Title: Ex CIA Officer John Kiriakou Talks Torture, Terrorism, U
Show: TruthOverComfort
Date: 2023-12-07
URL: https://youtu.be/P9miDzcUT9U
Duration: 51:00

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[00:01] welcome to the truth of a comfort show today's guest is John kiraku I'm very pleased to have him here today he will be here today to talk about his past in the CIA some of the relevations he made quite a long time ago now but still carry weight uh in the kind of political discussion today and also his kind of Reflections uh now obviously being outside the CIA and kind of that sort of Lifestyle to see kind of what he thinks about the US government then and now and

[00:32] kind of through the war on terror uh and kind of maybe even some current events today the Insight he can bring but I really appreciate you coming on today John how you doing happy to do it thanks for inviting me yeah so I mean lots of people will be familiar with you maybe more in the US and the people who you know follow kind of uh the war on terror and foreign policy but can you just kind of give people a brief background about yourself if you don't need to go into mass mass detail but just you know

[01:03] obviously your career in the siia kind of leading up to your relevations and then kind of what happened after that and then we can kind of pick it up from there sure I spent 15 years in the CIA beginning in uh January of 1990 uh I I Rose to uh to become well at first the uh the head of counterterrorism operations in Pakistan after the 911 attacks I went back to headquarters and took job as the executive assistant to the cia's deputy director for operations and um left the

[01:36] CIA went into the private sector uh blew the whistle on the cia's torture report when I was in the uh I'm sorry the torture program uh when I was in the private sector and then went to work for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as the senior investigator uh the the FBI prosecuted me for my my torture whistleblowing and I went to prison for 23 months since then I I got out uh what eight nine years ago and uh since then I've I've

[02:08] been mostly in media I have a daily radio show I have a weekly TV show and uh and a syndicated newspaper column speak at universities and colleges around the world and uh yeah that's about it in a nutshell yeah obviously again that nice and brief in a nutshell I mean I encourage people to you know check out kind of if you type in your name much like Matthew ho and other people there's lots and lots of information but definitely uh more for people like you uh and you know go check out your

[02:39] interviews but yeah that was definitely a nutshell but obviously you know you had a kind of uh an interesting career to put it to to short and obviously life it was straight line that's for sure absolutely so I mean again like I said before I'm happy to obviously talk about you know your torture Revelations and you know some of your experiences in prison but you've done it I know you've done it a million times so I do encourage people to maybe uh check out your original interview of ABC but um can you kind of just talk us through what happened there because you know you

[03:12] what you discussed in that interview were kind of the first you know official or ex official to report on it but you didn't actually speak about anything necessarily classified there it later so you know I I've kind of heard you speak about as I watched one of your fairly recent interviews uh or I think it was a Turkish broadcast saying that you went there and you didn't obviously see what happened uh later to you coming so you know when you've gone there to speak about those re Revelations did you think

[03:43] it was going to have the massive impact it did and and can you just tell people because we obviously talk about us torture and and what happened there but what you reported on from what I watched you know it was more just about you know the water boarding and you even said you know it could just be a slap on their on their stomach and it was being directly you know going to the deputy can we do this can we do that uh I like to maybe get into maybe some of the revelations since then but can yeah can you just break down uh kind of what you actually

[04:14] spoke about there and I guess the kind of instant uh Fame it kind of gave you and know that led to obviously going to prison eventually for something else right in in in generalities I said three things I said that the C was torturing its prisoners I said that torture was official US government policy and I said that the policy had been personally approved by the president um in specifics I talked about the 10 torture techniques that the CIA had been using

[04:44] against prisoners with water boarding being or supposed to have have been the the most severe it it wasn't the most severe there were there were two um legal legal um uh techniques that were more severe that than water boarding techniques that led to the deaths of prisoners uh and then there were illegal or un unauthorized techniques that CIA officers were using on prisoners um the FBI investigated me for a full year

[05:16] after that interview from December of 2007 until December of 2008 and then they declined to prosecute me finding that I had not committed a crime but then when Barack Obama became president the uh John Brennan Who was the Deputy National Security adviser asked the justice department to secretly reopen the case against me and they investigated me for another three years uh until January of 2012 and then I was charged with five felonies including three counts of

