Title: CIA EXPOSED: Whistleblower Reveals Torture Secrets with Jo
Show: Spartan Leadership Podcast
Date: 2024-07-30
URL: https://youtu.be/Jnq27oguBTQ
Duration: 50:00

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[00:00] you know the image that's been portrayed is is we sat around the campfire and said oh boy now we go get to torture people well we don't torture people let me say that again to you we don't torture people okay come on George we don't torture people College Shake Muhammad we don't torture people water boarding we do not I don't talk about techniques and we don't torture people now listen to now listen to me everybody forgets one Central context of what we live through

[00:31] the palpable fear that we felt on the basis of the fact that there was so much we did not know you're going to make me wildly unpopular now as it turned out I was the only person who went to prison I was just asked if I wanted to be certified in these enhanced interrogation techniques what do you think about that this is a torture program they can use whatever euphemism they want but this is a torture program he said you know how these guys are somebody's going to go over board and they're going to kill a prison do you

[01:01] want to go to prison be honest about it we don't want to respect human rights we really want to torture people at secret prisons okay then change the law and go on record otherwise this is a prosecutable offense you can't just shoot a 15-year-old in the head because he participated in a pro-democracy demonstration I'm going to have to report this to Congress I will not just accept like a leming what they tell me to accept I won't do it I know that they lie to us all the time and so I'm not

[01:33] going to accept after I got home from prison I was invited to a dinner at the Greek ambassador's resident a member of Congress showed up and he walked over and I said hi Congressman nice to see you again and he says John I got to tell you we were so worried about you and I said [ __ ] [Applause] this is Spartan welcome back to another

[02:05] episode of Spartan leadership and I'm your host Josh kosnik welcome to all you longtime listeners and we are excited to have you here today and if you have haven't listened before haven't tuned in before we are a leader to leer podcast trying to have as big of an impact on this world as possible and we have another high impact guest for you today in John kiraku I can't wait to get into this conversation I know Al has been so excited to have you on he's he's been geeked about it for weeks John so that

[02:35] makes me excited and so I I'm we're going to Dive Right In today I know you get to tell you've told this story numerous times and it's all over your P podcast and your social so I don't want to spend a ton of time here but I think it's worth us talking through a little bit of how we got to where we are today so what drove you to transition from being an analyst to a case officer at the CIA a couple things there there was one specific incident that that that made me pull the trigger but you know

[03:06] from when I first was hired at the CIA in January of 1990 people would randomly tell me that that I should think about being a case officer I never had any interest in being a case officer a case officer at the CIA is it's an operations officer that's the person who recruits spies to steal secrets and I was hired as an analyst working on Iraq not realizing that almost every analyst is is introverted I'm an extrovert and people thought that I would have success in

[03:37] operations but I was an analyst for seven and a half years and then uh frankly the reason I did it is I just got bored I uh I needed to write something called a National Intelligence estimate an niie which is a which is a fully coordinated paper agreed upon by literally everybody in the intelligence community on a specific topic to get promoted Iraq colon Saddam Hussein's

[04:07] next 12 months and um you know you write it and then you send an invitation to the senior Iraq analysts at at every organization in government that has an intelligence uh function which is like 17 or 19 whatever it is now and um and I said Saddam could threaten the curb Saddam could threaten the Shia Saddam could threaten Kuwait and after the coordination session which lasted uh

[04:39] four hours the National Intelligence officer came up to me and said that was the fastest coordination session I have ever participated in and I said I'm ashamed of this paper we could have just taken last year's niie and change the date because literally nothing changed in the last year and it was that moment that I thought I am wasting my time here I'm going to do something exciting and fun and interesting and then like

[05:10] magic a job opened up for a counterterrorism operations officer in Athens working against Arab terrorist groups think Abu nidal pflp pflp GC the libyans the dflp and they were looking for somebody spoke either Greek or Arabic as it turned out I was literally the only person in the CIA who spoke both Greek and

