Title: EP:22 [GUEST] John Kiriakou : Inside The CIA: Torture, Cov
Show: The Unfettered Speech Podcast
Date: 2025-12-09
URL: https://youtu.be/kopDfgn8Bas
Duration: 55:00

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[00:20] Welcome to the Unfettered Speech Podcast. I'm Patrick Sullivan. >> And I'm Leonard Goodman. Len, it's always good to see you. >> It's good to see you, too, Pat. Uh, and we have a very special guest today that we're excited about, and that's John Kiryaku. Um, an author and former CIA officer who holds the sad distinction of being, I believe, the only person sent to prison in connection with the CIA

[00:51] torture program. and he went to prison not because he participated in it, which he did not, but because he gave an interview, and he he can explain this better, but basically gave an interview to ABC News, which confirmed the existence of an official torture program. So, let's bring on John Keryaku and get to the bottom of this. Um, welcome, John. Thanks. Good to have you. >> Good to see you both. Thanks for the invitation. >> Yeah. So, do I have that right? And my

[01:25] and we want to go through this a little bit. We only have an hour, so we don't want to I know you've talked about this so many times. Um >> Sure. >> You um you were a CIA officer. you um had captured or helped capture um a targeted detainee named Abu Zabeda and were using conventional interrogation methods to get information from him. Maybe you could take the story from from there and give us a sort of a short

[01:55] version of um your interrogation and what happened um with that interro with that conventional interrogation of Abu Zeda. You bet. >> Okay. >> We captured Abu Zuba in Fisalabad, Pakistan in late March of um 2002. And uh I spent the first 56 consecutive hours with him. I I was instructed by George Tennant, the director of the CIA, not to leave his bedside. I was afraid

[02:27] I'd fall asleep, frankly. So I tore up a sheet and I tied him to the bed just in case I nodded off and and he was able to physically, you know, get up out of the bed. He wasn't. He had been shot three times. A Pakistani policeman shot him with an AK-47 and hit him in the thigh, the groin, and the stomach. But um you know, I recognized at the time as I was sitting there in his hospital room that this was a unique opportunity and I was going to try to engage him in conversation. So I did and he was talkative. Um, we talked about Islam versus

[02:58] Christianity. He recited poetry to me that he had written. Uh, we talked about his family. He he was very upset. He cried a lot. He said he would never know the touch of a woman. He would never know the joy of fatherhood. Uh, we talked about 911 briefly. Uh, he said he he never wanted uh al-Qaeda to attack the United States on 911. he wanted to attack Israel. Um, and like I say, I mean, the whole the

[03:29] whole point is you engage a person in conversation. You treat them with respect and uh and they respond to you. Now, he was taken off after these 56 hours, he was taken off to a secret site, a secret CIA prison. And um and after spending 6 weeks just recuperating from his gunshot wounds, he was interrogated by Ali Sufan, an FBI agent uh of Egyptian origin, who engaged him both in Arabic and in English. Now,

[04:02] I've said this a number of times, and I say it only half jokingly. It's like a kick in my gut to have to compliment the FBI. But if there's one thing that the FBI is really, really good at, it's interrogations. They've been doing them since the Nuremberg trials in 1945 and 1946. They have discovered through thousands of hours of practice that the only way

[04:32] to get suspects to talk to you is to treat them with respect. You engage them in a conversation. Perhaps you offer them a cup of coffee or tea, a cigarette, an orange, whatever. You ask them about their families. You engage them in a conversation. And eventually they're going to open up to you. Now it may take a day, a month, it may take a year, but eventually they're going to open up to you. At the

[05:03] CIA, we were not in any way trained or instructed in interrogations. And after Zabeda had been with Ali Sufan and the FBI at the secret site for a number of months, uh the CIA, for reasons that have never been explained, uh were able to get President Bush to order the FBI out of the secret site. They left the entire country, not just the secret site, because they knew exactly what the CIA was going to do, and they wanted no part of it. They

[05:34] didn't even want FBI personnel in the same country where the torture was taking place. And so as soon as the FBI left, the CIA began to torturing Abda mercilessly, I might add, using techniques that had never been approved by the White House or by the Justice Department. They were just winging it. Russian roulette and and putting him in a coffin and throwing cockroaches in there with him because he had this irrational fear of insects, giving him enemas, using hummus. They forced humus

