's a different issue so then when it turned

[43:11] out that it was uh abdul rahima nashiti's torture that she oversaw propublica instead of issuing a one-sentence correction and saying we mistakenly said that she oversaw the torture of abu zubair instead she oversaw the torture of abdulrahim anashri they retracted the entire story so then i get a call from this idiot at npr steve inskeep and he says hey can you come on the show and talk about uh gina haspel i said sure

[43:42] so i go up to npr it's like very inconveniently located on capitol hill and uh and as soon as i get into the studio the guy starts attacking me and and i i fought back and i said look it's not up to john kiriakou to do propublica's fact checking for them i said according to the washington post this is what she did it's not my fault that the washington post got the name wrong and i said it's also

[44:13] it's also not necessary for propublica to retract the entire story the story was correct the only thing that they got wrong was the name of the person being tortured that was it and so the 30-minute interview of course they they cut it down to like four minutes and at least they put in you know they kept the fact that i had raised my voice and told stevenski to get his facts straight before he started pointing fingers at people i've never been invited back to npr by the way yeah and

[44:43] this years ago that this happened um so yeah that's where that's where we left it and now jim mitchell is testifying to try to save his own skin or to save his own pocketbook anyway saying that not only was gina haspel in charge of the torture program at the secret site the original secret site where abu zubaydah and nashity were held but she was also the chief at guantanamo which we had never known before

[45:13] that was news and i think he's at the point where he doesn't care what the cia clears for him to say and what they don't clear i think he's just coming out with it yeah well um i mean they all know there's just no accountability whatsoever like we already know too that she was uh helped me out the the chief of staff to the director when they decided to destroy all the uh correct she was chief of staff to jose rodriguez the notorious director of the uh

[45:44] of the cia's counter-terrorism center who went on to be the deputy director for operations and when he was promoted to ddo he made her the director of the counterterrorism center and that was she was in charge of the counterterrorism center from what years to what years it was it was right after bob grenier was fired let me think i'm going to say it was like 08 to

[46:16] 11 or 12 something like that yeah man yeah i got all these overlapping timelines in my head i gotta stop and think about that one for a little while um i don't remember it very interesting i also am very curious about grenier because i read his book where he talks about you know i i cite him heavily even though he would disagree with my conclusion i'm sure i cite him heavily in the story of how they let bin laden get away and his role in oh yeah and i

[46:47] don't think he did i think he he did his job yeah he did everything that he could yeah he was supposed to meet the bad guys on the pakistani side of the line when they came running but right when they came running he was ordered to stand down and wasn't allowed to to get into the fight at all and of course the delta force wasn't chasing him because they were forbidden from chasing that's right um but he tells that story and then he goes nah i think it was all just a fluke though yeah you know typical bureaucratic snafu these things happen um

[47:18] but uh you know what as long as we're talking about him um i want to bring this up because i think it's important you and i may have discussed this before but i got what biden's got and i can't quite remember stuff right anymore so you got to bear with me but um it's this great little w double whammy of a um anecdote about grenier right so he's on npr news and it's right after january 6th and he's making an analogy oh i remember this okay good okay so he's making an analogy between al qaeda and

[47:50] the taliban and the january 6th kooks and the broader american right okay so he says at the dawn of the terror war what happened was we got attacked by al-qaeda right so what we decided to do though in afghanistan from the very beginning we decided not to go after them that they would be a second i think he says they would be a secondary target and then our primary objective was sort

[48:20] of this broader milieu in which they were thriving meaning we're going to go to war against the taliban instead of the guilty terrorists that attacked us who were all holed up in a one square mile little hideout in the nangarhar uh mountains there and then but his point then so on one hand he's just completely admitting in it just about as plain as english as you can get that they really decided not to

[48:52] focus on al qaeda but to focus on the taliban instead not to you know um and and and just forget the pretense there um and then of course this broader point is so never even mind the people who rioted at the capitol for one day um that the enemy is the entire american right then because they're the taliban and and that it was smart for us to let bin laden go and focus on omar and friends instead and it's going to be smart when we don't focus on the proud

