Title: Ep. 5832 - John Kiriakou on the CIA, FBI, JFK and 9/11 -
Show: Scott Horton
Date: 2023-01-04
URL: https://youtu.be/v1tRqZKo4q0
Duration: 1:01:00

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[00:03] [Music] all right shell welcome to the Scott Horton Show I'm the director of the libertarian Institute editorial director of anti-war.com author of the book pools Aaron time to end the war in Afghanistan and the brand new enough already time to end the war on Terrace and I've recorded more than 5 500 interviews since 2003. almost all on foreign policy and all available for you at scotthorton.org you

[00:36] can sign up the podcast feed there and the full interview archive is also available at youtube.com Scott Horton Show all right you guys introducing John kiriaku former CIA officer and author of a few books including surveillance and surveillance detection how to disappear and live off the grid lying in lie detection boy you've really been busy here uh doing time like a spy how the CIA taught me to survive and

[01:07] thrive in prison you know he went to prison over the torture Scandal not because he tortured people to death but because he revealed the names of some who had tortured people I don't know about the death or not but um so he's the only one who got in trouble for blowing the whistle and of course he wrote The Insider's Guide to the Iran crisis with the great Gareth Porter and The Reluctant spy before that about uh the war on terrorism oh and the convenient terrorist about the couple of Abu zabetas right very interesting stuff and he's got a brand new sub stack which

[01:39] is John cariaku.substack.com welcome back to the show John how are you doing thanks so much Scott it's great to be with you thanks for inviting me yeah happy to have you here so tell me why did you kill Jack Kennedy I know right I'm just coming around it's taken me all this time to just come around to the to the idea that uh that at least elements of the CIA were responsible for killing for killing JFK it's taken me this long you know it did you know it did it for me too uh Jefferson Morley I was talking to Jefferson Morley the other day former

[02:11] Washington Post journalist amazing historian and Scholar nobody knows as much about the Kennedy killing as he does and he uncovered a document at the at the National Archives just about three weeks ago from this latest tranche of Kennedy documents that shows that the hands-off Cuba committee that Lee Harvey Oswald was a member of was actually a CIA front organization even if Oswald didn't know that he was being paid by

[02:42] the CIA the CIA knew about Oswald and you remember just before he was killed he said he was a patsy I think that's what this is all about well you know um so and that's was I don't know how to pronounce the name but this is the document that uh confirms that this guy Joan nanonides or something like that he was the uh yeah yeah how do you say ioanidis huh well great great guys say

[03:13] it yeah I can't do it yeah um bad guy okay great so and so that was it so he's the direct connection there between the alleged shooter who it seems like must have gotten off one of the shots or maybe not that might be assuming too much whether he had you know actually pull the trigger at all but at least the accused shooter um is has a direct connection there now this guy was the CIA officer he was himself an agent of an officer he was an

[03:43] officer he was an officer yo I need this yeah and he was long known as a bad guy uh you know sort of a Black Ops I hate that that term but it replies in this in this case and I wanted to say something else I I happen to be on on Bob Kennedy's uh show the other day and after it was done he told me something that was just fascinating he said that on November 22nd 63 his mom picked him up early from school she took him out of school um and brought him home she told him on the way home what had happened

[04:14] and when he got to the house they lived it in a big mansion in McLean Virginia called Hickory Hill uh he said that his dad was there with John McCone who was the head of the CIA and John McCone was a long time family friend he said McCone would come to the Kennedy house every day after work and swim in their pool oftentimes he would stay for dinner he was unmarried at the time and so he was very close to the Kennedy family so Bob said that when he got out of the car

[04:44] his dad and McCone were standing there talking and he overheard his dad say tell me your people didn't do this and McCone responded I have no I have no idea who did this and he said the fact that McCone didn't say oh well of course not of course none of my people would have done something like this that's not what he said he said I have no idea who did this and he said it's stuck in his mind for the last 60 years yeah you know I'd like to go back to that or see I

[05:16] well what I like to do is uh Lawnmower Man the uh by osmosis somehow all of those books without having to sit and spend a year reading through them all right right because I'm just too young I don't know but I still would like to understand this I mean I guess well what I was trying to say is he was the Attorney General he could have said um special Prosecuting all of your asses and that's right going crazy right um but then he would have been relying

[05:46] on Jake or Hoover but hell he could have just indicted Jacob Hoover he could have done whatever he wanted he could have said listen the CIA couldn't have done this without you running cover for them so now I'm indicting you for conspiracy too you fat old trans Tesco whatever the hell and he could have done whatever he wanted right but you know as much they didn't he didn't do that he stuck around for a little while then he resigned and resigned ran for president and got himself shot again you know a couple years later yeah yeah he did as much as Hoover hated the Kennedys Hoover hated the CIA more and I wonder

[06:19] what would have happened if Kennedy had gone to Hoover and said I think the CIA did this because you know there's a story there's a story that I heard many years ago that when Congress was writing the the National Security Act of 1947 which created the CIA uh Hoover was was adamantly opposed he he didn't believe we needed a CIA there was already an OSS it was winding things down now that the war was over um and the only way that Truman could

