Title: CIA Whistleblower John Kiriakou On Declassified 9/11 Documen
Show: Katie Halper
Date: 2021-09-17
URL: https://youtu.be/elg4ufjFRSQ
Duration: 123:00

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[00:00] Hello and welcome to the Katie Halper Show. I'm Katie Helper. So excited to be here and to be joined by none other than Leslie Lee the third. Helper. So excited to be here. Hey, none other than none other than tech a little echo issue. One second guys. Hey, too many windows open. God, sometimes when you have the windows open. Hi, Kelly. Hey, are you

[00:31] Yeah, you're live. We are live. You're live with You're like byebye. Okay. So, it's nice to It's nice when I have YouTube open another window because I see how unclear uh I am, which I don't know why that is. We got to figure that out. I feel like this is a like a almost slapstick scene where it it gets increasingly louder like the special effects like jangling keys. dog chewing something. Uh, what would come next? Like a

[01:03] cracking of an egg. All right. Well, glad to see you guys. Hi, David Melford. Hi, um, everyone else. Uh, Echo No more. Thumbs up, like. Yes, please like. Please like and share this stream. Please subscribe if you don't already subscribe. And uh, we have a great show for you guys tonight. we have with us joining us. Uh, oh wow, this is great. I gotta I gotta highlight this comment. Frank Capria says, "When I had COVID, watching

[01:35] the whole Katy Halper show was the only good thing about having CO." Wow, thank you. That is so nice. Um, so we have a great show for you guys today and uh we are going to be talking to John Kuryaku who is a former CIA analyst. And you know the good news, guys, is that when something bad happens, you want people to be held accountable, right? Held responsible. And what's great is that we all know and hate and love, hopefully hate, we all

[02:07] know and hate the CIA torture program, right? And the good thing is that someone went to jail over that. The bad thing is that the person who went to jail over that is the person who blew the whistle on that, which is a pretty um Orwellian thing to to think about. And that's who our guest is tonight. And he's someone who was a CIA analyst. He's a whistleblower. He's the author of several books. And he is uh probably like uh one of the best

[02:37] sources on discussing 9/11, uh pulling out of Afghanistan, things like that. Uh but sadly he's not ever uh sought out by the mainstream media. So you wouldn't see him on MSNBC on CNN. In fact, we're going to he's going to share some stories about how he's treated by those networks, which uh interestingly enough is not uh in a particularly appropriate professional way. But before we get to that, oh, and hi. Thanks from London and

[03:08] Venezuela. Greetings from London. There's a Do you hear some background noise, Leslie? Um, is your Is that your right mic? Because I hear some Or is that something else? I hear like an Argentine. It was almost like a tango. Um, hold on one second. Let me see. Sure. All right. Someone asked me why I dragged them through my tech problems. I don't know what what why. because I I

[03:40] like doing that. It's not like we don't do a tech run before things just happen. Tell Abby Martin I'm live. Why? Why am I Why do I Okay, it's the CIA tapping the stream. It could be that. Yeah. Um the Katie Halber show is a proven cure. It's true. Hi from Costa Rica. Wow, we got we got a really international audience. And by the way, yeah, why not? Why should I not walk you through my tech problems or drag as the verb is? Thank you, Robert. You know, some people some people are visionaries.

[04:13] And when I say some people, that includes Robert Nichols, perhaps most of all. Um, oh, out in left field. I subscribed to Katie four years ago. Uh, on YouTube. I was so happy when she finally got on YouTube. Hi, Katie. A chat uh where is this? A chat from Philadelphia. Hi Katie, Leslie and chat from Philadelphia. Hello Philadelphia. Good evening Philadelphia.

[04:44] Uh Carne Verde points out Kiraaku's story is not complimentary toward uh many defense department advertisers on most media outlets. It's true. So it's a good sign that he's treated like crap by them. Um someone is saying hi from Guantanamo Bay. I'm glad the conditions have improved so much that you can watch the Katie Helper show and have good enough internet to sign in and say hi. Hey Katie Helper, this show distresses me. I think you mean like Yes, that's

[05:16] how you spell it, right? Like destresses me, not distresses me. Um, okay. And then Sparky wants me to ask about five eyes controlling the MSM narrative. I feel like that's a reference I don't get, but you may get. Do you know what that means, Leslie? Five eyes. If not, no. Not off the top of my head. Okay. Off the top of your head. Okay. You're better on on covert conspiracy things than I am. Maybe it's not even a conspiracy theory. Anyway, we'll see. Okay. Cool. New logo, Leslie. Oh, yeah. I need I need my logo

[05:47] up there. Um maybe Nick can throw that up. The little Katy Halbisher thing that goes in the corner. Oh, hello from Canada. When does the party start? The party already started. Um, oh, five eyes are the governments of US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Ah, interesting. All English speaking. All right. Five eyes. Shouldn't that be one, two,

[06:17] three, four, five? 10 eyes. Just saying. All right. Well, we'll get more into the five eyes uh shortly. Um, oh, there's a really funny clip. We Well, we'll watch that later about uh Did you guys see Did you see that clip going around? Uh, anyone see that clip going around in the chat from the show I think called Utopia uh with Australia choosing to like declare war on China? Anyway, I'll I'll find I'll find out. But uh before we bring uh John in,

[06:48] Leslie, how was your week and any updates that you like to share either from your personal life or political life? Well, this weekend, um, as everybody knows, was the, uh, was the 20th, uh, anniversary of September 11th, and I got to watch former President Trump celebrate, uh, this and give his tribute to this by calling uh, a freak show boxing fight. Um, President Donald Trump, yes, that that Donald Trump,

[07:20] former president, was actually commentating. Uh he spent the day in New York, but then he flew down to Florida to do some commentary on this boxing show headlined by the 58-year-old Evander Holyfield being TKO'ed by Vor Bellforth in a really really a match that probably should not have legally be allowed to take place because I Holyfield even though he's in amazing shape um not he's 60 years old, he's old

[07:51] man. He's just an old man. And to see Donald Trump there commentating on it and it his commentary was so bizarre because even though he goes to all these boxing events, he doesn't know anything about it. You know that the old trope about like how oh in like a sitcom like the wife will watch football and she'll just start cheering for the team with the most with the most attractive uniforms. That's how Trump approaches like boxing. Uh he keep even though he's been going for 20 years, he still keeps talking about like he kept talking about

[08:23] during the event like, "Oh, that guy, he looks so beautiful. He's in such great shape. Like he must be win, right?" He literally asked the MMA guys like how come like sometimes the most attractive fighter doesn't win. Like he he did not understand that the hottest guy does isn't always going to win uh the fight. He didn't understand. Well, that's because uh that's because he is a winner. He won the presidency. So he the lesson he learned is the hot guy wins. Yes. Yes. And that's why he was so sad about losing to Biden because I think he

