Title: The Bitter Truth with Abe
Show: The Bitter Truth with Abe Abdelhadi
Date: 2019-06-27
URL: https://youtu.be/q1Pt_pZgzqw
Duration: 29:00

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[00:00] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] greetings and salutations this is a Bob Dole hottie with the bitter truth where we may not have all the answers but we're gonna ask an awful lot of questions those of you that are not already can become a bitter pill at patreon.com forward slash the bitter truth and as always you can get some freshly toasted bumper stickers and

[00:31] stuff like that we are celebrating one year of the bitter truth so excuse me I may be doubling up on rewards and stuff like that I can't make a concrete promise because I just kind of thought of it so but today my guest is someone that I've looked up to for quite a while his name is John John Kiriakou if you've not heard of him you should know who he is he was a CIA analyst senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on counterterrorism he's been an expert on ABC News he's on

[01:01] all the channels these days he's I've seen him on RT Jimmy door everybody is talking to this man he's one of the first CIA anti-torture whistleblowers that was jailed during the Obama administration that's kind of key to note and we're gonna talk about that he's note a noted author he's written a reluctant spy the convenient terrorists the weird Wonderland of America's Secret Wars doing time like a spy taught to survive in prison we talked about that a little bit he's also a founding member of veteran intelligent professionals of for

[01:34] sanity and he's one of the founding members along with Bill Binney if you know who he is and John Kerry aku are you there I am thanks for having me hey thanks for coming on man I really am appreciative that you came on so so I know I know your times a little tight so I'm going to kind of just jump into some stuff initially obviously when when you came forward with the CIA torture of prisoners that was under the Bush administration correct yeah the torture took place under the Bush administration

[02:05] between 2002 and 2005 that we know of it may have dragged on longer but certainly the administration never admitted to it right and then and then and obviously you are already working in that arena correct yeah I joined the CIA in January of 1990 rose up through the ranks ended up as chief of CIA counterterrorism operations in Pakistan after the 9/11 attacks I was the executive assistant to the CIA's deputy

[02:37] director and and I left the CIA in mid-2014 waiting for someone expecting someone to say something about the torture program which I believed was so patently illegal besides being immoral and unethical I I thought for sure somebody would say something and they never did and I waited for three and a half more years and then finally I did and what what method did you take with that was it the

[03:07] some of the things that we've seen before for example like with that Snowden or with Chelsea Manning where you were able to get information out and then get it into the hands of of a reporter or how did that come about yes and no or maybe I should more accurately say no and yes I didn't take anything out I I knew that I would be accused of theft of government property which is a felony and falls under the Espionage Act if I had done that and I decided not to what I did is I talked to Brian Ross of

[03:41] ABC News he's the he's a multiple Emmy winning investigative journalist and I agreed to sit for an interview and I said three things in that interview I said that the CIA was torturing its prisoners I said that torture was official US government policy it was not the result of a rogue officer which is what President Bush had said and I said finally that the policy had been personally approved by the president

[04:11] which he had always denied up until then right right and then um and then explain how you got in the hot water yeah yeah well did you allow sorry sorry no you did you think you were kind of in the clear before the Obama administration and how did that kind of process begin yeah in fact I knew for for certain that I was in the clear the FBI as you might imagine started investigating me the day after that interview that was December of 2007 they

[04:44] investigated me for a full year until December of 2008 and then in December of 2008 they sent my attorneys something called a declination letter where they said that they had completed their investigation and they were declining to prosecute me they said that I hadn't committed a crime that the torture program was was generally known in Washington I had just confirmed the information rather than leaked the information so they closed the case

[05:16] three weeks later Barack Obama becomes president and my old nemesis John Brennan becomes the deputy national security adviser he then secretly asked the Justice Department to reopen the case against me which they did I had no idea that this case which had just been closed three weeks earlier was now reopened and for the next three years the FBI tapped my phones they intercepted my emails and they had three

[05:48] teams of FBI agents following me everywhere I went I was working on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the time right so it's not like I was involved in you know some kind of subterfuge or anything right but they they investigated me for the next three years I'll jump ahead and tell you that in discovery which we received after I was arrested in January of 2012 we found a memo from John Brennan to Eric Holder saying charge him with espionage and