[05:40] Arabic and uh I went to the hiring officer who was a recently returned station Chief and I said look I I'm an analyst I have literally no experience in operations nothing but I speak both Greek and Arabic and I'd like to apply for this job and he said if you legitimately speak Greek and Arabic the job's yours he said it's a lot easier and a lot cheaper for me to take a linguist and teach him operations than

[06:11] it is to take an operations officer and teach him how to speak Greek and Arabic I can imagine went to Athens and uh changed the course of the rest of my life now what was the history there where where you learned Greek and Arabic was that college was that your parents what was I learned Greek at home growing up um I come from an immigrant family all four of my grandparents came from the Greek island of RADS and so we spoke Greek at home and you know like every Greek American kid I had to go to Greek School

[06:42] twice a week from like first grade to seventh grade and um and then I got a Bachelor's degree in Middle Eastern studies and um and served in Bahrain for a couple of years I served in Kuwait I served in Saudi Arabia as an analyst but the CIA taught me to speak Arabic by sending me to language school for a full year and so my Arabic was perfect gotcha this just came to mind so I'm already off track like I told you I would do uh

[07:13] um what's it like to be recruited by the CIA as as an American to be a CIA officer or as a foreigner to steal secrets well no I no actually that's a good distinction initi the initial part like how you know how because we see the movies and stuff of that nature but like us civilians that did have never been recruited to be in a role like that whether it be FBI CIA or anything like that what what's it like because most of us don't I would imagine the vast

[07:43] majority of the public none of us like we think about firefighter or police officer I wanted to play in the NFL that didn't work out I didn't dream about becoming a CIA operative what's it like to go through that process and if if you can impart some wisdom there entered into the CIA in a very unusual way a way that's actually illegal today thanks to the 1993 passage of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act but uh I've told this story many times so if I'm repeating it for you forgive me but I

[08:15] was in grad school at George Washington University I was studying under an eminent psychiatrist by the name of Dr Gerald post he he uh built himself as a political psychiatrist he had an MD a PhD in Psychology and a PhD in political science and um he gave us an assignment for a class that he was teaching called the psychology of leadership he gave us an assignment to Shadow our bosses for a week and then to write a psychological profile of our bosses I was working at a

[08:47] labor union at the time called the United Food and Commercial Workers Union in Washington and uh I was actually a little bit afraid of my boss he was a a mean big strong tough old school Union organizer he had had his back broken during a strike scabs attacked him and he was just a mean old man and uh halfway through the week that I was shadowing him we got into an argument and I called him a racist which he

[09:17] was and he got so angry he put up his fists and and I thought to myself oh I went too far and I I put up my hands to to block the inevitable you know punch and he says my penis is bigger than yours my penis is bigger than yours and I said you know what you're nuts and I quit and I walked out and I went back to my apartment while it was all fresh I wrote this paper and I concluded that he

[09:48] was a sociopath with Psychopathic Tendencies and uh I gave you know examples and put footnotes and I passed my paper into Dr post a week later I get the paperback and he gave me an A and below the a he wrote in the margin please see me after class so I went to see him after class he leads me to his office he closes the door and he says listen I'm not really a professor here I'm a CIA officer undercover as a professor here and I'm looking for

[10:19] people who might fit into the cia's culture I think you would fit do you want to join the CIA the truth is I wanted to do something in foreign policy intelligence International Affairs whatever and I was getting married in six weeks so I had no job and I said sure I'd love to join the CIA and you know there's a process you can't just pick up the phone and you're in you have to go through a series of tests and polygraph and background

[10:50] investigation and all different kinds of stuff but I found myself in the CIA man that is an amazing story well I'm glad we went there cuz if my audience didn't do their homework on you to hear the story that that was well worth hearing and wow as if anything about that comment about his penis being bigger than you had anything to do with what you guys were just approaching there that's just hilarious all right so let's let's fast forward because we got a lot to cover in a little bit of time

[11:20] during the operation that led to capturing I'm going to butcher this name so you'll have to Pro uh correct me but Abu zabai is that right Zaba Abu Zab Zaba all right so what was a moment where you had to make the tough call what like how did you navigate the stakes involved because you for those that give them a little backstory because this was a high stakes situation uh between water boarding torture all that different stuff and this is a high