[08:54] has an argument. I think he has an argument. Hey, maybe he's a little bit hotter than Biden. Oh my gosh. I don't know. I I can't even terrible. Would you rather? Yeah, I know. That's like uh that or or cutting off my leg. I'm not sure which of those three scenarios. Yeah, but it was a it was a fun show but very strange like culturally because Triller Fights is like this it's like a like some kind sort of like scam that all these celebrities are invested in. I don't

[09:24] know. I'm sure there's Saudi money involved but like they're appealing to the MAGA crowd with Trump, but they're also like their whole promotion is like very like youthleaning and like hiphop oriented. So it's like also trying to advertise to like young black kid and Hispanic kids while also like having like old like white people who like Donald Trump want to buy and see. It was very very very strange like mashup of these cultures that uh you could watch

[09:55] for $50 and I I couldn't think of a better way to celebrate to you know to It was America. It was America. a woman interrupted the 10 bell salute for September 11th victims and started screaming and most people assumed she was screaming screaming at Donald Trump because the camera was on Trump and it was he was trying to look his most somberest uh with there and Donald Junior was there too. Um and but the woman was actually screaming because she

[10:26] didn't want to wear a mask. She was screaming about the m I don't even know if she had to wear a mask. Most people weren't wearing masks. I think she was just screaming about the mask restrictions existing. That's how mass the Holocaust. Yeah. She was literally at slavery and the Holocaust combined is the mask mandate. Yeah. So it was like she was so m she was at this event with Donald Trump during a 911 tribute. Very somber. Uh, and she was still so mad about the fact

[10:57] that in some places there's a mask mandate that she felt the need to interrupt it in front of the person who I'm sure she voted for twice like it was it looked like a good moment for him like that some he get to he got to be there and be very somber and then this woman just starts screaming bloody murder about something or another while Trump's there. very embarrassing uh night, at least at the start, because he was really not into the fights. He was like exhausted at like 6:00 p. p.m. Uh

[11:29] or Trump was Trump was he did not want to be there until he was joined by like some actual fighters, a fighter named Jorge Masadol and then Junior Dostos. They're both like MAGA like MMA fighters. He talked about like, "Oh yeah, these guys helped me win Miami by 30 points. first time Republicans ever done that. And he got as so when he replaced like the MMA commentators who are just these like nerds with like the hot MMA fighters, Trump started getting

[12:00] really into it and excited about it. What do you think it is? He just like gets excited. What do you think it is? He likes being around hot guys. I I don't know what else to say. He likes being around hot fit guys. He's very much like uh Vince McMahon uh in a sense. Vince McMahon also thought that the hottest uh guy should always a buffest guy should win every fight. That's why he did pro wrestling to make that a true, you know, story. But Trump wants it in MMA and boxing and he's confused by why that doesn't happen.

[12:32] So Trump knows wrestling but not boxing. Is that correct? Well, or does he not know wrestling either? Well, he's very good at wrestling, I think. How do I say this about Trump? He is a natural heel. a natural heel. And can you remind people like me what heel is? So a heel is a bad guy in wrestling and a face is a good guy. And so Trump is just kind of a natural heel. Like he knows how like and a heel's point is to uh get the get people mad at them, right? So the matter you get a heel,

[13:03] you're just responding to the the more you boo the heel, the better he's doing at his job and the happier he is. Oh, like trolls. They're like Yeah. Well, yeah, kind of. But that's the key thing to understanding like that's what kayfabe is all about. Like you think that when you go remind people what kayfabe is. Kayfabe just means fake. It's kind of the you know the idea that you know wrestling is taking place and it's the matches are predetermined right? So when you go down there and boo you know Rody Piper and yell at him you're not hurting

[13:35] his feelings. That's what he wants you to do. That's his job. If you stop going to do that, then Rody Piper loses his job. And so, uh, that helps with understand politics because, you know, lots of things Trump did piss people off, but it's like he wanted people to be pissed off about that or that's all it's all part of the show. I I would say Trump versus Biden celebrity presidential death match. That would be good. Uh let's I just want before we bring on the guests, I just want to show this is

[14:07] this is when I think of uh uh Trump and wrestling, this is what I think of. You guys remember this? Hold on. Remember this tweet? Oh yeah, he does know pro wrestling. He did do I He did do a very sloppy Lariat move. He's is not a very good move. What's that move? That's called a lariat, but he doesn't do it real well. You're supposed to do more force so that when you hit the

[14:39] person with your arm, they're going down. Like, he kind of falls on top of the guy. Kind of kind of just falls on top of him. So, it's not it's not a very good Larry. In fact, one of the earliest episodes of Struggle Session, which you can find at patreon.com/struggression, we invited an actual real life championship pro wrestler, Nicole Matthews, to uh evaluate Trump's uh wrestling ability. And frankly, she did not she was not impressed. Oh, okay. So, that wasn't good wrestling that he did there.

[15:10] Yeah. See, we tried to take Trump down very early on. People should have listened to us. We told we tried to tell people that he was bad at pro wrestling and nobody listened to us. We we tried to stop him. he never would have been elected. And as goes uh pro wrestling goes uh being president over the United States. So that should have been a warning. You tried. We all did our best to take him down. Um speaking of uh Patreon, I want to thank everyone who supports this show on Patreon. I also want to encourage people to support the show on Patreon. patreon.com/thekatyhelper

[15:40] show. And if you do that, you get your name read and you even get a little poem written about you. So, um, I'm going to thank some recent, uh, Patreon donors to this show. And if I've skipped you or missed you, just let me know in the chats and I will read your names. And also, uh, remember, you have this entire, uh, show to become Patreon supporters in a way that will get you featured on the show. So, here is who I'm thanking right now. Ready?

[16:10] Susan Pari, you come from Rich Parentage. And I say that because you share the last name with Christian Parent and Michael Parent. Great story. Great. Yes. And uh great intellectuals, great speakers also. Um who else do we got? We also have a new Patreon supporter, Fender Gibson. That is a fender bender of a donation that we got from him. Just a fender

[16:41] bender of a donation. So, thank you so much for that. Uh, who writes the poems? I write the poems. I know you can't tell because they seem so uh professional and and baroque. Are you being ghostwritten by Amanda Gorman? Perhaps, you know, Kanye West even. I I both of them actually in real time at the same time. Um, but uh, so that's that's that's the show so far. What do what else do we want to talk about? I think should we just get into that into

[17:12] the interview because our guest is so good. I really want to get as much time from him as possible. What do you what say ye? Yes. Yes, we did. All right. So, our guest tonight is John Kiryaku, a former CIA analyst and former case officer and former counterterrorism consultant for MSNBC News and lifelong whistleblower, exposing after he left the CIA the US's illegal and immoral torture policy practiced by the US government during the Iraq war. Um, one second, there's more. Do not you worry.