[06:51] get Hoover to back off to get this bill passed was to lie to Hoover and tell him that once it was created the CIA would be a division of the FBI and so Hoover withdrew his his uh opposition and then of course he was duped it was never meant to be a division of the FBI he was livid he never forgave Truman for it and institutionally this hatred of the between the FBI and the CIA lasted well beyond the 9 11 attacks

[07:24] yeah but not anymore they're just one in the same agency now yeah it's pretty much one of the same you know the the big the big change the the thing that finally brought them together after all those years was the series Donald Trump right pretty much yeah pretty much what were you gonna say I I was gonna say the computer systems the computer systems were never compatible like for example when I was at the CIA I could email somebody at the state department or at NSA or Dia or energy or whatever I

[07:54] wanted I couldn't email anybody at the FBI because the systems weren't compatible similarly when any agency in the intelligence Community uh released an intelligence report no matter the classification I would see it at the CIA all the analysts would see it at the CIA not FBI reports again because they were incompatible and so it wasn't until after 9 11 like well after 9 11 like two three four years after 9 11 that they finally

[08:27] cleared each other for the information made the systems compatible and then institutionalized a modus operandi where they could actually share information yeah they did one other thing too actually after 9 11 uh they named they named a CIA officer as deputy director of the FBI for counterterrorism and they named an FBI officer as the deputy director of the

[08:57] cia's counterterrorism center so just to keep the honest people honest and make sure that this transfer of information was indeed taking place they sort of placed people in each other's agencies all right well you know what as long as we're going down this road um how about September 11th and the role of Prince bandar Ben Sultan and Prince turkey alfaisal I think the news is not very well publicized over this last year but I think just over this last year

[09:28] we've had a major leak from the lawsuit against the Saudis that's been published in pieces in a couple of papers here and there that seems to reveal if I understand right John that it's not just that the Saudi Embassy was running the guy who was running or at least protecting uh carrying and feeding for the San Diego cell the flight 77 hijackers but that all the different hijacker cells in America were being run

[10:00] and protected by the Saudi Embassy in that same way and uh and so like I'm sure I'm oversimplifying that but can you let us know like what what have we really learned over the last year Beyond those 28 pages I I believe that the Saudis or elements of the Saudi government were deeply involved in the planning and the financing of the 9 11 attacks going all the way up to bend our binseltown and uh and turkey Al

[10:31] Turkey Hill Faisal of course was the head of the Saudi intelligence service and Bender bin Sultan was the long time Saudi ambassador to the United States when he left the U.S he went back to Saudi Arabia to become the National Security advisor the first Saudi National Security advisor and you know bandar was always a Washington favorite he was he was the head of the Diplomatic Corps because he was the longest-serving Ambassador uh he had wild popularity inside administrations

[11:04] be they Republican or Democrat everybody loved bandar but I remember in the immediate aftermath of the 9 11 attacks uh bandar coming to the CIA ostensibly for a briefing on the latest developments and George Tennant got right in his face and said that we knew there were Saudi government officials that were involved we knew that there were royal family members involved and he says bandar I'm

[11:36] telling you right now we're going to start killing people and I don't care if their last name is Saud and I remember thinking this is a historic conversation I'm witnessing you know I mean George used to get mad easily and he would yell and swear and point fingers and make nasty comments but I had never seen anything like this and then later on you know years later after all these these allegations we see that that Saudi Intelligence

[17:22] and look by the way I'm not really a truther on this and I don't really buy my own argument about bandar did this because he had to deal with Cheney to hit New York because I think no it doesn't make sense he's taken too big of a risk that especially you hit the Pentagon you know you could kill some General's wife and then he could get mad and take Dick Cheney out back and shoot him and sit in his chair and do whatever he wants and every mind W bush and and nuke Riyadh because

[17:52] that's what happens when you hit the Pentagon you know what I mean I don't know yeah that would be the risk so so there's no Assurance there's no collection of assurances that would be enough but then so what's the explanation CIA man for why Prince bandar would do such a thing to us man well I think that there are a lot of of True Believers in Saudi Arabia True Believers in in Islam who um who don't give a about the United States and want to attack the

[18:23] United States fundamentalists inside the Royal Family and I think that's what we saw uh in this case in fact you remember well I mean I'd buy that but but we're talking about bandar and Faisal who those guys are going to betray the bushes on behalf of some Royal cousin I've never heard of who likes Bin Laden's view instead I I can't think of any other reason why they would allow something like this to happen I mean I've thought about this for years and I just don't understand what their

[18:55] motivation would be especially bandar's motivation you know maybe his wife's a nut she's a fundamentalist I don't know I never met her but that does seem a weird way to make that payoff you know Phil geraldi he when when he first got into 911 stuff another former CIA officer he went further than me on some things I was like yeah I'm not so sure about some of those things but then when it came to the Saudi thing he actually wrote a thing for the American conservative essentially debunking the 28 pages and saying you know if you don't beg the question here and you just try to look