[06:18] Eric Holder responded my people don't think he committed espionage and then Brennan wrote back and said charge him anyway and make him defend himself which is what they did they charged me with three counts of espionage one count of violating the intelligence identities Protection Act of 1981 and one count of making a false statement I hadn't committed espionage I hadn't made any false statement and I did confirm the name of a former colleague to to a

[06:50] journalist but the name was never made public right but that's what they that's what they hung their hats on you know at first I was looking at 45 years Jesus and and I refused to take a plea for a full year and they kept coming down in their offers my lead attorney told me that he had been an attorney in Washington for 50 years and he had never seen a justice department come down in their offers of time and I said well why are they doing that and he said because

[07:20] they have no case and they know they have no case so they waited until I went bankrupt and then they dropped four of the five charges but that's what they do you know they overcharged it's called charge stacking and they wait until you're bankrupt and then they say okay you take a plea for 30 months you do 23 months or we go to trial and nobody ever wins a trial and you're looking

[07:51] realistically at 18 to 24 years and my lawyers said it'll cost you another 3 million for us to defend you so you know what do you do comes an economic decision right well it was it the thing is the the accusation of making false statements it's been proven that there was an enhanced interrogation program so on what grounds did they say you were making false statements you know that's a great question and it's something that journalists never asked me in August of 2012 I remember sitting in the conference room at Akin Gump & Straus

[08:22] one of the most important law firms in the world right they have they have something like 14 thousand lawyers all over the world and one of the lawyers the one that I that I liked and trusted the most said you know we've been spending so much time on these on these espionage charges we've never even discussed the false statements charge he said what exactly is the false statement supposed to have been and everybody

[08:52] looked at me and I said I'm not really sure it had something to do with my first book when I when I sent my first book in for clearance I had written to a friend of mine I sent the book in for clay and I laid it on thick I said and they interpreted that to mean that I had lied in order to get the book cleared hmm but I never lied to get the book cleared right I mean the in fact they didn't clear the book they chopped out 90 pages

[09:23] so nothing no classified information was ever revealed in the book I actually went by the book and and I followed the rules right and they ended up they couldn't defend that charge anyway so they just they just withdrew it Wow it's crazy but the thing is I still spent you know a hundred two hundred thousand dollars defending myself just against that one charge right right and what makes me so angry to hear your story and I've seen you interviewed before and the

[09:53] the the the one thing that always just really chaps my ass is that this was supposed to be under the most transparent administration that was the promise you know oh listen that's the whole that's the whole crux of this story now you're gonna you're gonna make me do my spiel here I see a naja acted my blood still boils when I think about this you know Act was written in 1917 yes to combat German saboteurs during the First World War it doesn't even mention

[10:24] classified the words classified information because the classification system wasn't even invented until the 1950s right right and and the law was never even updated until the 1990s and even then the update was only technical in nature right so between 1917 and the inauguration of Barack Obama three Americans were charged with espionage for speaking to the media just in the eight years that Obama was president he charged eight people with espionage for

[10:55] speaking to the media hmm he was not the most transparent president in history he was quite truthfully the least transparent president history he was the enemy of transparency yep he was the enemy certainly of whistleblowers oh well eventually national security whistleblowers well he's the buddy of his donors I mean the one thing I hate about the Espionage Act is it does not allow for the public good you know when you're trying okay when you're trying a case intent is you know nine if you're in a bar and you intentionally walk up somebody with a bottle and hit

[11:27] him in the head and that was a plan that's first-degree murder if that's right if the death was the result of a fight and it was a crime of passion then that's a second-degree murder so intent is everything and so the the challenge I've always had the Espionage Act it does not allow for the public good you know they'll they'll put you or Chelsea Manning or Ed Snowden into this category of other spies we'll wait a minute wait what was their intent the intent was the shady this is a very important point that you raised there is no affirmative

[11:58] defense in an espionage Act case I've spoken a number of times with Ed Snowden about this he wants to come home and he's willing to go on trial and I urge him in every conversation not to do it right he says he's willing to go to prison if he can stand up in the courtroom and he can say why he did what he did and I said and they will never let you say why you did what you did no there's no affirmative a defense to the Espionage Act you're not going to be