[11:51] stakes Person of Interest for the United States so give him a little bit of backstory and then how what was the moment that you had this I got to make this tough call well in January of 2002 I became the chief of counterterrorism operations for the CIA in Pakistan so 911 has just taken place we're bombing torab Bora in eastern Afghanistan and Al-Qaeda Fighters are flooding across the border

[12:21] so my job was to work with P the Pakistani intelligence service and frankly with any other intelligence service that happened to be in is Amad to capture as many Al-Qaeda Fighters as we possibly could I had been there about 6 weeks and we got word that Abu zua was somewhere in Pakistan and we had to catch him well Pakistan is the size of Texas and they have 180 million people so to say he's somewhere in Pakistan go

[12:53] catch him I mean that's where do you even begin needle on a Hy stack doesn't describe it PR it so I came up with a couple of terrible ideas I won't bore you with and finally I said I can't do this by myself I need help so I asked a friend of mine from headquarters who was a targeting officer to fly out to Islamabad and help us help us sort of hone the intelligence that we were collecting all Source intelligence whether it's NSA or DOD or CIA or

[13:25] foreign intelligence Services just put everything together and try to narrow down his possible locations and he knew we were on his tail we learned later there were a couple times where we would break down a door and he he had been there two or three days earlier there were a couple times we broke down a door and there was a lit cigarette in the ashtray and warm food still still on the table so we were close and then finally the uh the targeting analyst told me after a period of weeks going

[13:57] through all this intelligence he said that he just simply couldn't narrow it down to any fewer than 14 sites I said we had never we had never hit more than two sites in a single night before we're going to need a big team so we flew in 36 FBI and CIA officers pallets of weapons and cash and night vision goggles ammunition uh secure Communications battering rams uh night sticks you name it it was on the

[14:30] plane to make a very very long story very short um one of the sites was no good it was a pay phone and a shishkabob stand so clearly there were all kind of people in the neighborhood using that pay phone but the shishkabob stand closed at midnight nobody's living in there so we dropped that from the list and then we hit all 13 sites simultaneously and in the one site where we thought there was an honest to God

[15:00] chance that you know he really might be in there there he was it was a site that had I'm not allowed to say the exact numbers still but it was it was well more than than a dozen people and so Abu Zeda his bodyguard and ass Syrian bomb maker that was holed up with him they climbed to the roof of the house and they began jumping to the roof of the neighboring house to try to escape now I had specifically told our

[15:30] Pakistani partners that we had to take him alive and as soon as they started jumping a Pakistani policeman just opened fire with an AK-47 killed the Syrian bomber instantly dead before he hit the ground shot abuaba in the thigh the groin in the stomach and um and then shot The Bodyguard through the leg but uh thanks to some fancy footwork by a Pakistani surgeon in

[16:02] the middle of the night and followup Medical Care at a Pakistani military base uh they saved his life and uh and I sat with him for the next 56 hours until he was finally flown to a secret site which then changed the course of the rest of his life so that's amazing so you go into this situation you get get the bad guy but now there's these really high stakes

[16:36] where now he's going to be potentially tortured for information right and walk us down that path of your moral compass along with what was considered standard protocol at that time correct yes so I returned to headquarters uh after six months or so seven months and I I just happened to be in the cafeteria one day and a senior officer from the cia's counterterrorism center which was my home base came up to

[17:06] me in the cafeteria and very casually said oh hey I'm glad I ran into you I meant to ask you do you want to be certified in the use of enhanced interrogation techniques I had never heard that term before and I said enhanced interrogation techniques what's that mean and he said excitedly we're going to start getting rough with the these guys and I said well what does that mean and so he delineated these 10 techniques that the

[17:38] CIA intended to begin using against abua and presumably against any future high value targets that we were successful in capturing and I said I said dude that sounds like a torture program to me and he said it's not a torture program the justice department signed off on it and then the president approved proved it I said uh I said give me an hour I need to think about it so in that hour I went up to the seventh floor of the CIA which is the executive floor and um I went to see