[19:27] at it honestly this isn't really out of character for what the Saudi Embassy does for Saudi immigrants to the United States all the time or people here on visas all the time they give them a ton of money they pay for their economy you know this that or whatever yeah and it's not just the Saudis it's all the gulf countries do that yeah so if you're a citizen of that country you get a check period yep at that point so here we are and don't forget let me add one other thing go ahead don't forget um when we captured Abus beta in in March

[19:59] of 2002 in Pakistan we also confiscated his uh his address book and you know where this is going yeah there were there were the names and numbers these two Saudi princes and we went back to the Saudis and said you know what what the heck is this Abu zubaida who we believed at the time was the number three in Al Qaeda um he's got uh he's got the personal cell phone numbers of these two Saudi princes the next thing you know one of them is killed in a one-car accident in

[20:30] the desert and the other one goes camping in the desert and is found later having died of thirst no well but wasn't also the case that he had the number for Prince bandar's Castle in Aspen Colorado oh see that I didn't know that I didn't know that would be wouldn't you be the guy who knows that yeah I should be the guy that knows that yeah because I just think I learned that from Larissa but no I that's not true I think she thinks that but no no I remember there's some news report about zubaida had bandar's

[21:01] phone number in Aspen uh here let me Google it as long as yeah I'd like to know we're screwing around on a Friday afternoon here man um wait a minute you wrote the book on this guy you would know that yeah but it was like 10 years ago and our phone yes Prince Sultan bin feisal was the one killed in the car accident okay yeah so here you go this is oh here's the Aspen Times version of it uh

[21:34] CNN 28 Pages indirect 911 link to bandar revealed so what's here um oh it was in the 28 Pages oh it was that was what it was it's a beta's phone book both those numbers were unpublished and one of them was uh unlisted number for a company that managed bandar's estate in Aspen Colorado read CNN an unlisted number was also

[22:06] found for a bodyguard who worked at the Saudi Embassy in Washington wow yeah wow yeah and I'm I'm looking at a at a book here called Blood Horse no no no no that's the site it's uh why America slept by Gerald Posner Random House book oh I hate that guy isn't it yeah I do too actually when he's not pleasured speaking of Larissa I remember him outright plagiarizing her she wrote a thing on

[22:36] her blog at largely and then 10 minutes later he's on MSNBC just outright regurgitating just feeling it I think that's a piece of crap he wrote A Thing even like his whole specialty was like nothing's a conspiracy right MLK killed himself JFK killed himself David koresh killed himself Timothy McVeigh killed himself and you're about to sorry go ahead no this is uh Prince I haven't been been Sultan who uh died in the car accident but they later said he had a heart attack while

[23:08] he was driving and there's um and there's a another one oh Prince Fahad bin Faisal uh who died of thirst and their funerals were a day apart well who knows well now I want to ask you about other old Terror War stuff what about the al-Qaeda attacks in Saudi in 2003 that the neocons convinced Bush were launched out of Iran oh my gosh well it was 2003 or the

[23:41] earlier ones maybe it was O2 19 in 1996 that was oh that was no no yeah no that's a whole other story well go ahead and talk about that and we'll get back to O3 in a minute yeah I'm gonna talk about kobar because that's a great one yeah kobar I I was living in Bahrain at the time and I mean it's you can see al-kobar from my house right it's just right across the water you can see the lights at night and I was on the phone with my wife it was our anniversary January I'm sorry uh June the 25th

[24:13] 1996 and um so I was on the phone with her she was she was in the states she had just had our second child and uh there was an explosion that just shattered the the windows of my living room I I thought my house was under attack so I rolled off the bed and got underneath it so I told her there was just an explosion I gotta go and I hung up I stayed under the bed for a few minutes and then went outside and my neighbors were all outside thinking that they had

[24:44] been bombed we couldn't see anything there was no like you know crater nothing was on fire and I was like I don't know what the heck that was so I went to bed the next morning of course it's all over the news that it was El hobar so I drive over there by the way so that means this is a barracks and it was Airmen American Airmen who were killed 19 of them and I don't know you could see it it was one of the most incredible

[25:14] things that I that I've ever seen I I drove over there the next morning with a with another CIA officer and Warren Christopher who was Secretary of State at the time flew in with a whole bunch of CIA people and the whole front half of the building was just sheared off like you see it looks like Oklahoma City I was just going to say like you see in images of Oklahoma City it was just sheared off but worse than that the crater was 30 feet deep it was so deep that water was seeping in from the Persian Gulf and on the ceilings in the building there was

[25:47] blood because the bomb was so big people were blown up out of their beds and just kind of squished on the ceiling that's how many of them died it was from the the force of the of the sound wave of the impact just squished them and never went there and saw this yourself pardon me you went there and saw this yourself oh yeah yeah I've got devastating pictures yeah it was terrible terrible but anyway my point was sorry I