[17:44] Um he is a uh former senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and former counterterrorism consultant for ABC News. He was responsible for the capture in Pakistan in 2002 of Abu Zubay I can't say this right Abu Zubaya believed to be the third ranking official in al-Qaeda. In 2007, Kuryaku blew the whistle on the CIA's torture program, saying that the CIA tortured prisoners, that torture was official US government policy, and that the policy had been approved by then

[18:15] President George W. Bush. He became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act, a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a result of the revelation. Kuryaku won the Penn Center USA's prestigious first amendment award in 2015, the first blueprint international whistleblowing prize for bravery and integrity in the public interest in 2016, and the Sam Adams Award for Integrity and Intelligence, also in 2016. Kuryaku is the author of

[18:46] The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA's War and Terror, Doing Time Like a Spy, How the CIA Taught Me to Survive and Thrive in Prison, The Convenient Terrorist, and Abu Zubaya and the Weird Wonderland of America's Secret Wars. So, without any further ado, let us bring onto the stream John Kuryaku. Hello. Hey, thanks for having me, Katie. Of course. Thank you so much for joining. Well, it's my pleasure and thanks to everybody. I can't believe how many people are already on and commenting. So, this is going to be a lot of fun.

[19:17] Thank you. Yeah, people are really excited that you're here and you should be on every network. Um, but surprisingly uh are not. Uh, and I just coincidentally before I booked you uh no, sorry, after I booked you, I saw that you were on uh with Bob Sheer. It was a great interview and one of the things that he was pointing out was why I mean this is a time when people like you should be sought after. Um there not that many people like you though, but you should be sought after. You know, you're someone with inside knowledge who's

[19:49] actually willing to talk about these things in ways that are honest, but that's also exactly why you're not asked to talk. You know, I don't I don't want to sound cynical, but all these networks have their have their retired fourstar generals that they need to put on uh the air. And um and it's it's funny after I after I blew the whistle, uh I was frozen out of of the big news networks. And then

[20:22] a couple of times I had invitations from CNN, once from MSNBC, the Ari Melbour show. And then when Trump got elected, um, I was getting more requests from Fox than I could handle. And it was because they wanted me to jump up and down and yell about the Obama administration uh, waging a war on whistleblowers. So, you know, that was that was one of those points where the enemy of my enemy

[20:52] was my friend. But as soon as Donald Trump left, then that was the end of it with Fox, too, right? So now, well, lucky for us, lucky for the Katie Halper show. We have a near monopoly. We share you with Bob Sheer. Yeah. Well, well, there's one there's one notable one. Uh Jared Leto, the Joker himself, reached out to you and did an interview. That's of all the people, one of the most twisted minds in Hollywood, but not MSNBC. Crazy. I I was Jared Leto's uh high school history teacher

[21:23] um at at a small school in uh in Washington. And I actually wrote him a letter of recommendation to go to film school. Wow. Yeah. And then he went to went on to win an Academy Award for best supporting actor. Terrific guy. And he interviewed you? He interviewed me on his show. He he has a a web show that that did quite well. And then when I won the pen award, I asked him if he would introduce me, so he was generous enough to do that. Wow, that's great. Yeah, it was fun. Awesome. Your so-called life.

[21:55] Yes. Remember that? Yeah, that was that was a show that nobody watched that the critics absolutely loved and it put him on a path to stardom. Yeah, I remember that. Whatever happens happens. That's something he said which is sounds like Buddhist in the context of what we're talking about. But um can you tell people about how you wound up in prison? Uh because there like so many twists and turns, but I I just think it's important to remember that you are the person the one person in prison over the CIA

[22:26] torture program. So yeah, the only one. Um, yeah. Uh, I I led a raid in Pakistan on on the night of March 22nd, 2002 that resulted in At this point, you were the C you were what? I was the I was the chief of CIA counterterrorism operations in Pakistan. I had gotten to Pakistan in January of 2002. So, we had just finished bombing Tora Bora. And my big claim to fame there, I I guess I can say it now because almost 20 years have passed was we had these CIA officers all the way up

[22:57] and down the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. And I said that that was really really inefficient that we should pull everybody off the border, bring them into the cities, let the terrorists come into the cities, and then we know they're going to make a mistake because they're always going to make a mistake. Then we hit the safe house and we grab everybody at once. And that actually worked. And so we caught many dozens, I'm not allowed to say the number of alleged uh al-Qaeda terrorists that

[23:28] night, including Abu Zuba, who we believed at the time was the number three in al-Qaeda. He was not the number three. He was not even a member of al-Qaeda. He was a bad guy. He had founded al-Qaeda's two training centers in or training camps in southern Afghanistan. He had founded what they called the house of martyrs in Pashawar, Pakistan. It was the safe house that al-Qaeda used there uh to bring people into and out of Afghanistan. And he was kind of a logistics guy for al-Qaeda. If

[24:00] you needed a passport, you needed a ticket, you wanted to go fight, or you were tired of the fight and you wanted to go home, Abu Zub, Abu Zuba was your guy. That's who you went to. So we caught him and uh my orders that night were to sit with him in the hospital. A Pakistani policeman had shot him three times with an AK-47 in the groin, the stomach and the uh thigh. And so my orders were not to leave his

[24:31] bedside. So I I tore up a sheet. I tied him to the bed and I sat there and we talked a lot. And I said to him at one point, listen, I'm going to give you some advice, I am the nicest guy that you're going to meet in this experience. I said, my colleagues, they're not nice like I am. So, if there's one thing that you have to do, it's that you have to cooperate. And he said, "You seem like a nice man,

[25:02] but you're the enemy, and I'll never cooperate." Well, finally the CIA sent in a a an unmarked private jet to pick him up. Uh, three FBI agents and I carried him out on a gurnie to the plane. We maneuvered him onto the plane. We put him on the luggage rack at the back, tied him down, and he squeezed my hand. And I said, "Remember, you have to cooperate." But he was very upset. He he cried a lot. He said he would never know the touch of a

[25:32] woman. He would never know the joy of fatherhood. And I said, "Listen, you're not the victim here. There were 50,000 people in those towers. What did you think we were going to do? Did you think we wouldn't try to find you or to find Bin Laden?" And he said, "I never wanted to attack the United States on September 11th. All I ever wanted to do was to kill Jews." He said he wanted to attack Israel. Nice guy, right? Few. So, um, I said, "Your life is over.