[06:06] into his rectum. Um, they did all kinds of terrible things to him. They they held a drill next to his head and threatened to drill a hole through his head. They threatened to kill his family members. All kinds of different things. >> Were you present for any of this, J? >> No, I wasn't. I had been promoted. When I got back to headquarters, I was the executive assistant to the CIA's deputy director for operations. And so, in that position, I had access to literally everything that the CIA was doing around the world. And these cables were coming

[06:37] into a to a top secret compartment and and I was reading them as as they were coming in and then reading cables from CIA officers who were there saying, "Hey, I never signed up for this. I never I never said that I would participate in this." Or we had doctors on site that said, "Wait a minute. I took a hypocratic oath to do no harm. And you want me to do what? you want me to stand by to revive the guy after you kill him so that you can torture him more? And I thought, well, thank God I'm

[07:07] not the only person that's against this. But then nobody ever said anything. >> Can we ask because um you know what people always say about whistleblowers? Well, you didn't have to go to the press, you didn't have to talk to the press. You could have there's official channels, >> right? >> The official channels. May I tell you about my official channels? Because my official channels created the CIA's torture program. >> Number one, >> I worked in the CIA's counterterrorism

[07:38] center. They invented torture. Number two, where do I go from there? The inspector general, guess what? The inspector general's not read into the compartment. He didn't even know the torture was taking place. Number three, the inspector or the uh general counsel. The general counsel was the one who approved the torture program. Can't go to the Justice Department because the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel was the one that said that it was legal and allowed the CIA to carry out its torture program. Then where you

[08:10] go to the National Security Council, guess what? They're the ones that asked for the torture program. And then there are the oversight committees, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. They were the ones that approved and funded the torture program. So then where do you go? You go to the media. It's the only place you can go because everybody is part of the problem. And so I just love it when people say, "Oh, chain of command." Yeah, tell me about the chain of command

[08:42] since these people seem to know so much about the chain of command. Yeah, it was the chain of the command that was that was the criminals in the CIA. So what happened after you So tell us a little bit about you. You gave an interview. What year was this? >> Yeah. Well, I I left the CIA in 2004. Okay. And um and I went into the private sector. I have five children. Wanted to make some money to put the kids through college and um and I thought surely somebody is going to come forward and

[09:14] say something. And indeed somebody somebody came forward. We don't know who but somebody came forward and talked about the secret prisons. Um, there was a woman who was accused of of releasing the information on the secret prisons and uh she was escorted out of the White House but never charged with a crime. They couldn't prove that it was her. If it was, kudos to her. Congratulations. That was a very heroic thing to do. But um I waited for somebody to say something and nobody did. And so I resigned and I went into the private

[09:45] sector. Finally, three and a half years after I resigned, I got a call from Brian Ross at ABC News who said that he had a source who said that I had tortured Abu Zubeda. I said that was absolutely untrue. I was the only person who was kind to Abu Zuba. I said, I've never laid a hand on Abu Zubed or on any other prisoner. And I had never spoken to a journalist before, so I didn't know it was an old reporter's trick to say, "Well, you're welcome to come on the show and defend yourself." So,

[10:18] I said I'd think about it. That week, uh, President Bush gave a press conference in which one of the reporters asked him about these rumors that the CIA was torturing its prisoners. and he looked in the camera and he said, "We do not torture like that." And I remember saying to my wife, who was also a senior CIA officer, I said, "He's a bald-faced liar. He's looking the American people in the in the eye and he's lying to them." And

[10:50] then a few days after that on Friday he he walked out of the south portico of the White House toward the helicopter to go to Camp David for the week for the weekend and a reporter shouted a question about torture. And he stopped and turned and said, "Well, if there is torture, it's because of a rogue CIA officer." And I told my wife, "Brian Ross's source is at the White House and they're going to try to pin this on me." So, I called him and I said, "I'll give you your your

[11:21] interview." And I decided in the whatever it was, four or five days between that call and the actual interview that I would tell the truth regardless of what the questions were, I was going to tell the truth and just let the cards fall. And so that I did. I I said three things. I said that the CIA was torturing its prisoners. I said that torture was official US government policy and I said that the policy had been personally

[11:51] approved by the president and then all hell broke loose. >> Now the CIA torture program would do you have knowledge of this? So my recollection is there were two contractors that were hired Jessim and I forget the other >> Mitchell and Jessim. >> Mitchell and Jessim. Is that something that you were aware of that those people coming in? >> Yeah. >> Um, >> in fact, on their first day, well, there's there's a rule in the CIA that