[05:48] Espionage um those ended up being dropped because I hadn't committed Espionage but to make the whole thing go away I took a I took a plea to a lesser charge and uh and was able to end end this this nightmare by doing that yeah am I correct they went from potentially between like 35 to 45 years to to about 30 months yeah 40 it was 45 years um I ended up accepting a deal to

[06:18] at 30 months and I I did 23 months yeah I'd like to maybe just in a moment kind of get into the your kind of just experience in prison I know it was a kind of lower security but there was still lots of people there who committed much worse crimes than you did you can even cool what you did obviously a crime outside of the legal framework but um at that time where you you reported on that during that period was there also you know not direct us CIA torture but you

[06:51] know kind of the program extraordinary renditioning where you you know we'd pick people up take them to a country like Egypt or Jordan where they would maybe do something like torture would that would that be accurate oh yes there uh there's a difference between rendition and extraordinary rendition so rendition is let's say you are we'll say Tunisian and I catch you in Pakistan a rendition is I send you back to Tunisia and you face the music in your home country

[07:23] extraordinary rendition is again let's say you're from Tunisia I pick you up in Pakistan I place you under arrest um I don't tell the Tunisian government that I have you and instead I send you to to Jordan or turkey or Egypt or Algeria for you to be tortured and interrogated and then maybe they'll they'll let you out someday uh maybe they won't and you'll just disappear that's an extraordinary

[07:53] rendition and in the context when we talk about us torture because know if you go back and May maybe watch your interview and you're just talking about um you know the slap on the belly uh the sleep deprivation making them stay up for 48 hours while standing up or water boarding uh does that kind of if people did go back and see that would and not know the rest of the context would that be misleading uh in the rest of the picture of us torture including taking them to third countries even if they

[08:23] didn't do it themselves or was the kind of torture program actually does it sound exaggerated because it was only actually that but the term torture conjures up maybe stuff that enemies of you know the West previously did oh no no torture torture is torture and those those techniques while some of them may not sound terribly severe things like sleep deprivation uh were were fatal uh another was the cold cell

[08:54] we can get into these uh these specifics the the American Psychological Association the APA did a study on sleep deprivation and they said that people begin to lose their minds at seven days with no sleep they begin to die of organ failure at nine days the CIA was was authorized to keep people awake for 12 days so that's well past the insanity and defense uh guidelines uh and when I

[09:27] say sleep dep deprivation I'm not just talking about you know nudging somebody and keeping them awake you're chained to an eyebolt in the ceiling so that you can't sit or lay or get comfortable in any way music is blasted 24 hours a day you have industrial strength bright lights on you 24 hours a day so it's just impossible to to even KN off or or to nap you uh yeah St my camera went I'm

[09:58] sorry car on sorry Carol it's it's impossible to to refresh yourself in any way and then like I say days into it people begin to hallucinate they begin to lose their minds and then their organs begin to shut down uh another one was the cold cell this was a similar situation where the prisoner would be chained to an eyebolt in the ceiling he would be stripped naked and his cell would be chilled to 50° fah and then every hour a

[10:32] CIA officer would go into the cell and throw a bucket of ice water on him we killed multiple prisoners using that technique and that technique was never authorized by the justice department uh you know once the Senate torture report came out we learned about other things that were being done Russian Roulette for example or shoving a tube up of up a prisoners rectum and and forcing hummus uh into his rectum that's not authorized by anybody and it's certainly not recommended by any any

[11:02] physician uh with Abu Zeda the the senior prisoner that I was uh responsible for capturing uh besides Russian Roulette they threatened to drill a hole into his brain with a with a drill they learned that he had an irrational fear of insects and so they put a diaper on him they put him in a coffin and dumped a a box of cockroaches in there with him and closed the the casket just to to make him crazy as the bugs were crawling all over him they kept him in there for seven days so

[11:34] these these were far more damaging even if only psychologically than I think most most Americans realized yeah I mean that's quite yeah much more than obviously at the time when you did that interview a belly slap compar to some of the stuff you said there doesn't sound at all even you know comparable just going back to the kind of um where the US would maybe send someone to like uh a third country you