[26:19] forgot my point my point was we worked really hard as a government to blame that on Iran you know with no evidence whatsoever all we knew was that two guys were in a truck uh they they drove up to the the barracks more the barracks I say Barracks with air quotes it was more like a like an apartment building and um and then they ran like hell and when the lookout guy on the roof saw

[26:50] them running he started running floor to floor screaming for people to evacuate he probably saved dozens of lives but it was night time and so many people were sleeping that they just couldn't get out man yeah and then so what they blamed it on iranian-backed Saudi Hezbollah exactly and listen I can tell you Saudi Hezbollah is different from every other Hezbollah Kuwaiti Hezbollah and the main Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria

[27:20] we've never had a beef with Saudi Hezbollah they hate the Saudi royal family because the Saudi royal family oppresses them well there's some tiny powerless little group there right little teeny tiny it's it's probably a couple of dozen guys so there was never any evidence that the Iranians had done this never you know we had they were covering us for who well we had heard of this group Al Qaeda because a year earlier they had they had blown up the OPM sang building in Riyadh and they killed I don't know five people

[27:52] seven people all uh Third Country Nationals working that's where I used to do my grocery shopping uh they blew it up because they sold pork there right like there was a back room you could go in and discreetly buy bacon or ham steaks or whatever so they blew it up killed all these Indian guys that used to work there so we knew there was this group Al Qaeda but but this group that we barely knew anything about they couldn't pull off something like a kobar right it had to be the Iranians it's this group thing that's so pervasive at the CIA

[28:23] sounds like a bunch of idiot liberals on Twitter hang on just one second hey y'all the audiobook of my book enough already time to end the war on terrorism is finally done yes of course read by me it's available at audible Amazon Apple Books and soon on Google Play and whatever other options there are out there it's my history of America's war on terrorism from 1979 through today give it a listen and see if you agree it's time to just come home enough already time to end the war on

[28:56] terrorism the audiobook hey guys I've had a lot of great webmasters over the years but the team at expandesigns.com have by far been the most competent and reliable Harley Abbott and his team have made great sites for the Show and The Institute and they keep them running well suggesting and making improvements all along make a deal with expandesigns.com for your new business or news site they will take care of you use the promo code Scott and save 500 that's

[29:27] expandedesigns.com man I wish I was in school so I could drop out and sign up for Tom Woods this Liberty classroom instead Thomas done such a great job on putting together a classical curriculum for everyone from junior high schoolers on up through the postgraduate level and it's all very reasonably priced just make sure you click through from the link in the right margin at scotthorton.org Tom Woods's Liberty classroom Real History real economics real education all right well

[29:58] so I don't know I feel like I must have let you off the hook uh too easy there on September 11th somehow but it's I'm I'm very happy I agree with you 100 on that issue well I don't even know what I think about it so you can't because no but you said you know you're not a believer in the the Nano thermite and oh yeah oh it's easy yeah no I don't buy it yeah no but so I don't know I don't understand it though because I

[30:31] do I do think I understand the level of involvement of the Saudi government in doing it and the the only obvious motive is one that to me is just too much of a stretch I mean and you know what I'm saying that as a proud former conspiracy cook who predicted that attack for years before it happened and what I said it was was the CIA is going to do it and blame it on that Bin Laden guy and then invade Afghanistan and Iraq I mean I was saying that on the radio in 1998-99 in fact I had a funny anecdote somebody

[31:02] stole the tape I lost all my tapes out of my buddy storage shed of my first radio show oh that's terrible but I had that anecdote and I knew that part of one of those anecdotes was I was on the phone with this guy when we were both kind of predicting September 11th and I said then they're going to go to war with Iraq and then he goes well they'll have to go to Afghanistan first because that's where Bin Laden is now and he got that lady Christian amanpur on CNN always trying to get rid of the Taliban so that'll be on there too and this is like in the end of 98 maybe beginning in 99 we're saying

[31:32] this when Bush hadn't even begun to run yet and we're just like totally predicting all this so I was like well I got a witness even though I lost the tape you know I know I have a witness because I was talking to this guy too and then what happened was I was at a party and I knew I met a guy or I remed a guy who I know knew this guy and I got in contact with him oh my God and I told him that story and I said do you remember that and I said yeah then they're gonna be a terrorist attack in New York and they'll blame it on Osama

[32:03] and then they'll uh invade Iraq and then you said yeah but they'll have to stop in Afghanistan first because the Christian I'm poor and Osama Bin Laden and he goes nah I don't remember that oh man I'm not gonna lie to you I got no Witnesses but it's definitely true but anyway but then look even then it happened just exactly the way I predicted it but then one all that stuff that you just mentioned with the thermite etc etc etc is all every bit of that you know it really

[32:33] like jaded me of the that entire kind of conspiracy thinking about the stuff and I decided I was going to hold my horses and really learn as much as I could about Al Qaeda and who these guys were and what they were doing and all of that stuff and so I don't know if this is a smart thing to say but I took a lot of what Michael Sawyer said to heart then you know when he came out with Imperial hubris and I talked with him I asked him hey man and you know I think he was involved with torturing people and stuff like not personally but in like participating in it and stuff maybe you