[12:29] allowed to say a single word in the courtroom no and and and they do that on purpose sure you know they could easily pass an amendment saying okay well if somebody leaks information that is in the public good you're you're exposing evidence of waste fraud abuse illegality or threats to the public health or public safety which is the definition of whistleblowing the legal definition then you should be allowed to to go forward with that and you're not you're not allowed to do that Wow see any what's

[13:00] amazing to me is like and and and you know Ed Snowden I do not admire him from afar that he still thinks that that could happen I mean if we saw what happened to Julian Assange just a couple weeks back when they had 15 minutes of prepares defense he said the word not guilty that was it and the judge ranted about what a narcissist he was I'm like well is this the kind of kangaroo court that Ed Snowden can expect to get into I think so in this culture in this climate right precisely the deck is stacked and you know and I'm

[13:31] not to heap on but I'm gonna heap on these we've all been charged in the Eastern District of Virginia I was charged there Snowden was charged there his charges of course are still pending Julian's been charged there Jeffrey sterling the CIA whistle blowers charged there and judge Leonie brinkema reserves all national security cases for herself and so what what did she do before she before President Reagan appointed her to the federal bench she was a prosecutor in

[14:02] the Eastern District of Virginia and under her judgeship no national security defendant has ever won a case never when when I was sentenced my attorneys negotiated something called an 11 C 1 C plea very very unusual plea and what it means is the defendant has agreed to plead guilty in exchange for a sentence that the two sides negotiated the

[14:33] sentence is written in stone and it cannot be altered by the judge and she said to me at sentencing that this was the first 11 C 1 C plea that she had ever had and she's been a judge since 1986 and she said to me mr. kuryakin I don't like it I don't like it one bit if I could I would send you to prison for the next ten years and that told me that the whole case the whole trial and

[15:04] everything that we had we had worked on was just it was window dressing because she had made up her mind in the very beginning I was guilty because everybody is guilty and I was going to prison it was just a question of how long right she and that's the thing to use like we're when I hear when I hear stuff like this what what angers me is the autonomy we like like the other day some judge went to jail for for trafficking literally trafficking black teens into

[15:35] private prisons right yeah he got 20 years you got disbarred yes you're right that that should not be so unusual that it makes the news that should be so commonplace like I'm from LA I grew up in South Central so you know when you hear about drive-by shootings never made the news you know I they happen all the time we should hear about spoiled rotten DA's and corrupt judges getting busted right going to jail all the time it shouldn't be so rare right you're right you're absolutely right and but so so quickly

[16:05] because you know I definitely maximize our time together I want to get back to a little bit you were recruited in 1990 so we're about the same age that you're just you're just what out of grad school yeah I had just gotten out of grad school actually was one of my grad school professors who was well he was undercover as a professor he was actually a CIA spotter looking for people who would fit into the CIA culture he recruited me in grad school that was my okay that was my question that and he wanted me to ominous about it cuz they're one of the greatest films

[16:37] on the OSS CIA transition ever made was a movie called The Good Shepherd with Matt Damon yeah based on the novel yeah and actually I own it I must've seen it 50 times and brother my brother got me into it and anyway went you know when I saw it when I saw in your background like 90 I wonder if they got it I wonder if they got you the same way they got Matt Damon's character right so yeah you know and that's that's actually illegal now with passage of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act in 1993 they can't do that anymore but that's why it was such

[17:07] an old boy kind of kind of agency because what they did is they they took these senior officers or even retired senior officers they cast them all around the country to universities and and they just kind of sat quietly pretended to be professors they would teach a class here and there and then they would pick and choose who they like to they thought would be a good fit how did you fit into that culture because I know you come from a Greek background I mean I only asked as my dad's era but my mother's Brazilian I'm happy I'm first-generation American and and that

[17:38] you know I've had some stuff thrown at me especially by like you know waspy types right yeah and you being Greek it's like yeah I mean yeah yeah in the Northeast yeah because the place was still it was still a waspey white man's paradise over there when I first joined it wasn't until Bill Clinton became president that they that they actively began to to recruit it try to attract talented minorities and women I mean there was even a class-action suit get this as late as