[12:04] know around these kind of black sites we heard what sort of things happened there you know I know it may be obvious to ask it but just for the audience why did the US send them there and just how complicit are we in there would it be the third country would take them like Egypt would kind of volunteer themselves or the US would ask them to kind of can you take this person as we need uh plausible deniability and your whole system that wouldn't let it get out anyway because you know it's a corrupt

[12:35] regime well that's not easily answered um because the well I I should preface this by saying that the CIA has never admitted to the location of any of these uh these black sites the Press have reported on the locations extensively but the cia's never made a form admission so we're talking about countries that in general are not the obvious bad guys that you would

[13:06] think uh we're not talking about Egypt or Jordan for example we're talking about well I won't say what we're talking about but you you can you can Google it and the and the reporting is correct Eastern Eastern Europe Eastern Europe most part yes yeah so um what makes this such a crazy situation is is that in many of these cases the presidents and Prime Ministers of these countries didn't know that these black sites existed in their own countries

[13:38] these were handshake deals between the CIA director and the directors of the host countries intelligence services and the information was kept from the political leadership of that country in almost every case or every case it was the CIA approaching that host country and the reason that the CIA wanted these facilities in foreign countries was because the prisoner would then have no constitutional rights no right to face

[14:11] his accusers in a court of law no right to ha his Corpus no right to be judged by a jury of his peers no right to respect for human rights no rights at all and the CIA at the same time maintained plausible deniability and it worked for a while it worked for you know three and a half years at least 4 and a half years so it worked for the CIA I I know you've discussed it um before and obviously it's a bit of a

[14:42] debate you know what and at the time of was your interview you thought that the techniques the uh enhanced interrogation techniques used to the time uh did have some use whether it was morally right or not you go over saying you know I've still kind of torn in my mind but when he asked you do do you think it it it worked provided the information you needed you said yes now all in these years on overall not just that specific case uh but overall toter do you think

[15:13] it works or no absolutely not and this was this was a lie that the CIA perpetuated I was wrong in uh in that interview in 2007 because I had been lied to like every senior officer in the CIA had been lied to uh the CIA had contracted out this torture program to two contract psychologists by the name of uh uh James Mitchell and Bruce jessen uh they were paid $108 million for their uh their program and um when abua who was the

[15:47] first high value Target that we captured was taken to a black site he was initially interrogated by the FBI and the FBI got him to talk this was an FBI agent by the name of Ali sufan Ali was successful in getting him to to open up and he gave Ali actionable intelligence that disrupted future attacks and saved American lives the CIA was very upset that the FBI had Primacy in this case and CIA director George Tennant at the time went to President Bush asked him to remove the FBI from the secret site and

[16:17] to allow the CIA to take over now here's the important part the CIA and the FBI so hated each other and I mean from the time of the creation of the CIA in 1947 until the post 911 period that their computer systems were not even compatible so Ali sufan was collecting this golden intelligence reporting it back in FBI channels and the FBI was not sharing it with the CIA so when Ali sufan and the other FBI

[16:48] agents were removed from the secret site and Mitchell and jessen took over they began torturing abua and he completely went silent so what they did in order to justify the $18 million uh expenditure was they took Ali suf Fan's information from the files at the secret site they retyped it in CIA channels and said look we waterboarded him one time and look at the amazing information he gave us well

[17:19] at the CIA remember they didn't have access to the FBI reporting and they said wow look what happened and I said to a colleague of mine at the time I think it's immoral I think it's unethical and it's certainly illegal but maybe I'm wrong and it does actually work well it wasn't until 2009 when the CIA Inspector General inspector General's report was released that we we realized that this was all based on a fraud a fraud committed by

[17:51] Mitchell and jessen and that not only not only did the uh did the torture program not work work but that they lied about it in the end yeah is it's interesting watching you then again that's the information you had at the time and obviously you know it's kind of when you look at these subjects many of them even with books I don't always love getting ones around the time it happened because so much information comes outat

[18:22] after the the internet has only grown and grown and grown and grown and you know wikileak these you know nukes that come out so at the time when you something happens it's kind of like what I wonder what's going to happen come out in you know it was interesting watching that interview then and uh interview this so