[12:22] contractors cannot have private offices, right? And contractors cannot manage staff employees. So, one day, these two strangers show up in the counterterrorism center and and two branch chiefs are told to move out of their office so these contractors can move in. I said I said what the heck contractors I said to a psychologist that I worked with in the counterterrorism center. I said what what psychologists get private offices? They're not allowed to have private offices. She said I have no idea but these guys have some wasa

[12:53] they're important whoever they are. They were um James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen. Now they had been longtime contractors with the department of the air force and they had reverse engineered the the SEIR training program. That's the training pro program that we give pilots to be prepared in case they're shot down over enemy territory and they're captured. So they have to go through, you know, waterboarding and and gas attacks. And it's terrible. It's terrible. But they reverse engineered it so that we could

[13:25] just we could use it on prisoners to break them rather than to use them on, you know, American pilots to try to get them to not break. >> Did they have any experience in interrogations? Mitchell and Jessen? >> No. See, that's that's a really important point here. Mitchell and Jess had no experience whatsoever in interrogations. What their experience was in was something that they called

[13:56] learned helplessness. And they wanted the prisoner to just burst into tears as soon as they walked into the room because the prisoner was so fearful of what was coming. That's learned helplessness. But they've never they had never interrogated anybody. And indeed at the CIA, we were not trained in interrogation. there. There was no class you could take on how to interrogate a prisoner because it was the FBI that was supposed to interrogate. Remember in 2002 when this was all taking place, 9/11 was

[14:29] still an open criminal investigation. And so even though we were overseas, the FBI was supposed to have primacy, but instead there was this bureaucratic, you know, pissing match between FBI and CIA over who got to be the boss. And that primacy kept shifting between the two. While as soon as the CIA took over, they deployed Mitchell and Jessen to implement this torture program. >> Was there any evidence that this learned help helplessness would cause a person

[14:59] to conf like what what was the evidence that it worked? >> There was none. >> Did they make a lot of money? Those two ah um they made $18 million. Later on they said that that was not true. They only made $94 million. Um, but yeah, they got rich and they live in giant mansions on the Gulf of Mexico now outside of Tampa. My god. Um, I

[15:30] I actually I talked to, you know, I I I represented a Gitmo detainy beginning in 2008, and I worked with this the um these folks in New York, the um Center for Constitutional Rights. Oh, they're great. Yes. >> Yeah. And I talked to one of my colleagues today and I asked him about it because I I knew you were coming on and so I asked him about Abu Zubeda because he still represents um there's I think there's 15 people left or 17 people left. >> 17. >> Um and Abu Zabeda is still there. He's

[16:02] never been charged with a crime. >> No. And was never a member of al-Qaeda. By the way, we had been lied to by the Bush administration. He was not the number three in al-Qaeda. And besides not being the number three, he had never even joined al-Qaeda. >> And so, John, I want to ask you about al-Qaeda. So, I mean, but I don't think this is the right point to do it, but let's see if we can get that in later. But, so, so it's 2007. You did this interview with ABC News and you said all hell broke loose, but you weren't really, they didn't come after you until

[16:33] 2012. It was Obama who came after you, not >> so what happened in the intervening five years? Nothing or were you >> Oh, no. That's a great question. So, uh, I I gave the interview on something like December 11th, I think it was, uh, 2007. And, uh, the very next day, the CIA filed a crimes report against me with the FBI uh, saying that I had revealed classified information. The Bush administration's FBI investigated me

[17:04] from December of '07 to December of '08 and then determined that I had not committed a crime. There's a law in this country, believe it or not, that says that that it is illegal to classify a crime for the purpose of keeping the crime from the American people. Torture is a crime. So, you can't make it top secret because you can't classify a crime. So, they sent my attorneys what's called a declination letter declining to prosecute me. And um

[17:37] my wife and I went out to dinner that night to celebrate. I thought it was over. Three weeks later, Barack Obama becomes president. John Brennan, who's one of the fathers of the torture program, becomes Obama's uh deputy national security adviser for counterterrorism. And Brennan asked the Justice Department. Uh Eric Holder was the attorney general to secretly reopen the case against me. So, I had no idea that for the next three years, my phones