[49:24] boys and the three percenters and other fbi informants like that instead we're going to focus on delegitimizing essentially all right-wing descent outside of the republican party in this country and maybe inside it too and um so that's what a bastard that guy is i don't know how well you know him or whatever but far as his thinking goes it's just incredible to hear him say that stuff out loud you know what i mean you know what robert inskeep this reminds me that time we brilliantly decided to let osama bin laden go and that's what we should do here too

[49:55] right um i was i was grenier's executive assistant all right bill your guts kiriakou let's hear everything and and i worked for him directly in pakistan when i was the chief of counter-terrorism operations there uh grenier no longer speaks to me um and it's it's funny because after i blew the whistle he was still very supportive and then um i wrote my book and i said to him hey do you mind reading my my manuscript

[50:28] and just make sure my memories are correct so he said sure and i gave it to him and um and he gets back to me and he says wow you really were tough on a couple of these former colleagues of ours and i said yeah yeah i figured i'm just going to come out with it and tell the stories and he said yeah i think you're i think you're he had two objections and i said that i couldn't that that i knew that my memories were as i recounted them were were wrong but they were classified and the agency made

[50:59] me change some of the facts so i said yeah i know that those stories happen differently but this is what they made me write and um and he was fine with it and he and his wife would come over to our house and have dinner and we would go over to their house have dinner we went to a couple of ball games together and cookouts and stuff like that and then um i got a call from another agency friend of mine the day my book came out and uh and my friend said hey i just got the craziest call from grenier

[51:31] and i said yeah what do you say he said that you're a liar you're a disgrace that no one should read your book nobody should buy the book you're on i was on every news network in america the day my book came out no exaggeration and um and i and i made number five on the new york times best sellers list and i was like what i said he he reviewed the book when it was still a manuscript he knew everything that was in that book then i get a call from one of my closest

[52:04] friends saying that his boss had gotten a call and these are like very highly placed household names we're talking about got a call from grenade grenier and grenier's trashing me then i get a call from john kerry i was working for kerry at the time and he says to me i just got the most insane call from bob grenier and i said let me guess and i told him what i had been hearing and he said yeah and i said senator none of it's true i i

[52:36] don't i i for the life of me i can't understand why he's doing this i hang up with carrie and then i get a call from cnn and i was like all right i've had enough so i called my attorney i told my attorney he said we could we could file a defamation suit and i said well send him a letter because the the the guy's going to have an economic impact on me he's trying to get me fired and he's trying to kill sales in my book so i gave uh cnn an interview you know

[53:07] sort of on background and um and then i had them talk to my attorney and then they didn't report on it so a couple of months pass and i'm out in la with this friend of mine the first one who called me and we're having dinner with this with this big producer from universal pictures and as we get up to leave the producer says to my friend oh by the way we're go on that movie and my friend says which movie he said

[53:37] you know this movie we were talking about with grenier that air force one goes down in pakistan and the president's the only survivor and we're looking at each other like what are you talking about and then he said you don't know what i'm talking about do you and he said no i i've never heard of this movie and the producer says yeah grenier's going to be on as the script consultant and my friend said you know i have a problem with grenier now and if he's going to be a script consultant i'm not going to work with you on this movie

[54:09] and and then the producer says to me and he sure is down on you and i said yeah uh he tried to get me fired he tried to kill sales in my book i just don't understand why and the producer says oh i can tell you why he said he was ranting and raving when your book hit the best sellers list because he was afraid that you were going to make money selling the movie rights to it and he was screaming that was my story he was

[54:40] my assistant i should be the one getting movie deals not him and i said there it is jealousy rears its ugly green head that's funny give me just a minute here listen i don't know about you guys but part of running the libertarian institute is sending out tons of books and other things to our donors and who wants to stand in line all day at the post office but stamps.com sorry but their website is a total disaster i couldn't spend another minute on it but i don't have to either because