[18:54] just kind of still here just I just thought I'd get your thoughts on guantan Bay as you know you kind of mentioned again in that interview of ABC that you know you wasn't sure what you thought about P it work well they worked but is it moral or immoral um so what kind of your thoughts about guant Bay you know because sorry you mentioned that interview uh it was definitely unamerican you know we want to represent The Shining you know light of the world and democracy uh we can't be doing these things so what does kind of oh sorry

[19:26] don't know where my camera keep what do you make of guantan bay uh and all the people who are kind of there that are interl obviously with the war and Terror some of them would never been charged it's not even on of you know United States soil what do you make of it and why does the US still have it what surely this is a stain on America does it do they really need it you know what yeah Guantanamo is a stain on America first of all we don't need a a prison at Guantanamo Bay to hold Al-Qaeda

[19:57] prisoners or anybody else and secondly we don't need Guantanamo we don't need a base on Guantanamo we don't use it for anything other than a prison um a prison that I believe is uncon unconstitutional in its very existence and the Cubans don't want us there you know in all the years that we were there that Fidel Castro was in power in Cuba he never uh cashed the checks that the American government sent for the rent on guantan

[20:29] never cashed the checks so the first time I had even considered Guantanamo or had any reason to think about Guantanamo was in um March of 2002 we had done a series of raids all over Pakistan and we had literally filled the raal pindy jail with Arab prisoners and the Pakistani intelligence service came to me and said look the jail is full we literally can't squeeze one more prisoner into Robble pindy you have to do something with them

[21:01] so I called Headquarters from Pakistan I said the Jail's full the Pax want us to to take all these prisoners and just get rid of them what should we do what what should I do with them and the response was to put them on a C12 cargo plane and send them to Guantanamo and I said Guantanamo Cuba yes I said why would we send them to Cuba and the response was that we were going to take them all to Cuba and hold them temporarily while we decided

[21:35] in which federal district court we would try them because 911 was still an open criminal case and federal crimes had been committed in Boston New York and Washington and the eastern district of Virginia which is where the Pentagon sits I said that's a terrific idea so the original plan was only to keep these people in autonomo for three or four weeks and then send them to these Federal districts to face trial and then

[22:05] you know once the uh once the attorneys and the uh and the neoconservative politicians began talking and came to the conclusion that at Guantanamo none of these people had any rights including you know the right of habius Corpus then you know the the end was written and we knew that nobody would ever get Justice okay yeah okay let me just sorry about that everyone um hopefully you heard everything we just finished off

[22:36] about want to obay and the fact no one has their rights I did actually ask a long question why does the US still have it if it is this St and it's this day not really secret this day open secret or the treatment of these prisoners America tries to portray itself as this I mean sanctions he's had sanctions on Cuba for 60 years but has it obviously on their soil and youly spoke about how

[23:06] Castro didn't take the money so why does the US keep it there is it just bureaucracy to just someone's holding to close down no than that it's more cynical than that there are really three reasons why they keep it number one they keep it just because they can and because it's a thorn in the side of the Cubans that's the least important reason why they keep it um secondly they keep it because Congress passed a very ill-advised uh law in the first uh year

[23:38] or two of the Obama Administration prohibiting the transfer of any prisoner from Guantanamo into an American prison um that was an act of sheer and blatant cowardice you know we have not just maximum security penitentiaries here we have two super Max prisons that hold some of the most dangerous people in the world so why would we be afraid of these a handful of characters in Guantanamo it doesn't make

[24:08] any sense and Third we keep it because they simply do not have any rights there you know we know for example from the Senate torture report that Abu Zeda uh will never be released under any circumstances and when he dies at Guantanamo he is to be cremated and his ashes cast into the Caribbean uh you can't do that in in the American prison system where he has the right to councel and the right to appeal and the right to habius Corpus and the

[24:40] right to go to the Supreme Court and the right to be met by the uh the Red Cross and Amnesty International he doesn't get any of that at Guantanamo none of them do so really those are the three reasons why we keep Guantanamo I agree with you it's a stain on the country and it's an example of American hypocrisy it's something that we should be ashamed of yeah that's a I'm glad you use that term hypocrisy as um again you know I know I've spoken to Matthew ho who