[18:09] 1994 I had already been in the agency five years and there was a class-action suit by all female CIA employees saying that they had been passed over for promotion just because they were women and in the in a decision the federal judge also in the Eastern District of Virginia said that he had never seen a case where the defendant had so clearly documented his own crime as the CIA had done and so what they did is they issued an across-the-board

[18:41] two-level promotion for every woman in the entire CIA Wow yeah that's pretty bad huh yeah that's a lot of that's a lot of people a lot of people it's a lot of brood over the years yeah a hundred percent well and then at what at what point did you because none of these things well some of these things I suppose are epiphanies but at what point did you was it a development did she had a that was the crisis of conscious developer did one day you just had this epiphany you're going what the [ __ ] are

[19:11] we doing with these people you know what it was all post 9/11 until 9/11 I really did believe that we were the good guys and I believed that you know when you would read about this about this stuff these you know we human rights violations and such that they were that they were anomalies they were exception in in the 1990s when Bill Clinton was president the CIA underwent something called a call see you ll where they went through the files of literally every recruited asset in the world and if any

[19:43] asset had any history in his file of human rights abuses he was fired and they just got him off they fired fully one-third of their recruited agents around the world and I thought wow Bill Clinton is serious about human rights man this is going to be a new day for us and it was until September 11th and then it was like flipping a switch they went back to the bad old days of before the the Church Committee and the pike

[20:13] committee and they just started killing everybody next thing you know there's a torture program there's a directed assassination program there's an extraordinary rendition program there's a system of secret prisons popping up all over the world that nobody knows about it was like like I said it was like flipping a switch Wow yeah and then Wow and so so literally the switch flipped for you and you saw this happened you are in your agents in September limits made me as angry as it

[20:43] made anybody else in America right I wanted I volunteered three times before they sent me out as the chief of counterterrorism in Pakistan mmm I was ready to do literally anything that needed to be done to help to protect the country but then little by little I started seeing these things and I'm like wow wait a minute I've given one small example the night that we captured up as a beta hmm we also captured a lot of other al-qaeda fighters I'm not allowed to say the number but it was many dozens of al-qaeda fighters and we had we had

[21:16] caught so many of them we had to bring them into the safe house in in shifts to interrogate them and one of my colleagues brought a paddy wagon full of about a dozen and they were all wearing hoods and I said why are these guys wearing hoods and he said well they're al Qaeda we don't want him to see our identities and I said have you seriously never read the Geneva Convention is that what you're telling me or you've never read the Geneva Convention you cannot put hoods on them mmm take those hoods

[21:47] off right now the guy says I'm gonna report you to headquarters I said Oh believe me I'm reporting you to General Council because you just committed a war crime Wow take those effort hoods off Wow yeah and it was that night which should have been the greatest night of my career it was that night that I started thinking I think we may have fallen off the edge here right and that's just one small example did that make you sort of retrace our steps though because I mean about you know

[22:18] because literally at when we went into Iraq and you know I was one of the few people this is a bad idea like you know was a dick yeah how many dictators are in the world we can't go pop in the you know the cork off of every shitty bottle of wine and then deal with the Sal leave it alone that's right not our business let our problem let the people handle it and he had nothing to do with [ __ ] 9/11 and so you know the long the long and the short of it is it made me kind of retrace all of our misdeeds I mean you know the main talking yeah you

[22:50] know the Korean War you know Pentagon you know you can't talk about Panama without talking about to Rios and see you go or treat us rather so you go you go back so now I'm all the way back to the Civil War I'm like well [ __ ] was that even real I mean you know the folks the Fort Sumter thing might have been a total hoax just to get us into that war as Lincoln had to get us into that war yeah it right did it make you did this start to make you kind of retrace your steps as where are steps I actually I actually go over this in great detail in

[23:21] my first book I got back from Pakistan and on the strength of the Abu Zubaydah capture I get promoted and I'm named deputy director to the I'm sorry executive assistant to the deputy director so on my first day of work I go into the office and I say to him okay what are we gonna do and he said actually I can't tell you until you go up to the sixth floor and you have to sign a whole bunch of secrecy agreements so I go up there and knock on the door and I go in and it got all these secrecy agreements laid out on a desk and and