[18:07] were tapped, my emails were being intercepted, teams of surveillance were were following me everywhere I went. As it turned out, they even followed us into church on Sunday, and they would sit directly behind us in the pew behind us and pretend to be Greek Orthodox. It got so bad. I was working for John Kerry at the time uh on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, but it got so bad that uh in 2011 I got a call from a Japanese diplomat

[18:38] who invited me to lunch. That was one of the things that I loved about that job was uh getting to interact with foreign diplomats just like I had done overseas. And so I went to lunch with this diplomat. Uh we went to a restaurant on Capitol Hill and at the end of the lunch he said to me, "So what's next for you?" And I said, "Um I said, "Actually, I think I'm gonna resign soon. I I promised Senator Kerry that I would give him two years. It's been two and a half. Uh I said, "I need to make some money to

[19:08] put my kids through school. I think I'm going to go back into the private sector." And very excitedly, he says, "No, if you give me information, I can give you money." And I said, the [ __ ] is wrong with you? I said, you know how many times I've made that pitch? I said, shame on you. I'm going to report this. And I went directly, and I mean without stopping, to the office of the Senate Security Officer, and I said, I was just pitched by a foreign intelligence officer. So, he told me to

[19:40] sit at this um standalone computer, write it out as a memo, and he was going to courier the memo to the FBI. So, I did. And um and the next day uh he called and said the FBI wanted to see me. They were going to send two agents up to interview me. Now this Japanese diplomat, his English was so bad that we did all of our conversation in Arabic. And um they came up to interview me and they said, "Here's what we want you to

[20:10] do. We want you to call him back, invite him to lunch, and try to get him to tell you what information he's looking for and how much he's willing to pay for it. And because I'm a patriot, I said, "You want me to wear a wire or something?" And they said, "No, we'll be at the next table." So I said, "Okay, he doesn't speak English, but okay, if that's what you want to do." So they called me the morning of that second lunch and they said that something had come up but that

[20:40] I should go forward with the lunch and just write them another memo. So I did and then they asked me to do that a third time and a fourth time and a fifth time which I did. So after the or at the fifth lunch he he told me that he had just been promoted that he got his dream job. He was going to be the number two at the Japanese embassy in Cairo. I told him, "Congratulations." I shook his hand and I never saw him again. A year later, I've been arrested.

[21:13] And the Justice Department sends us 15,000 pages of classified discovery. And in this discovery, we find two things. We find a series of memos from John Brennan to Eric Holder and and back. Brennan says, "Charge him with espionage." And Holder says, "My people don't think he committed espionage." And then Brennan says, "Charge him anyway and make him defend himself." And they did. They charged me with three counts of espionage. They waited until I

[21:44] went bankrupt and then they dropped the espionage charges. But then we also found that there was no Japanese diplomat. He was an FBI agent trying to get me to commit actual espionage to take money in exchange for classified information. But I kept reporting the contact back to the FBI. And so they finally wrote a memo saying we should end this operation. He's clearly not going to take the bait.

[22:17] I was so upset by that. I wasn't even as upset about Brennan and his memo. I was upset that they would run this phony diplomat against me. And I said to my lead attorney, Plato Caceres, who was a legendary figure in Washington legal circles, I said, "Why would they do that? I am a patriot." And he said, "Because they have a [ __ ] case and they know it's [ __ ] and they're trying to frame you." And so we elected to fight. >> Well, the FBI's been known for

[22:48] entrapment cases. There was a Gretch Gresian Witzmer case. there were plenty of so-called terrorists who were just troubled people who were enticed into agreeing with what the FBI was trying to get them to say or do. >> Um, so that's what seems to be a a tool in their toolkit. >> And you know what's happened in the meantime in the intervening years, as recently as 6 months ago, I've received emails from three of the FBI agents on the case apologizing to me and saying that they knew it was political from the

[23:18] beginning. they didn't want to do it, but that the orders had come from the very top and that they were very sorry. >> So, you embarrassed, but here's the political part that doesn't really make sense to me. So, you embarrassed the Bush administration and the Bush administration was desperate to get information and to solve this issue that they had. And so, they were willing to try anything, break any rule, and they said so. Um, and so, but that was that administration. Now, in comes Obama saying that I'm going to put an end to all that. and he specifically ran on ending things like torture that you had