[25:12] obviously worked uh you know in the state department as a political officer in Afghanistan obviously it was involved as a marine cor company commander and you know it's almost hard for someone looking in to really believe that the people government in the CIA in the state department really believe in what they say uh democracy about uh you know free will uh about uh Free Speech all

[25:42] these different things and then you hear like lots of people like you and other people say you know there's so many nice guys in the CIA obviously you you seem to be obiously a very guy and then people say the same things time and time again they're just looking for it's just impossible not to kind of thing these people can't really believe this because they say they believe in democracy and then since the cia's founding uh they've overthrown governments they've put money into elections they constantly meddle they meddle in US domestic politics

[26:14] every country not just you know African countries of the Middle East they have things like qu Bay they put people like you in prison Julian Assange so I guess you obviously believed in what you was doing uh I'd like to think obviously leading you into the CIA I know you said you enjoyed your time there on reflection you know what is your view on the CIA the US government do they believe what they're saying is it yes

[26:44] and no as in yes people at the lower levels or even sometimes higher but when you get to that kind of leadership level they don't believe in democracy they have an imperial view or you know they may think it's right like the British Empire thought they was doing it for good reasons civilization or missionaries so what are your Reflections on it now at the time you was there and kind of now uh being out that's a that's a very complicated

[27:17] uh question so I'm going to start it by saying start the answer by saying that a CIA psychiatrist once told me that the CIA actively seeks to people who have sociopathic tendencies not sociopaths sociopaths have no conscience they are unable to feel remorse or guilt people who have sociopathic tendencies do feel remorse or guilt but are happy to work in moral legal and

[27:48] ethical gray areas for example I will freely admit to you that I have sociopathic tendencies in that I have a conscience um I know right from wrong I try to do right but if my boss is needed for me to break into somebody's house and plant a camera and a bug I was perfectly happy to do that because I believed we were the good guys now like in politics or in corporate culture even when you try to weed out

[28:20] the sociopaths you're going to fail because they don't have a a conscience they will blow right through a polygraph exam and just like in politics and uh business they will rise to the top of their profession on the backs of the people around them because they don't feel guilt so when you have somebody who's intensely patriotic and who finds himself in a senior

[28:50] position without the ability to feel guilt then you've created a monster that's when you end up with a torture program and a rendition program and a secret prison program and international kidnappings and hit squads that fly around the world and assassinate people and the overthrow of governments like you said not just in the the depths of Africa the first government that the CIA overthrew and it's well documented was

[29:22] in 1948 uh and it was the Italian government tried to meddle in other Count's elections oh probably but uh it was for the good of the system in order to avoid the Communists from taking over for example in Europe uh uh in 4748 49 the Greeks and the Italians we we don't do that now though we don't mess around other people's elections only for a very good can you do that to a Vine video on his former CIA director only for a very good cause

[29:54] in the interest of democracy all right thanks for being here it's always great so um yeah on the one hand everybody at the CIA believes that he's a good guy and he's on the the right team the winning team because we are that shining Beacon of Hope for the rest of the world and on the other hand he's perfectly happy to commit crimes in some cases terrible crimes crimes against humanity war crimes uh Because he believes that it's for the good of the country it's

[30:24] very easy at the CIA to lose perspective and to and to lose the ability to determine what's right and what's wrong yeah now I would agree what you say as much as from the outside um it would be easy just to perceive it as that it's like you know kind of with the Iraq War which obviously you uh at the time in 2002 in Pakistan obviously you know you was kind of up to date with how that was moving but it's easy to say the

[30:54] Iraq war is just about oil this is or any you know whatever War you want to attach one reason but it's just not that simple and I've kind of as I've looked into it more come to the conclusion it's not just that because there's so many different factors it could be you know you can have the more um nefarious you know interest business interest whether it's arms oil it could also be someone who wants to for their own ego to be you know the be part of turning it into a democratic country in the Middle East or

[31:25] you know just for their own careerism or they truly do believe that Iraq was involved in 911 or it's worth getting rid of s Rin even you know just because he's that much of a bad guy this G so there's so many different factors so it would obviously work the same with the CIA and and kind of the government but with with the war on terror looking kind of through it now and obviously kind of in the context of again with Israel and Palestine that you know terrorism comes