[33:03] can fill me in on that but he was a hardcore anti-alkaeda dude and and even now that he's gone like way kookier yeah I still think that he says what he means and I asked him hey man come on do you think that they let this happen turn to Blind Eye somehow got the Saudis to help and do this thing so they could have this war and this and that and he goes nah because I don't think that the White House house knew enough to ignore because of the childishness of people like George Tenet and Louis free and all of these others in charge at the police

[33:34] and spy agencies who all hate each other so much and whatever so like what would connolisa rice know to even you know turn a blind eye to her what would Dick Cheney know these guys were working on missile defense and the name of North Korea or whatever boondoggle when they came in that kind of thing working on getting to Baghdad and didn't want to be distracted with all this Saudi stuff I mean just like what you're saying with kobar like oh man we don't want to have to go after some Saudi princeling let's blame it on the uh it's Holland yeah exactly exactly you know let me tell you

[34:07] something too about uh about shoyer I always liked and respected Troyer he's become kind of a nut since he left the agency uh he's very conspiratorial or even really like since the Obama years that's a better way to say it since the Obama years but I had a great deal of respect for him and and for his understanding of Al Qaeda from the very very beginning but where I finally walked away from him was just recently when he married Alfredo Bakowski Alfredo Bukowski the red-headed devil

[34:39] who headed Alex station who before that was the chief of operations in Alex station who oversaw the torture program Alfreda was bad news from the get-go and she married him like how the heck did that happen so yeah like I mean he was I mean that's part of the well go ahead and elaborate about that because the story is that he called Sandy Berger a or something and so he got exiled to the library and

[35:11] so from 96 or from 99 through 01 or whatever it was he was not working but on collecting his government check to sit in the library but kicked out of Alex station and so she was running it so when I was saying earlier that story like Ray nowleski says I know I say his name wrong I'm so sorry Ray I really respect you I'm just too stupid to say your name right um but he says you know she was trying to run this off they were she and Rich blee they were trying to to turn to San Diego cell into double agents but that failed and then they

[35:41] dropped the ball something like that do you know about that oh yeah yeah sure in fact just after that went bad I became the chief of counterterrorism I'm sorry the chief of counterintelligence in Alex station I was working yeah in Alex station yeah from what day to what day oh I was there for a short period of time because I got promoted on the strength of the uh of the Abu zubata capture I went up to the seventh floor so I was there from May to August of 2002. oh okay but after September 11th oh yeah

[36:13] yeah after September 11th okay I'm sorry go ahead go ahead yeah so she and Rich blee were very very close because they were they were like-minded on these issues they just wanted to go in guns blazing and if you couldn't turn somebody then then you kill them but like we said a minute ago they also had this very passionate hatred for the FBI so even after they realized that they couldn't turn these guys in San Diego they couldn't recruit them not realizing

[36:43] that they were the actual hijackers were planned to be the hijackers um they never told the FBI that these guys were in the country you know so they couldn't be arrested all they had to do was say look you know there are these bad guys they're in San Diego we took a shot at them and they they turned us down over to you guys um they never did that I'll give you another example when I was in Pakistan we had a guy a walk-in a walk-in is somebody who

[37:14] literally walks in to the American Embassy and offers up intelligence 99 of the time they are crazy people their probes usually from the Iranians just looking to see how thick the walls are how thick the windows are who's got a gun where the cameras are located and um and uh sometimes their intelligence uh Brokers we call them where you know they'll offer you a little nugget that may or may not be true and you give them 100 bucks and then they go to the French

[37:46] Embassy and then the British Embassy then the Russian Embassy and you know that's a month's salary right there so it's that one percent that you're working for it's that one percent that makes you take these walk-ins very very seriously so because I spoke Arabic and and other languages I was the designated walk-in guy we had a guy come in and um he offered us some intelligence and

[38:17] we did a raid a couple nights later based on his intelligence it was a bust so he said oh the guy must have moved he you know my my information was several days old uh for my own safety I waited to tell you so he wouldn't know it was me okay he gives us additional information we do a second raid it's also a bust we do a third raid and it's a bust so clearly this guy's a liar we don't know why he's lying but in the course of the debriefings he admitted that he was the one he was

[38:48] the actual guy that fired a shoulder-fired rocket a shoulder mounted rocket at the American Embassy in 1995. so I said to the chief I said look this guy's a liar and a fabricator but we have him on this rocket attack so let's just turn it over to the FBI and we'll grab the guy you know he had the opportunity to do the right thing he's been yanking my chain and wasting my time for all these weeks let's get him and then we just extradite him to the

[39:19] United States to face you know a terrorism charge we went down to the FBI office together which was on the first floor and they were like yeah yeah we're not interested yeah this is kind of your problem it's just a walk-in it's like this guy freaking fire to rock it at the American embassy and it's not it's not important enough to prosecute that was the relationship back then between the CIA and the FBI they just hated each other so much that that there was no motivation or willingness to help one another yeah so