[55:12] there's easyship.com easyship.com is like stamps.com but their website isn't terrible go to scotthorton.org easy ship hey y'all scott here you know the libertarian institute has published a few great books mine fool's errand enough already and the great ron paul two by our executive editor sheldon richmond coming to palestine and what social animals owe to each other and of course no quarter the ravings of william norman grigg our late great co-founder

[55:44] and managing editor at the institute coming very soon in the new year will be the excellent voluntarist handbook edited by keith knight a new collection of my interviews about nuclear weapons one more collection of essays by will grigg and two new books about syria by the great william van wagenen and brad hoff and his co-author zachary wingard that's libertarian institute dot org slash books well you know what if he had uh named some cia torturers and gone to

[56:14] prison then maybe he would have had a little bit more notoriety and someone would ask him what he thought about something and then you know he asked me he had asked me before we had this falling out if i could introduce him to a ghostwriter and i said i said yeah i've got a buddy who wants to get into that and he's a terrific writer he used to be a reporter for the associated press i said i can introduce you so i introduced him and they could never come to an agreement so grenier ended up writing his own book but like 50 people read that book and then he couldn't understand why

[56:44] why he didn't get any big movie deal or syndication rights or something he never got anything he didn't make any money on that book yeah so well it's not that good of a book it's not it's not that good of a book i mean when i'm reading jawbreaker i'm going oh my god dude seriously in the hell you know what joshua set the standard for those cia memoirs yeah or kill bin laden by uh thomas greer about you know the delta force betrayal there the betrayal of the delta force there

[57:15] right by the way as long as we got some tora bora here i i gotta make sure this goes out on the record a couple times so it's out there somewhere that and and i wrote about tora bora in both books uh fools aaron and enough already and i i had read greer by the time i wrote enough already so it's even better there the treatment of it but um the thing of it is i had only read this i think last december if my brain works right but i definitely read it in the task and purpose there oh you know what

[57:46] it might have been last summer during the withdrawal from afghanistan everybody's kind of doing their reminiscences and things like this and here's what it was it was task and purpose and the story was the air force special operations officer from task force whatever it is i'm sorry um who was the man on the ground with the delta force the air force man on the ground with the delta force running all air traffic control at tora bora and maybe for all the nangahar province and by air traffic control that means everything

[58:17] right down to the lacing of the targets for the planes and everything else and in fact in the story this is a side note but it's interesting that there had been a friendly fire accident somewhere else in the country and the air force command ordered a halt to all air attacks anywhere in afghanistan for a period of time a week or maybe two weeks even except at torabora where we have this special operation to get bin laden and zwahiri there and we're going for it and so um not only was this guy in charge of bomb

[58:49] and torabora but he had every plane in theater including the british planes and whoever else at his disposal and he was making work of it and he was bombing the hell out of tora bora and then it just gets a throwaway line and no one even seems to notice but it's in there that then they called him and all the planes with him out on december the 8th oh my god and i'm correct wait a minute but and it's widely you know agreed by

[59:20] the cia the delta force and everybody else who was there who had anything to say about it that he got away on december the 17th wow and so all that we know about all that because and see i would even say my speeches and stuff i would say well look you know i i'll give them credit if that's what you want to call it that they did bomb the hell out of them they dropped the daisy cutter on them and they called in f-16 and f-15 strikes and whatever they could and they did bomb the hell out of the place and that could have killed bin laden

[59:51] um but the real point is they would not give the reinforcements that cia and delta were demanding at the time and that they did have available green berets rangers and marines available um and did not dispatch them um that's the real point but then it's like no actually i'm sorry i was giving them too much credit on even the air attack there what reason in the world would they have to call off the air assault on december