[18:12] a very very senior Cia officer for whom I had worked in the Middle East 10 years earlier I knocked on the door and I said I need some advice I was just asked if I wanted to be certified in these enhanced interrogation techniques what do you think about that and he said first of all let's call a spade a spade this is a torture program they can use whatever euphemism they want but this is a torture program and torture is a slippery slope he said you know how these guys are somebody's gonna go

[18:44] overboard and they're going to kill a prisoner and when that happens there's going to be a congressional investigation and then there's going to be a Justice Department investigation and then somebody's going to go to prison do you want to go to prison and I said no I don't want to go to prison as it turned out I was the only person who went to prison but I went back downstairs and I said this is a torture program I have I have an ethical and moral problem with it I think it's illegal and I don't want anything to do with it and I'm sorry to

[19:14] say that I later learned of the 14 people that they approached I was the only one who said no now on the strength of the abua capture I was promoted and I became the um executive assistant to the cia's deputy director for operations and in that position I got to see literally everything that the CIA was doing all around the world on August the 2nd

[19:46] 2002 we began torturing abuaba and we did not start with the least offensive uh technique and then work our way down to the rough toughest most offensive technique they just started with the worst and um it got so bad that you know we we used to jokingly called the doctor that was on staff Dr mangala because his only job was to keep aboba alive so that when he came to they could torture him some more

[20:16] it uh it was really ugly but you were involved with his capture but you were also unsure that he was the guy that you guys needed at the time right did I research that right you research that exactly right and I'll tell you in retrospect what happened was at the CIA we we believed at the time that he was the number three in al-Qaeda he was never the number three in al-Qaeda he had never even joined Al-Qaeda now he was a bad guy he worked

[20:48] along with Al-Qaeda and acted as something akin to a to a logistician or a facilitator he created al-qaeda's Safe House in pesha Pakistan called the house of Martyrs he founded al-qaeda's two training camps in kahar and Helmand uh provinces of Southern Afghanistan if you wanted to go into Afghanistan and make Jihad he would get you in if you were tired of jihad and wanted to go home he would get you out but he never pledged

[21:19] fty to Osama Bin Laden he never joined Al-Qaeda and he had no idea that Al-Qaeda was going to attack the United States on September 11 to make matters worse he had a first cousin who was also named Abu zua and so we're getting this intelligence Abu zua is in Pakistan he's you know training Al-Qaeda Abu zua is in Jordan he's gonna make an attack Abu zua

[21:50] got a student visa four years ago he studied in Montana Abu zua is here Abu zua is there he looked like a terrorist Superman but there were two of them and we just never knew that and so when we caught him I mean it was Banner headline news all around the world the president called Uh George Tennant called we could hear the executives cheering in the background of the of the call I mean and it all turned out to be just

[22:20] wrong but the torture proceeded proceed there were two uh contract psychologists uh James Mitchell and Bruce jessen who for The Bargain Basement price of $81 million um created the torture program for the CIA by reverse engineering the Air Force's sear program and they confidently said that uh if they uh if they were able to carry out these uh these techniques on abuaba that he would

[22:50] give us the kitchen sink we would save American lives and we would all live happily ever after and nothing could have been further from the truth he was 8 he was waterboarded 883 times in addition to a bunch of techniques that were never approved by the justice department or by the White House these guys were just winging it and you know here we are in in Late July of 20124 and Mitchell and jessen are still involved in civil suits brought against

[23:21] them and the CIA as recently as this week interesting so man so for those not catching this John has now become The Whistleblower and if you do any research on him he's done a lot of talks on that but this is the the aftermath of that whistleblowing was super intense for you and then you alluded to already that you

[23:52] were the only one of those 14 that ended up in prison and the only one that declined going through the enhanced torture program so as you think about that or as you how did you let me phrase this how did you find the strength because this is a huge leadership lesson because there's a there's a moral dilemma there's an ethical dilemma there's following orders at the highest Stakes order right where where as you just uh positioned you know this is going to save American lives is how it