[23:51] had revealed. So why is the Obama administration coming after you given that they came in with a mandate to stop all that kind of stuff and turn the page on it? I'm smiling because we like to convince ourselves to try to convince ourselves that there are that that of our two parties, one is a right-wing party and one is a left-wing party. And really, we have a right-wing party and then we have a farther right-wing party. Uh the answer to your

[24:24] question is is severalfold. Number one, the entirety of Barack Obama's experience in government was two years as a US senator. Two years. He didn't have the foggiest idea how to be president of the United States. Number two, he made the unfortunate unforced error of relying on the likes of John Brennan, whom I consider to be a war criminal uh for his expertise in intelligence. Number three,

[24:54] he had a Nixonian obsession with national security links uh leaks. Obama did Nixonian in its ferocity. And number >> that came do you think that came from Brennan? >> I was just going to make the the final point. It came from Brennan. Obama had never had never accumulated acquired any intelligence experience and Brennan convinced him from the outset that if

[25:24] you really want to make a name for yourself, you have to stop these leaks. Well, in fact, it's the White House that leaks like a civ. Those leaks are are okay. Um especially when it makes the the administration look good. But and look at it this way. I love this this statistic. The Espionage Act was written in 1917 to combat German saboturs during the the First World War. Between 1917 and Barack Obama's inauguration in 2009,

[25:57] three Americans were charged with espionage for speaking to the media. Just during the Obama administration, eight people, eight whistleblowers were charged with espionage for speaking with the media. And in many cases, espionage is a death penalty case. For me personally, I was facing 45 years in prison. And indeed, that was the Justice Department's initial offer to me. There

[26:27] was a horrible, horrible woman involved in my case who ended up being the deputy attorney general for the criminal division under Joe Biden. And she said, "Take the 45 years, Mr. Kiryaku, and you may live to meet your grandchildren." >> That's what she said to me. >> What was what was her name, just so we know? >> Uh, you know what? I don't even want And you can find it in a second. I don't even want to speak her name. >> I don't even want to speak her name. She doesn't deserve the publicity. >> Um, Could

[26:58] >> could you talk a little bit about you know well I two questions. First um you mentioned that there were I think eight total espionage prosecutions and of course correct me if I'm wrong but all of these prosecutions were of whistleblowers not actually people that were selling secrets correct another country or >> and there were a couple of those but but I'm only talking about whistleblowers. There were eight whistleblowers and I think there were two or three. One was working for China, one was working for

[27:31] South Korea, something like that. So, yes, you're exactly right. And >> did you end up having um any sort of support group or or working with any of these other or >> helping support or they supporting you these other whistleblowers? >> Is there any that you want to just mention? >> Oh, I would love it. Thank you for that question. Um, and I'll preface my answer by saying when something like this happens to you, you become positively suicidal, right? They're throwing words at you like death

[28:02] penalty and 45 years and your life's over. I I was I was almost 50 years old when this happened and I'm looking at 45 years. I'm going to die in a steel bunk somewhere. So, the first person who approached me was um was a a former Justice Department attorney by the name of Jesseline Raak. Jessine had been the director of ethics at the Justice Department. She became a whistleblower in her own right and then not only was forced out of her her job at the Justice Department, but she was put on the nofly

[28:34] list and accused of being a terrorist sympathizer. And what was her crime? Her crime was to tell the FBI when they captured John Walker Lind, the American Taliban in Afghanistan, to be sure to read him his rights. That was an unforgivable, unpardonable sin to tell the FBI, "Be sure to read him his rights before you interrogate him." And so they they tried to get her bar license revoked. They put her on the no-fly list. It was a mess.

[29:06] Anyway, Jesseline was the first and her deputy um uh at the government accountability project. It was called GAAP. They immediately introduced me to Tom Drake, uh, who was an NSA whistleblower and quite an important one, who in turn introduced me to Bill Benny, Kirk Weebi, and, um, and Diane Ror. Diane being from the House Intelligence Committee. They were all whistleblowers. And then um uh

[29:36] the great Daniel Ellsberg who became one of the most important mentors uh in in my life. A a man who became as important almost as important to me as my own father was. And so it it's funny and we we extended that circle to Jeffrey Sterling, the CIA whistleblower, to Daniel Hail, the drone whistleblower, to a series of FBI whistleblowers and IRS whistleblowers. And you know, we

[30:07] ended up with this community because because the FBI, in my case, the CIA, the White House, the Justice Department, they're going to leak lies about you to the media and they're going to turn the jury pool against you. It's what they do. They It's like they can't help themselves. And so, you can't get through this alone or you can't get through it just with with your attorneys. you have to have you have to be surrounded by people who understand like legitimately understand