[39:51] a couple more anecdotes on that you got time to kill here still sure yeah so one people can look this up on YouTube it's pretty easy to find you just type in Michael Schauer John O'Neal and you look for the one where he's sitting at the desk testifying before Congress and he said and John O'Neill is the head of the counterterrorism division in New York FBI counterterrorism division well he he was the head of the whole FBI uh uh field office okay yeah oh okay if the

[40:21] New York field officer the terrorism officers under him then right right exactly he was a very big shot right but then he got run out of the FBI and he became the head of security on September 11th at the World Trade Center was the first likely Target and the building fell on him so then here's a clip of Michael Sawyer saying that um the congressman asks him you know I forgot the question how he sets him up about you know that you were you were uh

[40:52] condemned this guy John O'Neill and sure is this that's right I also said that when that building fell on him that that was the only good thing that happened to America on 11 September and he's just mad as hell like you can tell he's like ready to get up and fight somebody there over this dead guy that he still hates that much and um and then oh so here's another important anecdote I don't know if people can find this anymore but should be it was a little Twitter video I don't know if what it originally was maybe it's on

[41:23] YouTube too but it's famous people all around you should be able to finance Alex Gibney is the um documentary in the famous documentarian taxi to the dark side and all that stuff and then he's got Lawrence Wright who famously wrote the looming Tower and a lot of other times it's from The New Yorker magazine and all of this stuff right Austin um and then they're interviewing Doug Miller and Ali soufan and Rossini is the other one all three former FBI agents counterterrorism agents and I think Ali

[41:54] soufan was O'Neill's right-hand man and they're they're portrayed by uh by um Denzel Washington and uh the guy that played monk in the movie The Siege by the way that Lawrence Wright wrote in the 90s anyway so these guys are sitting down and talking about September 11th and what happened that day to them or whatever I forgot the whole angle but the point is this Ali sufan was working again FBI counterterrorism was working

[42:25] the coal bombing in Yemen and then once the towers started falling down he got a phone call that said hey you better come into the embassy AKA CIA headquarters in Yemen right and he goes in and they take him in the back room and they open up a manila envelope uh and he looks at the you know you can imagine like it's a PowerPoint type slide you know little graphic thing like a Snowden file or whatever a little pictogram of the

[42:55] Malaysia meeting and he goes oh I get it half of this is the coal bombing and half of this is what happened today the September 11th attack is like this is it this is the whole plot was like hatch both of these plots were hatched at the Malaysia meeting and the CIA has known everything about everybody there and everything that they've been up to this whole time and thanks a lot for not telling me guys because that's why our Towers just got knocked down and now you tell me now that they've Fallen exactly right so and you could see Zero

[43:28] cooperation and I guess from shoyer's point of view right and I forget if I ever asked him about this directly but the obvious thing I think he told me this was the FBI wanted to take every scrap of data that they could find and lock it all up behind a grand jury where nobody else could get to it and the CIA was like we need that stuff for killing people with exactly so is that really right like that was the way the beef came down was really that kind of territorial 100 true I'll tell you another story the night that we captured up as a beta we we got

[44:00] a lot of stuff along with him we got his diary we got his address book we got a cell phone we got a copy of the al-Qaeda uh training manual I mean this was this was a giant leap forward for our analysts and and our collectors and remind me what month this was this is the end of March 2002. so um in in the chaos that was taking place an FBI agent there by the name of Jennifer she took up his ubeda's cell phone and

[44:32] she put it in an Evidence bag and she sealed it and as soon as she sealed it I mean like the second that it that she sealed it it started ringing so I grabbed it and she said whoa wait a minute what are you doing I said I'm going to answer the phone and she said you're not answering the phone I said as soon as I opened the phone NSA is going to pick it up this could be Bin Laden calling we don't know who's calling this could be a major event for us operationally she goes do not open that bag I said Jen we've got

[45:04] to open the bag so that we can answer the phone so that we can track the person calling and capture them and everybody we we got heated and it's still ringing right this is all happening within a matter of 30 seconds and there were you know 36 FBI and CIA people around us half FBI have CIA and they're all just silent standing there watching us scream at each other and I said I'm opening the bag and she said if you open the bag I will arrest you and

[45:35] charge you with obstruction of justice and I just stood there and then the phone stopped ringing and I tossed it back to her the headquarters was absolutely livid but this this goes in part to this this hatred between the FBI and the CIA on the one hand and on the other hand you know the FBI looks at everything as an open criminal investigation and the CIA doesn't give a about open criminal investigations they just want to bust down the door and grab the bad guys and

[46:07] prevent the next attack now I'm not saying that that's the right thing to do I'm just saying in the immediate aftermath of 9 11 that was how people felt yeah well man so the reason I brought you on today was to talk about Joshua Schulte and how he wrote this note to the judge about how he would rather be dead than locked in solitary confinement anymore I wonder if he could tell us a little bit about this guy and why he's locked in solitary confinement this poor guy Joshua Schulte was a CIA