[26:04] what's left of it can be easy or it can be terrible. The choice is yours. Now, I I said that, but I really didn't know what the CIA had in store for him. I didn't know that while this was all taking place at headquarters, they were coming up with this torture program. So, uh, I got back to CIA headquarters in May of 2002, and I was asked if I wanted to, uh, be the words were trained in the use of enhanced interrogation

[26:35] techniques. I had never heard the term before. So, I asked what it meant. And this senior officer, after excitedly saying, "We're going to start getting rough with these guys," he told me what they meant. And I said, "Ooh, I don't know, man." I said, "That that sounds like a torture program." No, he said, ' It's not a torture program. It was approved by the Justice Department and the White House. I said, 'Yeah, I don't think I'm interested. I I actually consulted a senior officer and he's like, "Buddy," he said, "Run screaming

[27:06] from the room. This is a terrible mistake." So, I went back down and I said, "I am not interested in this. I think it's immoral. It's unethical and it's certainly illegal." I actually got passed over for promotion because I turned it down. So um I went about my business. I got promoted because of Abu Zubeta. I became the executive assistant to the CIA's deputy director for operations. And so I was able to follow the whole uh torture program as it was playing out. But what

[27:37] we were reading at headquarters was actually a lie. What was really happening was that Ali Sufan, an FBI agent with whom I had worked in Pakistan, um, and other FBI interrogators had actually gotten Abu Zuba to start talking. And they did that the way they've been doing that since the Nuremberg trials in 1945 by establishing a rapport by being respectful by offering him you know an

[28:08] orange or a cigarette or you know a piece of paper and a pencil so he could write to his mother which he was really really worried about. He was very worried that his mother would, you know, think the worst. And um make sure she knows that I just wanted to kill Jews. Yeah. Yes. And and she was so proud of him after we we captured him. She immediately ran to the media and she said that she wished that all of her sons and she had like nine sons. She wished that all of her sons could have

[28:39] made jihad against the Americans like Abu Zubeda did. Wow. Wow. It's like you might want to tell your mom to stop talking. Yeah. Wow. So, yeah. I mean, for the sake of his siblings, that's just so much pressure. Yeah. Well, I was so appalled by this torture program. I I left the agency and I kept waiting for somebody to go public. It was just so egregious. I thought surely somebody is going to go public and say something and nobody did. Well, I let time pass. And then finally in um in December of 2007 um I said

[29:13] something in an interview to Brian Ross at ABC News. As you might imagine, the very next day the CIA filed what's called a crimes report against me with the FBI saying that I had revealed classified information. And this is where it gets weird. Um the FBI investigated me from December of '07 to December of '08. and then they closed the case and they sent my attorneys a declination letter, meaning they were declining to prosecute me. So, my my

[29:45] then wife and I were so happy that we actually went out to dinner and celebrated that night that that this nightmare was over. But three weeks later, when Barack Obama was inaugurated and John Brennan became the deputy national security adviser for counterterrorism, my troubles began a new. John and I were not friendly. I had worked directly for him. And then when I went up to the seventh floor as the executive assistant, John was the executive

[30:16] director of the CIA, the number three ranking officer in the CIA. and he was one of the fathers of the torture program. And so he asked the Justice Department to secretly reopen the case against me. I had no idea that for the next 3 years my phones were tapped, my emails were intercepted, and teams of FBI agents would periodically surveil me. And then in January of 2012, I was arrested and charged with five felonies, including

[30:48] three counts of espionage. Now, mind you, espionage sometimes carries with it the death penalty. Um, but I had the greatest lawyers in Washington. I hadn't committed espionage. Those charges were eventually dropped, but uh, in the end, I had to take a deal to make the whole thing go away. Um, they were threatening me with 45 years. They offered me two and I actually turned down the two because I said I haven't done anything

[31:18] wrong. And my lawyers said, "Look, this study had come out from uh ProPublica in October of 2012. It said that the federal government wins 98.2% of its cases." So, I had a 1.8% chance of winning. I said, "If I lose realistically, what am I looking at here?" And they said, "Realistically, 12 to 18 years. Take the deal." And so I

[31:48] took the deal. You know, there's this there's this joke that everybody in prison is innocent. I met a lot of people in prison who were actually innocent. But when they have essentially the rest of your life hanging over your head and they're offering you a fraction of that to plead guilty, people plead guilty. You got to make the thing go away. One of the things, this will be my last thought on this issue. One of the things that one of the lawyers told me, and this was the lawyer that I liked and trusted the most. I had 11 lawyers, if you can imagine. He said, "This can be a

[32:20] blip in your life or it can be the defining event of your life. Make it the blip." And so I took the deal. Wow. So can you tell us more um before we we move forward to what's happening today about um what you learned from um can you pron Abu Zaba Abu Zaba what what you learned from him how you learned what you learned from him and what insight that gave you into

[32:52] what I guess was behind for some people uh the uh the vitriil against the United states uh and Israel. Yeah, good question. So, Abu Zubeda taught us a lot. Uh there were two things that were the most critical that came from Abu Zuba. First of all, the guy had a mind for detail that I've rarely come across in my career.

[33:23] Abu Zuba gave us al-Qaeda's wiring diagram which we just never knew. We knew that Osama bin Laden was the number one that uh I had had been the number two. Now he's the number one. And that Muhammad Ata uh was the head of what they called military affairs and and we killed him. Uh I'm sorry, Muhammad Atef, sorry. We killed him in October of 2001. We just didn't know anything else about al-Qaeda. We didn't know how it was

[33:53] structured. We didn't know where it was. And so Abu Zuba said, and I'm going to use I'm going to use this as an example. He didn't say these specific words. What he said was still or is still classified, but to give you an idea, we would ask him if if I wanted to carry out an attack in let's say Dusseldorf, how would I do that? And he said, 'Well, in Dusseldorf, there's this guy, Muhammad, and here's his phone number. And Muhammad knows

[34:25] this other guy, Abdullah, and Abdullah's really good with bombs. And Abdullah has this email, and Abdullah's cousin is a guy named Rashid. And Rashid has access to weapons. And this is the address where Rashid keeps the weapons. So we call the Germans, and we'd say, "Hey, you have a problem in Dusseldorf." And here's the information we have. And then the Germans raid these addresses and they grab Muhammad Abdullah and Rashid and you know lives were saved. So um that was the one thing that he was

[34:58] really great at. The other thing that he was really great at and it was dramatic was we had never heard of Khaled Shikh Muhammad. We just never heard the name before. We knew that there was this guy going by the nondigger Mkhtar. And we knew that Mkhtar had been the mastermind of what was supposed to be called the Trebinka operation. I'm sorry, the Bojinka operation. Forgive me. The Bojink operation in 1996 was a plot to

[35:28] hijack something like a half a dozen 747s in Manila and then fly them into buildings up and down the west coast of the United States. Uh, word of this plot leaked and we were able to break it up along with the Filipinos, but all we knew is that it was a guy named Mktar. So when he mentioned Khalik Muhammad, we we didn't know who that was and he laughed and he said, "You don't know

[35:59] Mktar?" And that was the first time that we were able to understand that Mktar was Khal Shik Muhammad, which then gave us a target, right? We have these targeting analysts at the CIA who um whose job it is to pour through thousands, hundreds of thousands of pages of data to try to locate somebody. You know, most CI analysts, their job is to think the big thoughts and write a paragraph and write a second paragraph

[36:30] of analysis and then send it to the White House and hope that, you know, the the deputy assistant to the president for whatever reads it. And then you influence policy. This is a completely different job. This is there's a guy named Ahmed Schmmed. I don't know where he is. We need to kill him. You have to find him. And then that's it. You know, they they send you go to NSA. You go to FBI. You you just use what's called all source intelligence to try to geollocate

[37:00] somebody so we can either grab them or um or kill them. And so they put the targeting analysts on Khalich Shake Muhammad and two months later he was in our custody. So that was the value of of Abu Zuba. And I'll add one other thing about Abu Zuba. And I feel very strongly about this. Abu Zubed has never been charged with a crime. Never. Not in the United States in any federal district. Not in the military tribunal at Guantanamo.