[1:00:21] the 8th i mean they were only really just engaged they'd been engaged for at that time only like a week and a day i guess right like they didn't get there until i think like even the second of december and start the fight maybe not even then it was or it could have been the very very end of november but we're still talking about just a little more than a week of air attack and then i don't know anyway and you know what i do have a slight doubt in my mind maybe it was the 9th but it was definitely not the 10th because i remember trying to count on my

[1:00:52] fingers like wait how many days was that before they got away you know what i mean so it was definitely it was definitely um the the eighth or the ninth but i think it was the eighth and so then nine days before he got away or may was the ninth and then eight days before it got away that's what i'm trying to think of anyway so there you go that was the terror war and they clearly i mean so tell me this you were in the cia then and really he kind of dug my question about telling me everything about this bastard other than what he did to you but i would like to

[1:01:22] know more you know about him but i want to know about if you were working for him at the time when all this was going on then what was your take on the cancelling of the attack on al qaeda in eastern afghanistan in that december there were a bunch of us who vocally actively opposed that decision you know our our position was the taliban as wrong-headed and misguided as it might

[1:01:54] be was not out there actively seeking to kill americans that the mission should be very simple very quick we go in and get bin laden and zawahiri and the handful of other people that we knew were in afghanistan at the time destroy the organization and leave simple as that plain as that and that's why um i went to pakistan because the idea was not to target the taliban

[1:02:26] it was to target those al-qaeda fighters who had crossed the border into pakistan the my very first day there the operation that i proposed was to pull all of all of the cia personnel off the border we had people you know up and down the pakistani afghan border like in its entirety pull them off the border and then relocate them into major pakistani cities just allow the al-qaeda people into the country because you know they're going to congregate in safe

[1:02:57] houses and they're going to feel like they're safe that they're protected there and then we hit the houses and we catch everybody all at once instead of just plucking them one at a time off the border none of us wanted to go to war with the taliban we didn't have any beef with the taliban yeah they clearly did have beef with al qaeda and you guys all knew that right oh yeah oh yeah definitely i mean it's in the woodward book that even on the national security council

[1:03:27] level i guess tenet even advised maybe he had convinced rice and he and rice took the position that we should focus on al qaeda and demonstrate to the taliban we're really not trying to bomb you guys really stay out of our way and that that was overruled mostly by rumsfeld he said no we want to make sure the war gets bigger faster we don't want the american people to think that oh look we killed the bad guys and now the war is over because that'll ruin everything exactly right they have the direct quotes in there that's what people don't

[1:03:59] understand about those woodward books man especially that that first woodward book but maybe maybe after that in the w bush years that first w bush book they just gave the entire national security council minutes to this guy oh we can trust bob he's fine and he just republished verbatim some of what you would consider if it was like leaked to wikileaks only you might be like whoa is that really real did rumsfeld really say it that blatantly and then bush agreed and what have you the way it is

[1:04:29] portrayed in there it's incredible to read it really is listen i was sitting at my desk one day grenier and i had a very small office or i mean it was just the three of us it was grenier the secretary and me and so his office was on one side of the room my office was on the other and the secretary was between us so i'm just kicked back in my in my chair with my hands behind my head looking out the out the door of my office into the hallway and i see bob woodward walk by all by

[1:05:00] himself and i said to the secretary am i imagining things or was that bob woodward that just walked by and she said no that was woodward and i said bob woodward just walking around without an escort like he owns the place and she said oh you didn't see the director's memo i said no what memo and she said he's writing a book and we're all ordered to cooperate with him i was like so that's what it's freaking come to which hell yeah man i mean thank god it

[1:05:32] just goes to show what bumbling incompetence that bush and his government are that yeah like yes he is a trusted confidant type insider with them of course but at the same time it's just the truth about what how evil they were and what they were saying didn't dawn on them how incriminating these block quotes are going to be if we give him that much stuff like they just thought it wouldn't be a problem and it's a problem a big problem that's