[46:39] hacker and you know the cia's got an entire Army of hackers as you might imagine and they tend to be quirky people a lot of them have you know they're on the Spectrum one way or the other they're strong introverts and they like just sort of sitting in front of a computer all day long well Schulte was very unpopular in his office he would he would toss Nerf basketballs at people while they were working and he had a bad relationship with his branch chief they

[47:10] just didn't like him well he finally left and what he was accused of doing what he was convicted of doing was taking out information with him on a thumb drive that he passed to WikiLeaks and these documents came to be known as Vault 7. the CIA said this was in fact a former CI deputy director said this this was akin to a an intelligence Pearl Harbor the it was the worst the single worst thing that ever happened to the CIA because it was the crown jewels of what the CIA was capable of doing

[47:41] so Schulte was arrested very quickly and sent to MDC Brooklyn the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn it's a notoriously horrible Place uh The Whistleblower Marty goddessfeld was there uh what's his name Epstein was there uh and many prisoners not just Schulte but many prisoners have complained about conditions there's no heat for example in the in the winter time and even your toilet water freezes uh there are no windows uh you you go

[48:15] crazy because you're isolated literally from any form of human contact for 24 hours a day you're allowed one phone call a month and it can only be to your lawyer the the food is terrible it's it's uh you know a bowl of Cheerios for for breakfast a bologna sandwich for lunch and a bologna sandwich for dinner every single day of your life so um Schulte was he went on trial last year and was acquitted on two counts and then

[48:46] it was like another eight counts uh that that it was a hung jury and so the justice department decided to retry him and these are all Espionage counts they retried him and he did something that was like unbelievably stupid he fired his lawyers and he said that he could represent himself better than they could represent him you know that old saying that the the man who represents himself has a fool for a client uh he ended up being convicted on all

[49:18] charges and he now faces 80 years in prison uh the way they've they've treated him indicates to me that when he finally comes up for sentencing which I think is in March uh he's gonna get the maximum or pretty darn close to the maximum well they're giving him these uh special administrative measures too yes is that right so this is yeah they're giving him special Administration administrative measures uh which really cut him off completely from from the outside world

[49:49] he can't speak to family members he can't have visitors he can't speak to the media ever uh the only reason that we know about this is that he wrote a letter to the judge which he's allowed to do and then the judge released it by by having it uh put in the court records and leaving it unsealed so you know there are two um uh cmus uh um management units what's the what's the C stand for communications Communications

[50:19] thank you two Communications management units in the United States one is at the federal penitentiary at Terre Haute Indiana which also has the federal death row and the other is um at the the super max prison in Marion Illinois Daniel Hale the Drone whistleblower is there Marty goddessfeld who's a hacktivist and never hurt anybody is there that's where Victor boot was I mean these cmus and um and and Sams they're supposed to be for the

[50:51] worst of the worst the most dangerous the most horrible the most deadly prisoners that we have in America and they're not they're used for political reasons to silence people yeah and you know I mean you think about uh who you know what we're talking about here I read a thing where they interviewed the jurors too and they're like well he was guilty of the crime and everything but you know the worst you could say was he was guilty of the offense right we're talking about leaking government secrets to somebody we're not talking about robbing a store

[51:22] and putting a gun to some lady's head and you know that's right or even some you know uh Robo call scam where you rip off old ladies of their savings or something we're talking about leaking government secrets here and they're treating him when you think about like who goes in the hole it's somebody who is already in prison for murder and then murders somebody else in there or something like that right not this guy who's just boy you sure didn't make CIA mad and everybody knows it's it's not

[51:53] the CIA it's just CIA because you don't say the god it's just God and so look at what they can do to you they'll they'll give you a living death in the whole so true and and that's what it's going to be it's going to be a living death because it's not like he's going to be putting the whole uh for for a week for insubordination or for a month for fighting somebody he's gonna die in there he's going to go into the hole and he's going to stay there for the rest of his life

[52:25] it's terrible it's a terrible Injustice and I wanted to make another Point too if we've got the time that is that that much of what he is alleged to have released was actually in the public interest without his Revelations we wouldn't know that the CIA can can remotely Take Over Control of our cars you know by hacking into the car's computer system to do what to drive the car into a tree or into a bridge abutment or off a cliff to kill you we

[52:55] wouldn't know that the CIA can take over control of our Smart TVs and reverse engineer the speaker so that it acts as a microphone even when the TV appears to be off I'd like to know if the CIA is doing that to American citizens but we wouldn't know any of that without Josh Schulte yeah and you know marble cake well look they can break into your server and make it look like some other country did it exactly words or words in Arabic or Farsi and

[53:27] say oh look it was the Iranians that did it whereas the North Koreans that did it yeah look they wrote iron Felix right in there um marble cake they call it well and this is the thing right is that anyone could have guessed this I hate that you could go oh yeah you just find this out now or whatever look anyone could have figured that the CIA would spend as much money as they can building their own NSA if they can sure um but what this did was it proved that that's