[37:33] Whether we like this guy's politics or not is irrelevant. What is relevant is that he has constitutional protections. And so either we're a nation governed by the rule of law and by this living breathing constitution that we're all so proud of, or we're not. And if you're not going to charge him with a crime, you have to let him go. Now, he's been in our custody for almost 20 years. It's going to be 20 years on March the 22nd

[38:03] and he's never been charged with a crime. And that's after going through unspeakable torture, including where he was he was taken into surgery without his consent and had his eye removed. So, we've we've really done a number on this guy. Oh, yeah. For any reason, he had heard his eye um fighting the Soviets. And so he had one brown eye and one eye that was really really pale blue because he had taken some shrap.

[38:35] Yeah. He couldn't see from that eye, but you know it never bothered him. Yeah. You're allowed to Oh my god. And so we drugged him one day and when he woke up he had no eye. What was the Was that just a power move? Yeah. It was just Yeah. I mean like a sadistic move like a That's it. So disgusting. Oh my god. That's why he we gave him I mean I know I sound so naive. We're talking about the CIA, the CIA and also torture, but still that deep. Oh my gosh. That's why he refuses to wear a glass eye. When you see pictures of him now,

[39:05] it's always with an eye patch. Yeah. He refuses. They gave him a glass eye and he said absolutely not cuz he like wants to to be in people's faces. What happened? What what we did to him. Mhm. And so the other thing and and Robert Shear uh pointed this out like the his and his mind I mean how destroyed are these people's minds? You were talking about this in this interview like if it just for for um you know Machavelian reasons wouldn't we want to not torture these people so that

[39:36] they would be useful resources um for information? Oh my god. One of the things that that we learned very quickly is torture just simply doesn't work. Right. The moral, ethical stuff. Yeah. Forget the whole moral, ethical, legal question. Um, it just simply doesn't work. A a a a person who's being tortured will tell you anything that that person thinks you want to hear, whether it's true or not, just to get

[40:07] you to stop torturing them. So, they will give you this data dump of information that you're going to have to then assign an army of analysts to go through to figure out what's true and what's not true. While there might be something true in there, there's definitely stuff that's not true in there. And you've just wasted all these resources and 6 months. Now, there's this what what they call the ticking time bomb theory, right? There's a bomb that's getting ready to go off in some American city. We don't know where. We need the information. like on Fox's 24

[40:39] and we got to torture the guy to get the information. That's not real life. That doesn't happen ever in real life. Let's say you torture the guy. He says the bomb is in Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, Houston, San Antonio, and Philadelphia. Okay, now what do you do? He just said there are bombs all over the country. Now you got to figure out what was true and what wasn't true. And by the time you figure it out, the bomb went off and killed everybody. And that's besides the moral, legal, and

[41:11] ethical issues. And what kind of uh treatment did you did you witness any of this or did you just know about this? No. When I turned down the uh the torture training, um I I was just cut off, right? I got passed over for promotion. I they gave me the this nickname the human rights guy which was not a compliment, right? And so um what nobody expected was that that six

[41:42] weeks later I was going to get promoted and go up to the seventh floor as the executive assistant. And in that position I had access to literally everything that the CIA was doing around the world. And that was just at the time that they started torturing him. So I got to see it and I I mentioned a few minutes ago and I didn't explain myself that what we knew or thought we knew at the CIA was a lie. The truth is that Ali Sufan, the FBI agent had established

[42:13] this rapport with Abu Zuba and Abu Zuba opened up and he was giving us that Dusseldorf like information. The CIA was furious that the FBI had primacy over this case. Now, the FBI had primacy because 9/11 was still an open criminal investigation. But historically, whenever something is going on overseas, the CIA is in charge. Whenever something is going on domestically, the FBI is in charge. So, here we were overseas at this secret location, and the FBI is in charge. And

[42:45] that enraged the CIA leadership. I can't I can't explain enough how deeply the CIA and the FBI hated each other. We hated each other so much that we didn't speak to one another. And our computer systems weren't even compatible. And and this is the this is the operative point. Ali Sufan was getting all this intelligence from Abu Zuba. He was

[43:15] writing it all up and sending it to the FBI, right? The CIA had no idea that this stuff was being reported because the FBI wasn't sharing it. And so George Tennant, who was the CIA director at the time, went to President Bush and asked President Bush to withdraw the um the FBI from the secret site and let the CIA take over. Now, why Bush agreed to do that, he's never explained, but the FBI was pulled out, the CIA took

[43:48] over, and within two hours, they began torturing Abu Zuba. Well, what did he do? He completely went silent. He just clammed up and stopped telling his interrogators anything at all. So what these two CIA contractors did uh Mitchell and Jessen uh is they found Ali Sufan's FBI reports. They retyped them in the CIA

[44:20] database and said, "Oh my god, we waterboarded him one time and look what he gave us. All this intelligence. Somebody called the Germans. We got to save Dusseldorf, right? Mktar is Khaled Shake Muhammad. Oh my god. And I said to a friend of mine when the report came in, you know, maybe I'm wrong. I've been on my high horse about this being, you know, a terrible policy and and it doesn't work. Maybe it does work. That doesn't make it

[44:52] moral or ethical, but I mean, they're telling us he look at what he gave us. He gave us the kitchen sink. Well, that was all a lie. He had already given it to Ali to Ali Sufan. We didn't know that that was a lie until the CIA inspector general's report was declassified in 2009. If you can imagine and we gave Mitchell and Jessen $18 million of the taxpayers money to come

[45:24] up with this torture program. That's a crime. So, just to to clarify, the CIA got the program taken away from the FBI. They used the information that the FBI had already gotten from them. Yes. And then pretended that it was the result of their interrogation to justify because they knew nobody would would check. The hatred was so deep between the CIA and the FBI and the computer systems

[45:54] weren't compatible. They knew that nobody would check and nobody did. How many like disasters happened because of that lack of It sounds like a dating show or something. That lack of compatibility between the CIA and the FBI, but seriously, like Well, well, the big one the big one was 9/11, right? The the CIA knew that there were these guys who meant to attack us inside the United States. They even had several of their names, their actual names, including Osama bin Laden, right?

[46:25] Including Osama bin Laden. But I'm speaking specifically of the hijackers themselves. Oh, wow. Okay. We had we had some of their names. We knew that they were planning this massive major attack and the FBI never told us that they were in the United States. And um the FBI didn't say anything because the FBI believed that they were recruitable. And so they didn't want the CIA stepping on their promotions. You know, if you recruit somebody, you're going to get promoted. You're going to get a medal.