[24:22] was positioned to everyone that was working in the field how did you find the strength to be the one that stood up against all against everyone else no that's actually not an easy um question to answer at the CIA the culture is such that they train us and teach us to believe that everything is a shade of gray everything in life is a shade of gray that can be justified

[24:54] because we're the good guys we're the good guys who operate in the shadows to keep Americans safe and the truth in life is that that is not true that some things are black and white some things are right or wrong and if we are that shining City on a Hill that Ronald Reagan once spoke about if we are that Beacon for the world of Human

[25:26] Rights and civil rights and civil liberties then by God we have to be that Beacon we're supposed to be a country governed by the rule of law by a living and breathing Constitution that other countries around the world should want to emulate and so I really believed that it takes work to be the good guys and that we have to live by the principles that we want others to live by so I went up against some very

[26:00] very powerful people in the CIA and I I got the scars to show it but the reason why I decided to do it was because in my heart I knew that I was right and they were wrong and I felt like I owed it to the country to be honest that's how old were you at the time John when I blew the whis I was

[26:32] 43 okay so I just turned 44 last month I was trying to think so I was thinking back to that time frame and I'm this young Macho Man and and I got to be honest my uh thought process at that time as we're learning about this and you blew the whistle and I hear both sides and I'm like ah [ __ ] those guys they're they're killing our people right and and but I was naive I didn't have the information that you had and I'm just a civilian I wasn't at War but again I was positioned or thought that hey they're

[27:03] they're taking American lives it's US versus them you know fast forward and I have a severe distrust of our government at this age and uh and through stories like yours and many others that I've had the privilege to have on my podcast and then just observing worldview and I also spent six years going to DC lobbying for the industry that I was in at the time and saw some of the shenanigans that you and I were referencing before the show uh with politicians and theater and all that stuff but uh so I formed a different opinion of our government and

[27:35] not being the good guys at all times uh or even a lot of the time uh and that's all changed that's why I was curious of your age but uh may may I interrupt you on that point because this is a very important point that you're raising and and it deserves a little bit of explanation so so we've got a law in this country called the federal torture Act of 1946 it specifically Outlaws exactly those techniques that we

[28:06] were using against Al-Qaeda prisoners in 1946 Josh we executed Japanese uh soldiers who had waterboarded American PS that was a death penalty charge to waterboard somebody in January of 1968 The Washington Post ran a front page photograph of a an American Soldier waterboarding a North Vietnamese prisoner Secretary of Defense Robert mcamera when he saw that picture on the front page of the post ordered an

[28:38] investigation that Soldier was arrested he was charged and convicted of torture and sent human rights where we write the human rights report every year for every country in the world with which we have diplomatic relations it's all just a smoke screen be honest about it we don't want to respect human right right we really want to torture people at secret prisons okay then change the law and go on record otherwise this is a prosecutable offense yeah yeah yeah the

[29:11] smoke and mirrors the lies like that's not leadership and especially as you find leadership and as you man and as people find out about it right as you're you've blown the whistle on certain things and there's other stuff that's just coming to light as we sit here today and I think Co was a huge Awakening on how the media has played a role in all of this and brainwashing all of us um it's it makes you lose faith and it almost M it almost makes me

[29:42] question it's like are they doing it on purpose now to the point where we lose all patriotism and nationalism isn't that the truth I have to agree I have to agree what I hate so much is being told what to believe not just by the government because you expect that from government but by the media as well and if you don't subscribe to the sort of the mainstream narrative you're an outlier maybe you're a conspiracy theorist maybe

[30:12] you're a little bit nutty and that's just simply not fair that's not the American way yeah we're allowed to have differ thoughts that's the it's what our country was founded on differ opinions coming together to find a common solution it's what I talk about in my leaders ship team meetings all the time is we need to remove ego from the room and focus on what is right not who is right that and so we need to do that more as a country but it's just so divisive right now so I want to ask a

[30:42] question around the three-letter agencies because you've been intimately involved for many years and and it just seems so I'm sitting here thinking I know that there's good people in those agencies and there's obviously people that have chosen to go the path of just following orders and I think back to co and I think back to if we get to a tyrannical government which one could argue that we're already there and uh what do what what advice would you have for someone that's a good guy at