[53:58] what they did and that in fact our discourse was entirely lacking when we're discussing FBI and NSA spying on the American people CIA is getting a free pass as though their only job is messing with the foreigners or whatever like in the mythology when in fact they have all of you know essentially looks like many of the same capabilities if not the uh server space that the NSA has to spy on Americans without of course any pretext of it being a criminal

[54:29] investigation or any kind of thing like that they can do whatever they want and call it intelligence collection yes exactly and when no one to review them who's going to review them Dianne Feinstein no nobody reviews you know this is another thing the CIA has tens of thousands of employees and the intelligence committees have what a dozen and a half people and they're going to do oversight of every program and every operation well they're not even trying that's not even there oh no they're all cheerleaders oh man

[55:00] um no it's a hell of a story and look there's another important part of this fault seven thing is that Assange man you know what I need to get my facts totally straight on this I hope that you know it better than me Assange was negotiating with the CIA and they were gonna get him a deal with the justice department to drop the charges but then was it a sanja's lawyer went or something like that I think went to somehow let uh John Warner in the

[55:30] Senate know and then he went to Comey at the FBI and Comey ruined it do I know what I'm talking about you know I hadn't heard that specifically but I'll tell you something similar um I had paid a republican lobbyist When Donald Trump was president to get me a pardon and I'm going on the Tucker Carlson show I went on like 12 times and Tucker Carlson has these chirons pardon uh Assange and kiryaku with our pictures side by side

[56:02] and my lobbyist keeps going to the White House and then I get passed over and I heard later from the lobbyist that Trump was going to Pardon Assange Snowden and me and Mitch McConnell went to him and said if you pardon uh uh Assange or Snowden you're going to lose the Republican caucus in the Senate and they'll vote to convict you

[56:32] and so none of us got pardoned he just walked away yeah and I said why why can we not be mutually exclusive why do I have to be lumped in with a sanjenda and Snowden when my case was so much less controversial and she said that's just how they saw it Yeah well yeah because that was the the Republicans in the Senate that Lindsey Graham and them who are doing the extorting that was there yes exactly yeah and now so listen I think I found

[57:03] something here about so this is just the Wikipedia damn version forgive me but it's the only thing that came right up that that had this it says during January and February of 17 the Department of Justice was negotiating through assange's attorney Adam Waldman for immunity and safe passage for Assange to leave the embassy and come to the United States um to discuss risk minimization of future whiskey leaks releases including

[57:33] redactions and to testify that Russia was not the source for the Wikileaks release in 2016. and then in mid-February uh 17 Waldman who was pro bono asked Senator Mark Warner who was co-chairman of the intelligence committee if he had any questions to ask Assange and he contact there's something left out there he contacted Comey and Comey told Waldman stand down and end the negotiations with Assange now the other thing this doesn't mention what I was

[58:03] thinking the other thing oh no it does it goes on to say something about um they quote Ray McGovern here I know he was working off as something else um at the time they were they were working on negotiating over Vault seven like he let it be known to them that he had it but he hadn't released it yet wow and it was like look man if you guys want me to not release these documents Set Me Free and the CIA the way I remember the story and I'm sorry I don't have all my footnotes together here but

[58:33] the way I remember the story was the CIA was willing to make that deal they were like Don't You release that leak man you wanted maybe we can work out a deal but don't you do it and then once they ruined the deal then he posted it just like in the deal you know wow um see but there it is it goes back to the fact that that their interests are frequently at odds and they just hate each other yeah well and that would make sense right I wonder how pissed off the CIA

[59:04] was that because it was you know the way I remember it anyway it was clearly like they were willing to make the deal but and and even I think we're working with doj on it but then when the FBI found out about it that was when it you know yeah anyway but um I mean they do have something about the marble framework here I called it marble cake something it was the marble framework that's the thing for leaving false tracks of uh yeah server you broke into

[59:35] and all of that yeah terrible man okay well anyway um oh One Last Thing Before I Let You Go which is apparently I'm in oswari put out a new podcast yeah I hadn't heard that oh yeah okay so I mean they claimed that they killed him last summer in a drone strike in Afghanistan right and now but the thing I read you know I I need to I need to go ahead and uh and bite the bullet I guess

[1:00:07] and buy a membership at that site website I hate to do it um but they really are always ahead on all those translations and stuff um but I think what I read though I I barely read into it I just barely saw a little new summary about it that said that there was nothing obvious in there that um made it clear what time it was recorded right it's not like he cites a current event that happened after he was supposedly killed or something obvious but you know it's purported to be new or it

[1:00:38] was at least new to the world yeah so yeah oh my gosh fantastic okay with that I'll let you go have a great weekend and a Happy New Year I appreciate thank you sir thank you good stuff fantastic thanks for having me oh yeah all right you guys that's John kiriaku the Scott Horton Show anti-war radio can be heard on kpfk 90.7 FM in LA apsradio.com anti-war.com

[1:01:09] scotthorton.org and libertarianininstitute.org