[30:38] what it is that you're facing. And so we've created our own community. We we brought you know Ed Snowden into it a little bit later. Although it's as you imagine it's a little bit tougher to to be in touch with Ed. But um I'm not sure I could have made it through without support from those people. They they were they were giants in my life. I've I've heard you talk a little bit about the the prosecution and how they ended up turning your your own wife against you. Um I don't want to put you through

[31:08] all that and we we have a limited time, but but um I want to ask you a little bit about sort of the game that they play, the CIA and the government with classifying information and then making you sign security agreements. Um, and this is something because I had to do as a representing a Guantanamo detainine and um, not I had nothing like what you went through, but I was um, I had basically told I had I had written an article in a

[31:40] paper um, about the fact that they were classifying information above my security clearance level so that I couldn't see it and I couldn't defend my client. And um they they basically took they revoked my security clearance and I had one course lawyer from from uh center for constitutional rights and also former US attorney. They represented me pro bono and got my security clearance back so I could see my client released back to Afghanistan. But but what I learned about this was was eyeopening to say the least about the whole game. But when you sign these

[32:12] security when you sign these security agreements you're basically agreeing. Now you had mentioned earlier that there's a law that says they can't classify their own crimes right to protect them. But in fact the security agreements do not have any exception. They you're not allowed to reveal once you sign this and say okay if you want to see classified information um you have to sign this security agreement but once you sign it there's no exception. So if you then see evidence of a government crime that you want to disclose um you can be prosecuted under

[32:45] that security agreement. Can can you talk a little bit about the agreements that you had to sign uh as a CIA officer um and leaving the CIA? >> Oh, sure. Sure. I signed more security agreements and secrecy agreements than I can recall. I remember signing one at one time or I'm sorry, six at one time related to the invasion of Iraq. Um those have all been declassified now. But you're right, they

[33:16] play games with they play games with classifications. Jay William Leonard, who was the Bush administration's classification zar, has become an anti-classification activist, saying that that most of what we have classified should not be classified in the first place. We have mandatory declassification laws that are routinely ignored by the CIA and by other um agencies and You know, it's funny. I I

[33:46] was smiling when you said that they would classify things above your above your level of uh of clearance because they do. And that's also improper. For example, something should never be classified at the top secret level unless it involves special methods like electronic intercepts, for example. If it's if we're talking about human intelligence, somebody said something, somebody reported something, that is by its nature secret. And you should have

[34:17] been well above secret. So for them to classify something above your level of clearance, to me, that's a criminal act. That should never have been allowed to happen. And I'll add one other thing. When John Kerry hired me uh as the senior investigator on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I took that job very very seriously. And he promised me when he interviewed me for the job that I would have access to anything I needed and I would have the freedom to

[34:48] report on anything I wanted. That was a lie. What he should have said is, "You can't work on anything that might embarrass the Obama administration and stand in the way of me becoming Secretary of State." That's what he should have said because that was the reality. But >> I take it I take it John Kerry didn't come to help you once. >> I emailed him and I said I said, "Senator, please, I'm begging you. I have five children. Please ask the president to commute my sentence. the conviction would still stand, but I

[35:20] would be able to work and and put food on the table for my family. And he emailed me back and he wrote, "Please do not ever attempt to contact me again." And that was the entirety of the email. So when I was working for him, um I told him that I had been called by a human rights activist who offered up a source who said that he had been present at what has become known as the Dash Delele massacre uh in northern Afghanistan on

[35:51] on November 30th and December 1st of 2001. 2,000 Taliban soldiers just gave up on Mas uh to the Northern Alliance. And the Northern Alliance called us and said, "What do we do with these people?" And we said, "Put them on trucks and take them out into the desert so we can divide them up and then send them to jails around the country." Because there was no jail in Afghanistan that could hold 2,000 people. So they put them into containers,

[36:23] but they never put any air holes and they never gave them food or water. 2,000 people of the 14 who survived what was called the box up. One of the survivors told us that the bodies fell out like sardines from a can. So, 14 survivors out of 2,000 people. And this new source that was being offered to me, I met him in a in a an