[31:14] the FBI or good gal at the FBI good gal or good guy at the CIA that is in this ethical dilemma right now of following orders that they don't believe in have to go to the oversight committee you know I I didn't go to the oversight committees because I had kind of an unusual situation you're supposed to go to the uh through the chain of command when you are reporting on waste fraud abuse illegality or threats to the public health or Public Safety that's the internationally accepted definition

[31:44] of whistleblowing um but it was my chain of command that created the torture program and it was the Congressional oversight committees that approved of and funded appropriated funding for the torture program so I went to the media but by God we have to force the Congressional oversight committees to do their jobs the reason that they were even created for the CIA in 1975 the Senate select committee on intelligence and the house permanent select committee on intelligence was so that people

[32:15] employees would have somewhere to go and there would be these outside observers to ensure that the CIA was acting legally instead over the years the Congressional site committees have largely become cheerleading organizations for the CIA there are a couple of exceptions not many uh actually on the Senate side I can only think of one that would be uh Senator Ron weiden of uh of Oregon right now uh

[32:46] and I would add Rand Paul on the other side um in uh in the house yeah forget it they're all they're all you know they're all Marching In lock step with one another so when you've got a when you've got a federal whistleblower protection act that specifically exempts National Security whistleblowers from protection then you have to rely on the oversight commities to do their jobs and to protect the Whistleblower that's

[33:17] really the only thing you can do unless you want to go to the media in which case you're going to be charged with Espionage and probably go to prison yeah so well two questions that just popped to me on that do you think the uh Supreme Court ruling down the Chevron act could help as crazy as it sounds I actually do yes what we need beyond beyond uh slightly off topic Supreme Court decisions is we need to scrap the

[33:49] Espionage Act and rewrite it for those of your of your viewers who don't know the Espionage Act was written in 197 to combat German sabots during the first world war it has never been meaningfully updated it doesn't even mention the words classified information because the classification system wasn't even invented until 1952 it only mentions National Defense information and then never defines it so

[34:21] what's the definition of National Defense information it's whatever the CIA says it is yeah for a long time it wasn't so bad uh between 1917 and 2009 three Americans were charged with Espionage for speaking to the media just under Barack Obama eight of us were charged with Espionage for speaking to the media and then those

[34:51] arrests continued under Trump so the whole thing has to be scrapped and Rewritten and I'll tell you why I I say scrapped because because every time the Espionage Act is challenged in court federal district courts around the country rule that it does not have uh what's called a a provision for an affirmative defense so if you're a CIA officer you call the New York Times you say the CIA is torturing its prisoners you get arrested

[35:22] and charged with Espionage you are not permitted under the law to stand up in court and say yes I did it but I did it because torture is illegal and the American people have a right to know what the CIA is doing in their names you're not permitted to say those words and we need a provision for an affirmative defense otherwise presidents of both parties will simply continue to use the Espionage Act as a as a cudgle to Stamp Out political

[35:53] descent yeah absolutely uh I'll save my question on Snowden but uh that uh we'll see we'll see if we come back around to that I want to talk about your imprisonment because again for those that heard before you're the only one that got imprisoned and because you stood up and did your moral thing and I'm just thinking about the emotions of a person that's feels like what they're doing is right what they're doing is right and yet get betrayed by the country that they swore to protect

[36:25] and the people that they served d ly and then you have to sit it was 3 years was it two years 23 months so 23 months in a federal prison with those thoughts and emotions how how did you get through that John and and come on I had to work very hard to not be bitter um and I will say there were a lot of people out there who made it easy easier for me um the day after I blew

[36:55] the whistle I got an email from a a retired deputy director of the CIA and he said uh he said you've chosen a difficult road but I'm glad somebody did I only wish that I had had the guts to do it myself and that meant the world to me another thing was I started getting calls from active duty CIA officers wishing me well telling me I did the right thing