[31:56] up time and time again do you think the war on ter created more well it did with obviously Isis and then you know what kind of happened in Syria but do you think the war on terror the way they went about it not just after 911 using like Special Forces to go after Al alqaeda they're invading all these countries did the whole war on terror um create more terrorists more groups and was it really ever about the war on

[32:27] terror or was it about using it to invade the countries they wanted or use it to overthrow the leaders of unfly governments in the region it was very briefly I'll use the word momentarily about ter about the war on terror uh it was very briefly about um destroying al-Qaeda in the immediate aftermath of the 911 attacks But to answer your your first question first um the US response to 911 created far more

[33:00] terrorists than it ever destroyed uh I can't tell you how many people and I mean I can't tell you because there were so many I can't even recall um how many Al-Qaeda Fighters I interrogated who said that they never had any problem with the United States until we bombed their Village we killed their parents we killed their cousins we killed their friends we killed whomever and then they took up arms against the

[33:31] United States so this wanting drone war that we initiated in 2001 has done nothing but harm and weaken our country that's separate from the creation of Isis for example Isis came out of the Iraq War and why did we invade Iraq not because Iraq had anything to do with 911 it didn't ala hated Saddam Hussein more than than they hated us but we did it for Revenge we

[34:03] did it for revenge for the the 1990 91 uh Gulf War and for the attempt in um 1992 93 to kill President George H W bush and so you know this is just it's bad shortterm foreign policy thinking that has gotten us into these these inextricable predicaments so now I mean we're we're more than 22 years past

[34:35] the 911 attacks and we're still in the region and we're still fighting and we're still droning and we're still you know sending carrier battle groups it's you know we're still fighting the same people in the same countries and more and more terrorists are being born and more and more terrorists are being converted and you know you would think that after 22 years we would have finally come to the conclusion that that our respon was was incorrect and that perhaps we should try a different policy but I don't think we've gotten there

[35:05] yet yeah Ju Just as you mentioned obviously about the Iraq War and obviously you were the of counter ter in Pakistan if I'm correct correct me if I'm wrong after but you know you obviously had information probably privy to the public wouldn't have you just mentioned there you know the Iraq War some of the reasons behind it was for reng the G War and the attempted assassination is that information that you're kind of speculating on someone who's looked at it since or someone

[35:36] who's around the people then making the decisions hearing their conversations we knew about it back then um you know I say my very first book that um when I got back from Pakistan I was I was promoted on the on the strength of the oppos beta capture and I was named executive assistant to the the deputy director so on my first day in that job I went to the deputy director and I said so what are we doing and he said I can't tell you you have to go up to the sixth

[36:06] floor and sign your secrecy agreements and then come back down and we'll talk about what we're doing I said okay so I I went up to the sixth floor there was a security officer there waiting for me and he had six agreements secrecy agreements lined up on a desk and I signed each one one at a time where I swore never to ever discuss anything having to do with my job unless it was Declassified subsequently so I signed each one of the six and when I was done I said so what's

[36:39] up and he said well and this was in May of 2002 he said next year in 2003 we're going to invade Iraq we're going to overthrow Saddam Hussein we're going to open the world's largest Air Force Base and we're going to move all of our air assets out of Saudi Arabia into Iraq that way he said we can deprive Osama Bin Laden of the ability of to say

[37:09] that we are polluting the land of the two holy mosques I was so shocked having just come back from Pakistan all I could think to stammer out was but we haven't caught Bin Laden yet and he said buddy the decision's always are already been made and the battle lines have been drawn he said the proar um entities are the office of the vice president the office of the Secretary of Defense and the National

[37:41] Security Council the anti-war side is the CIA the state department and The Joint Chiefs he said the decisions B made we're going to war well at the CIA in the state department and The Joint Chiefs of Staff we knew why they wanted to go to war because this was the this was the neoconservative wet dream right you can finally kill Saddam Hussein after all these years after all these years of of humiliation where we tell him you better