[36:54] empty classroom at John's Hopkins University with the lights off so nobody would notice us. >> What year is this? >> This is 2009. He told me that he had been 12 years old at the time. He witnessed the box up. He was hiding behind a boulder and there were two men there wearing black t-shirts and blue jeans and speaking English. Well, who is going to be in northern Afghanistan on December the 1st, 2001 in a black

[37:25] t-shirt and blue jeans and speaking English but one of a dozen CIA colleagues of mine. So, I wrote a letter to the CIA asking for clarification and I used the auto pen to sign Senator K's name with his permission of course and I sent it to the agency. About six weeks pass and one of my colleagues walks into my office and he said, "Hey, uh, the agency responded to your letter." I said, "I didn't see any response. I just checked my mail an hour ago. I hadn't

[37:56] received anything." He said, "No, they classified it top secret and it's in the uh Senate Security Office." Well, I only had a secret security clearance at the time because they were delaying my clearance because they were trying to charge me with espionage, which I didn't yet know. >> So, I said, "What did the letter say?" And my colleague said it said, "Go [ __ ] yourself." And I said, "Okay, that's how they want to play it." So, I flew to Afghanistan. It's a legitimate investigation. And I

[38:28] went to Dash Deilele and I went to the site of the box up. There are still human bones sticking out of the sand with weathered clothes still hanging on them, femurss, ribs, skulls, just laying in the dirt. So I came back, I start writing my report and Senator Kerry comes to my office and he said, "What about this dashle thing you're doing?" I said, "Yeah, I mean, we have him dead to rights." And I said, "Besides, President

[38:58] Obama said during the campaign that if elected, he's going to release all the dashle documents, which he never did." And Carrie said, "Listen, you're going to have to kill this investigation." And I said, "Come on now. I just got back from Afghanistan. I have pictures. I have firstperson documentation." And he said, "You're not listening to me. I want you to kill the investigation. And so I killed it. Let me let me add John Kerry

[39:31] is no friend of human rights. John Ky is no friend of openness or transparency in government. He's a neocon just like the Dick Cheney of the world. and the Democratic Party should be ashamed of him not trying to field candidates in his image. >> You know, John, one of one of the things we we don't talk about uh maybe enough is is something that they they used to

[40:02] call blowback. I don't know if you ever read, you know, Chalmer's Johnson wrote absolutely wonderful books about >> I have it here behind me. And you know, there was just recently um an incident in Washington DC. You probably know what I'm talking about. These these two national guards that were shot by um an Afghan national that was in the United States as a with asylum, political asylum. and he it turns out and this is one of

[40:34] the rare times that the the New York Times actually did a a report that sort of revealed I think it was going to come out anyway. So the New York Times CIA basically wanted to get on top of it. >> Yes. >> Worked for a unit called uh >> not sure if this is something it was called the zero unit which was trained and funded by the CIA. >> Yes. >> Which was apparently a death squad. right >> in Afghanistan where they were sent night raids into into people's homes if

[41:06] they were suspected of being part of the Taliban or collaborating with the Taliban um executing people and as a apparently according the the article in the New York Times said that a friend of his a childhood friend had said that yes he was incredibly disturbed by the work that he did. I think he this guy was only 5 years old at the time of 9/11. So he was a young man and he joined this unit as a young man and apparently it caused psychological damage to the point where he ended up killing um two

[41:39] national guards and obviously that's not the first blowback incident. We can go back to 1953 and and >> that's right, >> you know, and and and British intelligence >> um >> the regime change operation getting rid of Mosc on behalf of um on behalf of British oil >> and you know the blowback decades um you know the the US embassy in Iran uh hostages taken all these things we don't talk about this enough and it's gener

[42:10] it's usually covered up Um c is that something can you can you talk a little bit about um some of the consequences of some of these these crimes? I I see like you've talked about this and the government seems to spend a lot of energy covering up the crimes of the CIA. >> Covering up rather than trying to to treat these things at the at the the root. Um you know it was my experience at CIA. I was there for 15 years. It was my experience that almost no thought

[42:42] ever went into blowback or the potential for blowback. And I always believed that was very very dangerous. You know, there's a there's an enormous office at the CIA called MS, the office of medical services. And it's divided, you know, between medical and psychological and psychiatric and they have sociologists and anthropologists and just an army of of PhDs and PhD MDs. And either nobody listens to those people, nobody cares what they have to