[37:26] telling me that I had a lot of support inside the building two of the FBI agents who were involved in my case involved in my arrest later called my attorney to apologize and and to say that the case was political and they had to do what they did um and then while I was in prison and I was in a real prison right first of all there's no such thing as Club Fed but I was in an honest to God prison with the double barbed wire and the guard towers and

[37:56] everything I didn't go to minimum security anything um but but I got 7,000 fan letters over the course of 23 months 7,000 people took the time to sit and write me a letter an old school letter to tell me that I had done the right thing and then as soon as I got out um well the last week that I was in I learned for example that the Chinese

[38:26] artist I way wayi had done my portrait for the Smithsonian institution of all things and um my God I got a call a welcome home call from Yoko Ono and and Oliver Stone and uh and Roger Waters paid my mortgage and I mean it was just crazy stuff but it it makes you realize that you're not alone as hard as that is you're really not alone out there and

[38:56] remember when I said earlier that I knew in my heart I was right and they were wrong that just confirmed it for me a difficult road but somebody had to say something and um in the end it was worth it I appreciate that is there anything that you any specific daily thing that you did that helped you stay above board mentally there were a couple of things that's a good question

[39:28] um some of it is silly uh uh Dr post who had recruited me into um into the agency and who remained a dear friend until the day he died in TW excuse me in 2021 um he told me do the New York Times crossw word puzzle every day because it's going to keep your brain fresh and he was right so I did I wrote a book while I was there in in long hand on a

[39:58] legal pad called doing time like a spy how the CIA taught me to survive and thrive in prison every once in a while the guards would find Chapters I was working on and they would tear them up and throw them at me so every time I'd finish a couple of pages I would have to mail them to my attorney and say please just hold them for me until I get out I ended up winning two literary awards for that book one of the big four that I won the the pen First Amendment award which along with the pen Falkner the Pulitzer

[40:31] and the Edgar Allen Poe constitute the uh the big four and um and I answered every single one of those 7,000 letters that's awesome that's good those three things are what got me through it well I want to ask that question because we all go through dark times and I I've been open and honest with my dark times with my audience and and it's those daily things because your mind's going to take you to

[41:01] some dark spots and um and we got to fight against it with some practical things to stay above board so I appreciate you Sharon so let's let's move a little to um now you're an author as you just mentioned radio host public speaker you got a lot of irons in the fire a lot of Demands for your attention how do you stay focused and continue to push for change in such diverse I now ex-wife th this whole episode led

[41:33] to the breakup of my marriage but my ex-wife gave me some really really great advice in those darkest of times um after my arrest and before my incarceration I was I was on the brink of doing something terrible and she said to me you have to embrace this you can't run from it can't hide from it and you're right so you have to embrace it and she said eventually they're going to

[42:04] move on to their next victim and they did they moved on to Ed snow excuse me Ed Snowden as you pointed out but she said if you keep talking about this your side of the story is going to be the side of record and she was right and it became more than just talking about my case it became an issue of talking about human rights and government overreach and Corruption and the role of the media in this governmental corruption and so

[42:37] funny as it sounds I've never ever considered myself a journalist but I guess I am and uh and it's led to things like a Swedish parliamentarian nominated me for the Nobel Peace Prize for example I just sent my eighth book to the publisher I speak all around the world thank you all around the world I teach at some of the most prestigious universities USC and and universities in Europe and it's just all worked out because because

[43:10] people I think people innately want to do the right thing and and they want confirmation that their gut response to some of these issues is the right thing and you know at the end of the day too Josh I say this with complete sincerity there's probably nothing in my life more important than my children respecting me and I wanted to leave a body of work and a legacy that they

[43:40] could be proud of and that my unborn grandchildren and their children can be proud of and so I I feel like I've done that I think you have brother that is and that's the honor and that's the big reason I do this podcast is I want multiple generations to have my voice and so yeah I love I love your thought process there I think someone in my audience would probably DM or kick me if I didn't ask this question what is uh so

[44:11] us civilians we we see things going in a bad bad route in some ways uh we don't like where our government's going in your opinion what's the what's the one thing that we could do because the we know like I know this and I try to preach it as often as possible is like the people are the power but only when we can agree that's why they play that's why they play the divide and conquer game so strong so in your opinion what can we do as civilians to continue to do something that's right to inflict some