[38:13] not cross this line and then he crosses it and then he says now what are you g to do well what we're going to do is we're going to make a new line and say well you better not cross that one and then he crosses that one and then you say well you better not cross the third one or we're going to go to the UN and we're going to file a complaint well they were tired of that and so they decided no we're just going to kill him and that's what the policy was yeah you you mentioned the obviously about Bin Laden and looking back on the war on terror okay 911 happens

[38:47] alqaeda attacks the US their based out Afghanistan right they're going to go you know and the US population you know wanted Vengeance uh wanted to see some action and they could have just gone off but they go after the Taliban in Afghanistan and Iraq and you know we haven't even got beenin L then and all this task going and then obviously they get been in 2011 and there's obviously I

[39:17] kind of just wanted to see your thoughts on this the whole Torah Bora uh story where right at the start in in 2001 late 2001 maybe early 20021 yeah the B Laden and ala in t Bora and there's obviously been discussion and debate since then as there was kind of some flags that went that people all that they got away a bit too easy and they didn't bring kind of the full force

[39:47] and orders are kind of put out and there's been you know a few people who have come out who were involved who have said that do you think that it was genuine they just the leadership go away to um Pakistan or did people there there was a yeah there there was a double agent uh one of the translators working for the commander of Central Command uh was sent up the mountain in torab Bora to negotiate for bin Laden's um uh

[40:18] surrender and he came back down and he said Bin Laden had agreed to surrender uh they want you to let all the women and children go and uh they're Gathering their things and they just want to be able to surrender at Sunrise so they're going to come down the mountain at Sunrise but you have to promise to let the women and children go and we said fine in fact um they used those hours of Darkness to go down the mountain on the Pakistani side as it turned out with Bin

[40:49] Laden dressed as a woman and having escaped in the bed of a pickup truck into Pakistan so we learned years later that it was the translator who was actually sympathetic to Al-Qaeda he helped them engineer the Escape um and that was allowed to happen because sencom trusted him and they believed that he really had arranged for the surrender of Bin Laden and the rest of the al-Qaeda

[41:21] leadership I I I hadn't heard that perspective that's why I thought I'd asked you obviously the other side of the story was that certain kind of figures in the US Military and White House didn't want to catch Bin Laden that early because if they call him then and a lot of the leadership the war and terror is kind of done and dusted they can't get on with their political agendas in afghanan Iraq you don't think there's any way to that no you don't see this is this is something that that people who perpetuate these these conspiracies don't

[41:53] understand policy makers don't need for there to be a trigger to invade a country or to take their resources if if the US wanted to Triple defense spending it would just triple defense spending if the US wanted to invade Afghanistan it would invade Afghanistan it didn't need for you know the leadership of the Taliban to escape or Al-Qaeda to escape and to they just do what they want if they want to invade a country and seize the oil they invade the country and

[42:24] seize the oil we don't we don't need for any trigger to take place in the in the beginning yeah no that there's perly reasonable explanation I haven't really made my mind up about it I just thought it' be interesting to get your perspective as someone who maybe since then who was obviously involved uh in those early years maybe reflected on it and had a look but that's absolutely fine um just again actually kind of on the the terrorism side so again I haven't I watched you too much kind of

[42:55] about Syria but what what are your thoughts on obviously at your time in the CIA you're focused on catching ala and the terrorists and you know the public are told all throughout the war on terror is about catching terrorists and stopping regimes who encourage it and then in Syria uh whether you know people want to argue we willfully armed terrorists or alur or Isis or we kind of allowed it to

[43:27] happen by we would give it to the so-called moderate Rebels but they weren't the stronger firing Force so we would fall into them and either way you look at it obviously we was on the side of throwing uh throw overthrowing the Syrian regime and Assad and so they so we was on the same team even if you'd say had nothing to do with them what what are your thoughts on kind of the whole Syria situation uh the empowerment of these groups and the territories obviously Isis uh eventually took in Iraq and Syria and you know the fighting

[43:58] strength of Alura where do you kind of fall on this as someone you know who whose job was to obviously prevent terrorism how how did we go from that to this or or do you disagree uh with those kind of um arguments no no I think I think uh I think your analysis of the situation in Syria is correct I think that that you know there the United States has had a lot of foreign policy failures over the years and certainly a lot of foreign policy failures recently I think Syria is among the most