[43:14] say, or they're all incompetent. And I doubt that that's the case. But nobody really cares to even bother planning for the possibility of of blowback. You know, it's almost like invading a country. It's easy. I just said this earlier today to a friend of mine. It's easy to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein. The hard part is what what you do next, >> right? Well, if you're recruiting people to to be members of death squads and you think ah it's not going to take a

[43:45] psychological effect on them. They're not it's not going to bother them to just commit coldblooded first-degree murder, you know, on a daily basis just cuz we want them to, you know, murder friends and family members and tribal, you know, elders and whatever have you and we just hope for the best. Well, you know what they what they say in in business school, hope is not a strategy. You can't just hope for the best in a case like that. >> Well, you have to wonder too. I mean, at that point when you've when you're running death squads around a country,

[44:15] what are you actually trying to accomplish at that point? >> But but getting back to my earlier question about al-Qaeda, and that is blowback, right? Al-Qaeda, >> sure. >> Was a was a CIA operation to um cause pain to the Soviet Union. >> Yeah. Al-Qaeda was the blowback. Yes. A lot of people believe that that the CIA created al-Qaeda. That wasn't the case. Um, I guess you could argue that it it accidentally created it or it's it it was created by the effects of the antis-siet um war in Afghanistan. You My

[44:47] mentor at the CIA was was Gus Avricatus, who became legendary at the CIA, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman in in the film Charlie Wilson's War. All Gust ever wanted to do and all he ever talked about was killing Russians. That's all he wanted to do. kill as many Russians as he possibly could. And if that meant arming these these these Islamic maniacs, well, whatever the blowback would be,

[45:18] we'll we'll handle it then when it presents itself. Well, the way it presented itself was al-Qaeda formed and then when we started killing the al-Qaeda people, ISIS came out of al-Qaeda. ISIS was created in an American military prison in Iraq. Why? Because al-Qaeda wasn't radical enough and then we had that to deal with. Now al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and al-Qaeda and the and the uh Sahel, where does it end?

[45:48] >> Do you think that al-Qaeda is completely separate from the US government or do you think that there's a >> Well, yes and no. Listen, I'm going to give you an educated guess here. So, this uh the new president of Syria, former member of al-Qaeda, one of the co-founders of ISIS, >> yet that's the guy that we choose to be the leader of Syria. >> Well, that is odd, isn't it? A man who was off. >> Yes. A little bit odd.

[52:38] supposed to be something like this. And we know it wasn't because >> running it, who's a sociopath who not only recommended a specious charge against you that he knew wouldn't hold court, >> who ended up deeply involved in the Russia gate hoax. >> Exactly. And that's exactly what it was. >> Producing. That's what they're producing. >> You're You're 100% right. >> Helps, you know, Americans live a better life. That's right. And if they are, I I don't see where it is. >> You're 100% right. And I think little by little, Americans are coming around to

[53:09] that understanding. I I will say one thing politically. I've never believed that the ideological spectrum is is a straight line from left to right. I believe it's a circle and it's a different circle depending on the issue. And on this issue, I think that the progressive left and the MAGA right are in agreement. The CIA is a dangerous force. It's unAmerican and it needs to be addressed.

[53:40] >> People are afraid. People are afraid to say they are. I mean I you know the famous comment from um Schumer that like yeah know Trump nine ways from Sunday to get you. >> Yeah. >> Well that's probably a good place to end John. I know you've got a hard stop. >> Yeah you do. >> Thank you. It was a real pleasure. >> It's amazing story and uh we'd love to hear more of it. I mean you've you've got so much knowledge about what's what's happening and you know >> thank you. There's lots of people who are hungry for what uh for you know what you know and that's why you have such a

[54:10] huge following now on on social media. Where where can >> I've been fortunate to thank you more from you. >> I've got a couple different things. I I'm on YouTube with two podcasts. One is called um Deep Program which I do every day with Ted R. And then there's one called Deep Focus I do once a week. It's a it's much more in-depth uh interview usually with somebody in foreign policy or professors or activists or attorneys. And then I do one on Apple podcast called uh Deadrop, what Makes a Spy tick. And we talk about a lot of these

[54:42] issues. And then of course Facebook and Instagram and X and all the usual places. >> Terrific. Well, we really appreciate you coming on. Please uh like and subscribe to our program and uh we hope we hope to have you back and and we'll talk soon um John. >> Yeah. Thanks so much for having me. Good to see you both. >> Yeah. Good to see you, John. Take care. >> Thank you. >> [music]

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