[46:56] You'll get an award. The last thing you want is the CIA coming to grab your people. And so, you know, both sides fell asleep at the switch. It's so disgusting. It's It's a little different now. Now, there's an FBI agent who's the deputy director of the CIA's counterterrorist center, and there's a CIA officer who's the deputy director of the FBI's counterterrorist center. And people do rotations back and forth. You know,

[47:26] maybe you'll spend a year at the CIA and I'll spend a year at the FBI and, you know, we all go out for beers together on Friday nights. That's supposed to fix everything. Also disgusting in a different way. Yeah. Uh, and then of course you have that with the media. Oh my god, the situation with the media is is worse than most Americans have any idea. You know, there used to be this thing called Operation Mockingbird. And Mockingbird was where the CIA actively recruited reporters, especially American

[47:58] reporters, to plant stories. Now, we have laws against propagandizing the American people. You're not supposed to do that. And the CIA stopped doing it formally in 1975. Well, now they do it publicly. So they created this office of public affairs. It has several different branches in it. One branch deals solely with Hollywood Studios. So that any mention of the CIA is a positive one. That's how movies like Zero Dark 30 get made or the

[48:30] recruit. Uh there are never Hollywood movies where the CIA guys are the bad guys. Never. Um and the other one deals with uh with national security journalists. Now there are national security journalists out there who are probably good journalists, but they don't have a budget like they used to have back in the day. And so they'll just take whatever the CIA gives them, they'll gist it and change some of the wording and that's their article. So

[49:03] what you end up having is a situation where the CIA will tell journalists here in Washington what to write and they write it. Now, there's there's one guy who's especially bad. Ken Delaneian from MSNBC, formerly of the Los Angeles Times. Jason Leupold, who's a journalist with BuzzFeed and a friend of mine, is the king of the Freedom of Information Act.

[49:35] He's done more Freedom of Information Act requests than any other person in America to the point where um a defense department official called him a foyer terrorist because he's gotten so much information. He was the one that broke the information about the uh Hillary email server, right? So, he sent a Freedom of Information Act request to the CIA asking for copies of all emails between the CIA's Office of Public Affairs and National Security Journalists. And what

[50:06] that included was emails between Kendallian and the Office of Public Affairs where Kendallian was writing pro-CIA articles for NBC and MSNBC and he was sending them back to the CIA for approval. before he was sending them to his own editor. Well, that takes that one step. It's efficient. But what the CIA does, see, Kendallian is one of the guys that they like. Um, what they don't like is somebody like

[50:36] Jason Leopold. And so they'll tell Jason Leupold, "We want you to write this article this way, and if you don't, we will never speak to you again, and you will never have access to any CIA officer ever again." Well, Jason Leupold said that's fine. He'll develop his own sources. Thank you very much. But the likes of Kendallian just do as they're told. Right. Yeah. Disgusting. Um, couldn't looks like such a salt of the

[51:07] earth guy. Never would have guessed it. You know, he's he's a nice enough guy. I've met him a couple of times. He's always friendly. Yeah. But I wouldn't trust him as much as I could pick him up and throw him. Right. Um, and so how do you reveal? Can you just share the context in which you re you blow the whistle? There's a right way to do it officially. Oh, wait. Really quickly before then. Yeah. How public are you about your beef with Brennan? I don't know the answer to what the beef is, but

[51:37] I'm I'm public with my beef. I mean, we know that that that beef is there, but do we What about the cause? You know, I I don't know why John Brennan never liked me. I I when I worked for him, he was perfectly nice enough. I was not one of the, you know, one of the in guys. We didn't hang out at his house to watch football like everybody else in my branch did. You know, it was weird. I was the only guy in the office not invited to Brendan's house to watch football on Sundays. And I'm like, ah, whatever. You know, I'm

[52:08] married. I have two kids. I, you know, I'll watch football with my kids. I didn't care. Um, but later on, was it a helenophobic thing? Sorry, I just wanted to I think I'm going to go I'm going to go with that. Yes. Yeah. Yes, you should. He's prejudiced against Greek people. There you go. Um, let me tell you a little story about John Brennan. John worked for John worked for a woman when I first got

[52:38] hired. Um, he worked for a woman who was a Syria expert and she wrote this book called Syria Fragile Mosaic of Power that we all had to read because it was like the definitive work on Hafz al-Assad, Bashar al-Assad's father. M so John was a GS15 which is the top of the GS scale um deputy director of of the analytic group I'm sorry the general services scale it starts at one it goes to 15 so he's kind

[53:11] of a you know senior analyst junior manager and um he goes to her one day and she never really liked him he goes to her one day and he said listen I've I've been a 15 for a long time I think I'm ready to go to the Senior Intelligence Service, SIS, and that's where you belong to the whole community. You can go to the Pentagon, to the White House, to the State Department, and you're a big shot. So, um, she said, "Not only will you never be a

[53:44] member of the Senior Intelligence Service, I don't even want you working for me anymore. You're fired." And at the CIA, it's it's unlike any other agency. At the CIA, if you're fired, that means you have six weeks to walk the halls and find another job. And if you can't find a job in those six weeks, then they escort you to your car and take your badge and tell you, "Don't ever come back again." Well, it was Christmas and the normal cycle for jobs is summer.

[54:16] That's when everybody changes jobs is in the summertime. Nobody's changing jobs at Christmas. So he couldn't find a job. So finally he goes to the PDB staff, the president's daily brief. Now the president's daily brief is the most important document in government. Um, every morning, six days a week, uh, the PDB staff briefs the president, the vice president, the secretaries of state and defense, the national security um, advisor, the CIA director, and all their deputies

[54:48] on whatever classified events happened overnight. Okay, it's like 12 pages long, and the president reads it line by line while the briefer is sitting there to answer questions. So he goes to the PDB staff and he says,"I need a job." And they said, 'Well, we have one opening. You're probably not going to like it. He said, 'I'll take it. Whatever it is, it was to brief the lowest ranking person entitled to a PDB briefing. That was the National Security

[55:19] Council's director of national uh director of intelligence programs, okay? Which just happened to be this guy named George Tennant. Well, John and George have identical personalities. They're mean, loud, ugly, cigar smoking, wife cheating [ __ ] both of them. And they hit it off immediately. George had just had a heart attack and he wasn't supposed to smoke. So, he and

[55:50] John, there used to be a little bodega, a little stand uh at 17th in Pennsylvania and the guy sold cigars. So after the briefing, they would walk out there and smoke a cigar together every day. Next thing you know, uh, George becomes the deputy director of the CIA, and he promotes John to be the deputy director of the Office of Neareastern and South Asian Analysis, that woman's boss. So on his first day back in the office,

[56:21] he called her into his office and he said, "Now you're fired." and she retired. Well, the next thing you know, he's only in the job for six months. Then he becomes the station chief in Riad. Uh he's the direct line between the king and George Tennant. 9/11 happens. He comes back and he becomes the executive director of the CIA, the number three ranking officer. He's telling everybody who will listen that he wants to be

[56:52] Secretary of Defense. And then he retires and there was a big wave of retirements right after 9/11. He retires and he goes to work for BAE Systems very briefly and everybody else ran to the Hillary Clinton campaign. John was the only one that went to the Obama campaign. And he always says that he, you know,

[57:22] he's not even a registered Democrat. He voted communist in 1976. He voted for for Gus Hall. He's always been an independent, but everybody was going to either um uh McCain or Clinton. And he didn't like either McCain or Clinton. So, he went to Obama and he was the only one. And then the rest is history. Okay. So, now you are being interviewed. Uh, this is a a written interview. This

[57:54] is uh No, it was it was taped. Uh Brian Ross came down to Washington and I met him over at the ABC studios over on Dale Street and um you know I decided in the uh in the days before that interview that I was going to uh tell the truth no matter what he asked me because in in those days before the interview, President Bush gave a press conference in which he looked right into the camera and he said, "We do not torture her. And

[58:28] I said to my wife, she was also a senior CIA officer. I said, "He is a bald-faced liar. He is looking the American people in the eye, and he's just lying." And then a couple of days later, he's walking to the helicopter on the south lawn of the White House to go to Camp David for the week, and a reporter shouts a question about torture. And he turns and he says, "Well, if there is torture, it's the result of a rogue CIA officer."