[44:41] change on our country and government that we love so much something that's easy to say and very difficult to do it's that we have to take to the streets and we have to ride our elected officials they work for us they need to be resp responsive to us and I for one and I know you're going to agree I will not allow them to force me into the the mainstream right I will not just accept like a lemming what they tell me to

[45:13] accept I won't do it I was inside for too long I know that they lie to us all the time and so I'm not going to accept it and so I actually do take to the streets I participate in in marches and demonstrations all the time and don't be afraid don't be afraid to confront your elected officials I'll tell you kind of a funny story when I got home I had I've have had great amazing support from the Greek government and um after I got home

[45:45] from prison I was invited to a dinner at the Greek ambassador's residence and a member of Congress showed up and we saw each other and and he walked over and I said' hi Congressman nice to see you again and he says John I gotta tell you we were so worried about you and I'm just glad you're home and I said [ __ ] [ __ ] I said I asked you for help friends of mine asked you for help and you said I was too controversial so

[46:16] don't feed me that line now now that it's all over you should excuse me you should have helped me when I needed the help and you didn't so we have to ride them and keep on them they work for us that is correct 100% agree and I've been in those rooms and I've had them lie right to my face yeah yeah because they think either you're an idiot or that they can plate you just enough that you'll go away and leave them alone because they believe they're the ruling

[46:46] class and they're above us it's and that's it's they're here and we're peasants and again that's where I go back to that bugs life movie and the ants versus the grasshopper and if us ants ever figure out that we are the power and come together then we can actually inflict change right so last question because I know you got to go I always end the podcast with this question and we've talked about a lot of unpopular stuff today but let's try and narrow it down to one thing what's an unpopular belief that you hold to be true that you think

[47:17] others would either vehemently or just majority disagree with you you're G to make me wildly unpopular now believed we were the good guys I believed that this was the greatest country that uh that has ever existed that you know perhaps maybe even the Constitution was divinely inspired I just don't believe that anymore I don't I believe that we're deeply flawed we can be great we have the ability the

[47:47] capability to be great but we're not the greatest country that's ever existed we say one thing we do the other thing and then we just smile when people point out our hypocrisy I'll give you one last example uh when I served in the state department on rotation from the CIA I was the human rights officer in in a little tiny country in the Middle East called Bahrain and and this didn't happen but I'm using this as as a as a hypothetical example

[48:18] so as the human rights officer I would have to go into the the minister of interior's office and say your highness you can't you can't just shoot a 15-year-old in the head because he participated in a pro-democracy demonstration I'm going to have to report this to Congress in the human rights report okay but then imagine that a half an hour later the CIA station Chief goes in and says don't pay any attention to the human rights guy we want you to open a secret prison here

[48:48] and we'll give you $10 million and you can torture people and then just write up the transcript of what they say under torture and give us the the transcript what do you say well who's he going to listen to is he going to listen to John who says I'm going to write a memo and Report you or is he goingon to listen to the station Chief it's that hypocrisy checkes us a lesser country and it has to end yeah I 100% agree and I do believe

[49:20] that we have the capability based on our constitution to be the greatest country ever uh but we actually got to get back to the Constitution get back to our morals and ethics and uh come together as a country before we can ever consider ourselves the greatest country 100% right well you are a wealth of knowledge my friend and thank you for um your bravery and sticking to what you believe is right because in in this world today it is it is not easy and especially in

[49:51] the position that you were in uh I can't even imagine how difficult that was so really appreciate people like you that can stand on integrity and hold their word and then and even bear whatever punishment's going to come their way so I really appreciate you so opportunity hey hey any anytime like I had probably 50 more questions so we may have to do it again John but uh so Spartans share this far and wide John dropped some amazing knowledge both from the

[50:23] government side but also practical stuff for you to take away today and utilize today so share it far and wide use his advice use what you learn from him on morals and ethics leadership and integrity remember the good and great are the enemies of [Music] [Applause] possible this is