[23:52] and I said I'm here to sign them and he gives me a pen and I sign all six of these things and when I finished I said okay so what gives and he says well next year in February we are going to invade Iraq we're going to overthrow Saddam Hussein we are going to install our own puppet we're going to open the world's largest Air Force Base in southern Iraq and we're going to move all of our air

[24:24] assets out of Saudi Arabia into Iraq to deprive Osama bin Laden of the ability to say that we are polluting the land of the Two Holy Mosques and I was so dumbfounded I just stared at him and finally I said but we haven't caught bin Laden yet and he said buddy he said the decisions already been made and here's how it lines up he said on the one side you've got the office of the vice president the office of the Secretary of Defense and the National Security Council on the other side you

[24:55] have the CIA the State Department and the Joint Chiefs of Staff and guess which side loses and that was it nobody at the CIA wanted to go into Iraq we wanted to kill every last al-qaeda fighter on the face of the planet and we had to hunt down bin Laden but Dick Cheney said no no we don't care about bin Laden anymore we're gonna go into Iraq and we're gonna overthrow Saddam Hussein and we're going to take everything those people have dammit yep see and that's what makes me something

[25:26] oh you too Wyndham I went into an office in something called the Iraq Operations Group one day I went up to to pick up a briefing book and and the guy who had given me the the secrecy agreements to sign he was the director of Iraq operations so these are you know serious these are high-level people I'm dealing with every day and he's sitting there at his desk and he's got these Crayola colored markers and he's coloring something so I said

[25:57] what are you doing and he said oh I'm designing the new Iraqi flag and I said don't you think maybe the Iraqis should design the new Iraqi flag and he looks at me and he says not necessarily and I thought man we are in serious trouble here serious trouble this gets right back to the sykes-picot thing it's it it's at white absolutely it's too white imperialists on a bar napkin in in in the world yeah they're

[26:28] like okay well when when the Turks go down this is how it's gonna go down and and you know the first Shah was appointed that's why I when when the first Shah ran afoul of the Brits and the Russians with with what a nationalized Iranian oil in the 20s they were like well [ __ ] that and they removed him and installed the the second Shah who we know to be the Shah and and you know that whole story so I mean my point in all my point in all that is is we just don't seem to learn our last lessons from this colonial white

[27:00] imperialism and that's all it is you know like I mean all it is my dad's Palestinian right so I've heard all kinds of crap my whole life one thing that amazed me I remember in the 90s you know when everyone was about saving the Muslims I'm like yeah you really care what their why don't you cuz you know when they're brown Muslims you don't seem to give a [ __ ] I mean it's just it's just sort of that way and what you're what you're describing right now it's pretty much the sykes-picot thing yeah that's exactly what it is you know

[27:31] when when the Brits finally you know came to the realization that they weren't the global power they had once been we said oh no problem we can take it from here and that's exactly what happened yeah that's exactly and we became the reserve currency and that's why we can afford to do these stupid regime change wars because we keep printing the money to do it but you know a few years back we almost got voted out of being reserve currency but I think we I think we barely stayed in by two votes so you know Trump committing his [ __ ] all around the world pissing people off I don't know

[28:02] how the votes gonna go next time if they make the the Petru on their reserve currency we could be in for a lot of problems is that's something that I'm far-fetched on thinking but I think you're right well it's really it's really it's really too bad that I'm right because I'm just a guy with a day job as a Mike and that's it I don't have any I don't have any credentials I don't I didn't go to like journalism school or anything like that listen John I know um your times a little tight I know you host your podcast loud and clear is

[28:32] there anything else that you wanted it and I know you have a your website John Kerry aku com is there any else did you want to share with share with the listeners oh thank you no that's about it John Kiriakou comm I'm on Twitter and Facebook and all the usual stuff excellent excellent well what I'll do is I'll put you know I'll definitely put links to your stuff in the you know body of the of the show but again I'd loved I'd love to have you come on again as some of the some later point and as things develop I was gonna ask you about Daniel Hale but we're out of time but my pleasure but I'm happy to talk to you

[29:04] about Dan you know the next time absolutely well hey listen folks um my guest has been John Kerry aku noted author host of loud and clear again you could become a bitter pill by visiting patreon.com for just less the bitter truth and if this stuff makes you uncomfortable its supposed to sleep tight [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

[29:37] [Applause] [Music]