[58:58] And I said to my wife, "Brian Ross's source is at the White House and they're going to try to pin this on me." I said, "I'm going to go public. I'm going to tell the truth." And so I did. I said three things. I said that the CIA was torturing its prisoners. I said that torture was official US government policy. It was not the result of a rogue. And I said that the policy had been personally approved by the president himself. The president said the next day he was

[59:29] asked about my comments and he said, and I'll never forget the quote. He said, "I don't know this man. I've never met this man. I don't know why this man would throw me under the bus. It's like, well, that sounds like an admission that there's a torture program. Yes, you [ __ ] Yeah, seriously. Why would he out me like this? This Why would he Why would he say the president is responsible for this? What are you talking about? I'm just the president, right? Wow. You know, one of the things, one of the crazy things that that I

[1:00:00] finally saw in the torture report or in the heavily redacted uh executive summary of the torture report, we'll never see the actual torture report. Was that George Tennant had repeatedly gone to Dick Cheney to say, "We really, really need to brief the president on the torture program." And Cheney kept saying, "I'll brief the president on the torture program and I'll let you know when it's done." So Cheney finally told

[1:00:31] uh B told Tenant that oh I told the president about the torture program and the president's signature is on the authorization, but Bush still maintains that he didn't know there was a torture program. And after all these years, I think I believe him. Yeah. Yeah. So, did Cheney forge it or did or was he in a drunken stouper and someone you know? I I think that I think that Cheney walked into the Oval Office with a bunch of papers and said, "Mr. President, we need your signature

[1:01:02] on these. You know, they're not important. You don't need to read them." Yeah. You just sign them and I'll take care of it. I I I actually think that's what happened. Uh this whole thing was Dick Cheny's idea. All of it. He's still alive. Can you imagine? This is a guy that's had what, like 85 heart attacks and he had uh heart uh a pig heart in there or something. Yeah, he has a pig heart or No, no, it was the blonde guy from the movie. The guy fell and hit his head

[1:01:33] and he and Dick Cheney got his heart. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's the And then there are people who are good and die young. Yeah. It's uh Yeah, that's right. And you got Cheney. Kissinger. Um, Kissinger is another one. You can't kill the devil. I know. Yeah. But, uh, okay. So, God. Okay. We're gonna have to come back for another interview because this is so good and there's so many more questions. Leslie, you you want questions? Then we'll get to the Sure thing, Leslie. Yeah. So, uh, Robbie Martin, who I think

[1:02:05] you, uh, know because you gave him a blurb for his, uh, movie, A Very Heavy Agenda, wanted me to ask you what you think, uh, about the anthrax attacks from, uh, 2000. Ah, yeah. It's It's funny, you know, as a country, we've largely forgotten about those anthrax attacks. Yeah. Yeah. Uh so for people who might not remember about a week after uh 9/11 there was these and anthrax anthrax attacks uh sent through the mail five

[1:02:35] deaths 17 injuries they were sent to the offices of some Democratic senators Tom Dashel Patrick Lehey there was someone accused of it turns out to be false there's someone who they say they think did it but he's uh no longer alive and the case remains unsolved And it was massive news and was considered and I I I fair to mention most people assumed it was part of the September 11th attack like a ongoing part of the you know the

[1:03:07] attack on the Twin Towers at the time and it's just kind of been forgotten. Yeah. You know for a long time many of us just assumed that they were connected that this was this new world that we were living in that was full of terrorism. Um, and I think it's well documented that the FBI utterly blew that investigation. They made accusations against people who turned out to be innocent. One guy, one scientist committed suicide. Um, I don't

[1:03:38] know the answer to tell you the truth. Uh, was it a disgruntled scientist? Was it I don't think it was a terrorist terrorist. Um, there's no evidence that it was a foreign terrorist. Um, I don't know. I think the conventional wisdom is is that it was a disgruntled scientist. And um can you talk about the uh newly declassified uh FBI report? Sure. So this was Yeah, you you can set it up.

[1:04:10] This is uh the first of what are supposed to be or what is supposed to be a series of reports that are going to be declassified from the FBI's investigation post 911. Um, it was it was released on Saturday evening ostensibly because it was the 20th anniversary of the 911 attacks. I think it was released on Saturday evening because they thought nobody would pay attention to it. That's just me. Uh, but what it what it was was the FBI's investigation, again, heavily redacted,

[1:04:41] but still you can get most of the story of a couple of Saudis. um one by the name of uh Fumei who was an official in the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles and the other Omar Abayumi who was a Saudi national living in Los Angeles and their connections to the 9/11 hijackers or at least to two of the 9/11 hijackers. The FBI concluded that Thumedi and Bayumi were lying to them when they said, well, in one case, um, Bayumi said

[1:05:16] that he had just run into the 9/11 hijackers in a restaurant and he heard them speaking Arabic and he said, "Hey, are you Saudi?" "I'm Saudi." "Oh, yeah, we're Saudi. Nice to meet you." And they shook hands and they became friends and he had no idea that they were the 9/11 terrorists. No idea. Well, there are other FBI sources documented in this report saying that that is nonsense that when Bayumi would go into the Saudi consulate, he was

[1:05:46] greeted as somebody who was very important. People were deferring to him and he would speak with Thumi that they were friends. Well, the Saudis forced Thumi to uh talk to the FBI. uh he had diplomatic immunity of course and um the FBI said that one of their sources who was an employee of the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles said that Fumedi um almost lost his job a number of times

[1:06:18] because he kept giving out radical terrorist fundamentalist pamphlets inside the the consulate. Now, to make all of this worse, the Saudi ambassador to the United States at the time was Prince Bandar bin Sultan. Oh, yeah. His wife wired $50,000. He's the guy who called him a simple who called Osama bin Laden in the simple, quiet, simple man or something on Larry King. That's right. Not true. Just not true.