[1:06:03] right although you know when the book came out the politics were still worship bush or shut the f up you know that didn't change people don't remember this but i do that didn't change until katrina at the end of o5 and so then it was like okay maybe these aren't the most competent administrators in world history or something like that but before that it was like criticizing jesus or something just absolutely right yes so even when that book came out it was like there was some grumbling among some democrats but certainly never took

[1:06:33] off in the mainstream the way it could have yes because they really do discuss come on like it's not an absolute plain language like the most plain english but as close as you can get to them saying we have to let him go so that we can continue the war beyond here and on to iraq and the rest you know that is it it's great stuff um well so all right i'm gonna go back one more time tell me more about grenade and and uh stories of you and him in pakistan

[1:07:03] and i mean you did capture some spies there and things like that but uh so without going back to prison like what should we know about that period of time man that you would really harp on here yeah you know that period of time it separated people at the agency um there were the ones like kopher black and jose rodriguez and jim pavett and george tenet that that wanted to do literally anything

[1:07:35] and everything to kill bin laden and destroy al qaeda human rights be damned international lobby damned they wanted to do anything you know kopher black made that famous statement that he wanted there to be flies on bin laden's eyes and and would have his head on a pike and all this silliness the other side was you know the the grenier's of the world where grenier is very

[1:08:05] mainstream very neocon he he does as he's told but then at the same time he does have some respect for the law i can't believe i'm complimenting him but i sort of have to so the reason why he was fired you know he was fired when i i left the agency and as soon as i left grenier became the head of the counter-terrorism center he was only there for a year and he was fired and the washington post said that

[1:08:36] he was fired because um he had this concern for human rights and he was afraid that the agency was violating the law that was all [ __ ] that's what he leaked to the washington post the reason he was fired is that he was wishy-washy when it came to carrying out operations when you're the director of counterterrorism you know you've got to be the guy that makes the ultimate decision over whether

[1:09:08] people live or die and so he was getting these calls like every ctc director before him saying we've got the bad guys in our sights they're in a jeep request permission to launch and grenier would want 24 hours to think about it and mull it over and consult the attorneys and and by then the bad guys had gotten away and every previous director would say you know launch fire

[1:09:38] it was even worse when you know we're 80 sure that that it's the guy it might not be the guy it might be his brother you don't have 24 hours to consult the lawyers and call your priest and ask for guidance and whatever you either i don't know man you're talking me into liking this guy more and more now i know they kill 90 innocent people down there man they don't know who they're killing down there they do yes they do so yes they do that's why i said i can't believe i'm complimenting him he was

[1:10:10] right on those issues yeah um the only reason grenier and i and i are not friends anymore is because he was jealous over my book yeah it was as simple as that that sucks oh that's funny somehow i got steve inskeep from npr news in my twitter feed right now coincidence oh that's funny don't send him my best all of those guys are just insufferable robert siegel and all those guys it's almost like they're not real people but they are you know right yeah yeah right anyway man it's friday afternoon and i better let you go have a weekend

[1:10:40] um we could do this for a while and you know what i'm to re-read the reluctant spy that's the one i'm most interested in and um i don't remember it well enough um but i i'm so interested in the terror war era and not that it's over um but and i always will be you know unable to let all that stuff go so at some point and i think i've interviewed you about it like right after i read it the first time yes i remember that i think i may uh maybe i'll just go back and listen to that for the cliff notes but anyway awesome all right well listen man uh great to talk to you again thank you

[1:11:11] john great to talk to you thanks for having me aren't you guys john kiriyaku former cia guy now he's all right find him at sputnik every afternoon and he wrote this for the sheer post i don't think i said that at the beginning sorry the sheer post john kiriyaku a whistleblower's agony about joshua schulte accused of heroically leaking the vault 7 leak the scott horton show anti-war radio can be heard on kpfk 90.7 fm in la

[1:11:43] apsradio.com antiwar.com scotthorton.org and libertarianinstitute.org