[44:29] significant most complete foreign policy failure first of all um it was the US invasion and occupation of Iraq that led to the creation of of Isis right and Isis was more radical than Al-Qaeda because they believed that Al-Qaeda was not they they were not anti-American enough they were not violent enough and so uh and so they decided to attack uh

[45:00] the United States from outside the confines of what had been Al-Qaeda okay that's number one uh number two the US made a terrible strategic error in trying to identify so-called moderates in Syria there is no such thing as a Syrian moderate the Kurds aside the Kurds are a different issue uh we have long-standing relations with Kurds in both Syria and Iraq um they are generally pro-american and have

[45:32] been pro-american for many decades for Generations Donald Trump's ill-advised comments about Kurds aside we've had years and years and years of very close relations with the Kurds the Strategic error came in pretending that the nusa front um previously known in Syria as Al-Qaeda was somehow magically mod moderate one day one day we woke up and they were suddenly the moderates in Syria what what my constant cry was that

[46:04] our biggest problem was our allies our allies in the region were our largest problem in Syria the Turks were great friends and I have a great relationship with erdogan which I just spent a lot of time with the Saudis the amadis ETC what were they doing they were so determined to take down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni Shia War what did they do they poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens

[46:34] thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad except that the people who were being who were being supplied were alnus and Al-Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world now you think I'm exaggerating take a look where did all of this go so now what's happening all of a sudden everybody's awakened because this

[47:07] outfit called isil which was al-Qaeda in Iraq which when they were essentially thrown out of Iraq found open space and territory and in Western excuse me in eastern Syria work with elnusa who we declared a terrorist group early on and we could not convince our colleagues to stop supplying another strategic error in Syria was uh the decision to support a

[47:38] regime change operation against Bashar al-assad terrible critical mistake for a couple of reasons first of all Bashar al-assad has the support of the Russian and Chinese governments and he's not going anywhere whether we like it or not secondly Bashar al-assad has a long history of being supportive of Christian and other minority um ethnic and religious groups in Syria there is a vibrant um

[48:11] Orthodox antiochian Orthodox Greek Orthodox and Catholic um uh uh trading class in Syria uh there are Christians who are members of the cabinet the foreign minister is a Christian uh there are women who are in the cabinet there are women who are in the parliament there's an active Jewish community in Damascus um they have one of the the oldest continuously operating synagogues on the planet and you want to overthrow them

[48:43] and put in al-Qaeda I mean what kind of policy is that what kind of foreign policy is that um in addition to that Donald Trump when he was president um decided to maintain the Special Forces presence that Barack Obama had established in northeastern Syria to quote guard the oil fields well you know what that's a war crime right you can Google it that's a war crime you cannot

[49:13] occupy an area of any country for the purpose of of seizing their national resources thousands of years in the process between borders between these countries and other countries that we're involved with 7,000 miles away so we want to worry about our things uh we're keeping the oil we have the oil the oil is secure uh we left troops behind only for the oil and I have to just finish by saying that number one number two there

[49:45] are only three ways that you can militarily occupy a foreign country if you've been invited in by that country as the Russians have by an order of the United Nations security Council which has never happened in in the case of Syria and number three if that country has attacked you militarily so just the fact that the US is there in the first place is an international War crime it's like every aspect of this policy is wrong every single aspect of

[50:18] it we need to walk away from Syria I know you have John Paul soon so kind of start to finish out there um but yeah of course the US is still in Syria and obviously since what's been going on in the region with Israel and Palestine and Hamas they've come under Fire many times in Syria and Iraq which people might think the US is still even in Syria and Iraq to get fired at uh and I will put in the I put kind of everything

[50:48] in the show notes play clip of Donald Trump referring directly to they stay there for the oil to to probably more not to they've kind of been waiting to see what to do with certain oil but more just to take it away from them uh as this kind of they discussed um but yeah it was really great to have you do you just want to let people know that the books uh that you've written where to find your work oh sure I've written eight books now people to go

[51:19] back oh sure thank you um I've written eight books so far most of them are on on U uh intelligence and the CIA and foreign policy uh they're all out there on Amazon and wherever books are and uh I'm on substack I post all my work on substack uh under John kiraku