[1:06:49] Not true. Yeah. Not true at all. You know, when I was when I was stationed in Saudi Arabia, I knew a lot of Bin Ladens, and 99% of them are terrific people, right? They're as western as you and I are. Uh I won't hold that against them. They they have houses in Orlando and Beverly Hills and Manhattan and San Francisco, and they would rather be here shopping than, you know, ever step foot in their own country again. But they've got this one bad apple and his kids are

[1:07:22] bad too, right? His kids are murderers, too. And so the only flight that was allowed in the sky in the two weeks after 9/11 was President Bush ordered all bin Laden family members out of the country for their own safety. And so it took about a week, but every bin Laden and it was like a hundred of them. They all finally convened in Orlando. They got onto a Saudi jet and they got the

[1:07:54] hell out. That was a favor that the Bush family did to the Bin Laden family for the Bin Laden family because they had gone back so many years as business partners and friends. the the bin Ladens are the largest bin Laden the bin Laden group of companies it's called is the largest um uh largecale construction firm in the Middle East right they don't build buildings they build like airports or new cities in the desert or the

[1:08:25] tallest building in the world that's going up now in Jedha this is a major serious uh construction firm and the old man Abdul Rahman bin Laden He had 110 sons. Um, his daughters don't count. The the Will Chamberlain of uh Exactly. You know, I asked I asked a Saudi one time, "Do you have any children?" And he said, "No, unfortunately, just five daughters." I said, "Oh, I'm so sorry." Anyway, uh, a Middle East joke, but that was

[1:08:56] true. That conversation actually took place. So, anyway, um, the the is in Arabic or in English or in Arabic. Yeah. Yeah. And Asfad, I'm so sorry. You only have five daughters. So, um, so Ben, so, uh, Bandar's wife wired $50,000 to these two clowns that the FBI believes made its way to the hijackers. You know, I was I was the notetaker once in a in a meeting that George Tenned had

[1:09:28] with uh with Bandar in the days after 9/11 and um and George blew his stack and he was screaming at Bandar that we're going to start killing people and some of those people may be named Al Saud. You get it? And he said, "I get it, George. I get it. I get it." Well, next thing you know, these Saudi princes who had been kind of trouble for us or who were on our list of suspicious people um

[1:09:59] began dying. One of them died in a mysterious onecar accident on the the Riad de Jetta highway. One of them went camping and died of thirst, which doesn't happen. Um, one of them uh walked into the desert and disappeared and was never seen again. And then the bin Laden family started coming forward saying, "Listen, we want to cooperate. We don't want to have anything to do with him. He's nuts. He's a murderer."

[1:10:31] So, what we said was, "We're going to kill him one of these days." So, what we want is DNA. So, if we blow them up and we have to pick them up in little two-inch square pieces, we want to be able to test the DNA. And the Bin Ladens couldn't get in line fast enough to give the DNA samples. So, I don't understand the when uh Tenant said, "We're going to start killing Saudis."

[1:11:01] And what what that was a warning. That was a warning that you're either with us or you're against us. And if you're not going to cooperate with 17 of these guys being Saudi citizens, you're not going to cooperate. Then we're going to do it our way. And so that is what happened to those three perhaps in those three suspicious deaths. That's what we always suspected. The Saudis just killed him. Okay, got it. Um, and what does this new

[1:11:32] document reveal about the connections? There's no smoking gun in this document yet. That was the one thing that was really disappointing to me. The the FBI offers up some conjecture, a conjecture. And I like that conjecture. That's good. It's combination of what? Conjecture and something else. And Yeah. And context. Yeah. I I like that. That's good. and um and they do clearly come out and say that they have other sources that one

[1:12:03] inside the consulate who are saying that Thumatti and Bayumi are lying in their testimony. Um we never knew until this was released that the FBI believed they were lying. In fact, we didn't know until this was released that they were definitively interviewed. You know, we always wondered if they were. We hoped that they were, but we didn't know. So, there's nothing really new. There's no smoking gun, but it does fill in some

[1:12:35] of the blanks. And then the White House said that there are at least four other documents coming that are uh that are being redacted now for release. So maybe by the time that happens, we'll we'll have something akin to a full story. And why do you think Biden's doing this? Uh oh, actually I realize we don't have a lot of time. I definitely want your thoughts on that. I have that question, but also I don't know how much time you have left, but some thoughts on Afghanistan and the pull out there.

[1:13:06] Sure. You know, I was always of the of the opinion that um that the mission was the mission. We should have stuck with the mission and the mission was to destroy al-Qaeda, which we had done by December of 2001. It wasn't up to us to rebuild uh Afghanistan. It wasn't up to us to turn them into uh a western democracy. It it wasn't our problem. Uh we we were there to kill or capture al-Qaeda's leadership and to uh destroy or disrupt

[1:13:38] the rest of the organization, which we did. I remember being at CIA headquarters and watching George W. Bush giving a speech and for the first time he used the word nation building and everybody standing around me just groaned like, "Oh no, we're going to be there for a decade." Well, we were there for two decades. I went to Afghanistan with um with John Kerry in 2011. And when we first arrived, you know, they treat you like this VIP and they

[1:14:09] take you into the bubble and you're at the conference table and they're giving you this classified briefing and the the briefing is, you know, we have elements of this unit moving here and this mo unit's moving there and we killed these terrorists here and the Hakani network, we bombed them there and and we're winning, right? Things are going well. We're winning. a year from now, we'll be able to to to take over this whole swath. So, we get out of there and John Kerry says to me, "We may actually win

[1:14:41] this thing." And I said, "Senator, we're not going to win this thing." I said, "This is the same briefing they've been giving since 2002. They tell everybody this every single year. One more year, we're going to win this thing." And he said, "Really?" I said, "Really? I've heard this briefing a half a dozen times." So, I just never thought we should we should have been there in the first place. We had a job to do. We did it by December of 2001, and we should have come home.

[1:15:13] And what do you think made Biden um I mean, it seems like releasing this document wasn't a huge deal necessarily, but why do you think he responded to the to pressure to do was throwing some Yeah. honestly because the representatives of the 9/11 families told him that he would not be welcome at the commemoration unless he released the documents. And do you Huh? That would have been so embarrassing. He had to release it. Wow.

[1:15:44] Yeah. And do you think this is also is he concerned about PR given the response to his uh I mean I think it's an unfair attack on him. I do too. I do too. or you know, look, this was Donald Trump's plan and he implemented Donald Trump's plan. He actually delayed the implementation of Donald Trump's plan because Trump wanted us to be out by May 1st. Um, I think we we should be out. So, I I don't care whose plan it was. It makes no difference to me. It got ugly at the end, but you know what?

[1:16:15] Sometimes things get ugly. It's And it was ugly during. That's the thing. And it was ugly during, but no one talked about it. And what would we have remained for anyway? You know, the president of of Afghanistan was really no more than the mayor of Kabell. The central government hasn't controlled the countryside. Well, pretty much ever. Uh so why why remain? There's no good reason to remain. Mhm. Yeah. Um well, I know you have another

[1:16:46] interview, so thank you in 10 minutes for Yeah. Thank you so much. We want to give you a pleasure so much. Yeah, this is great. Definitely come back. Thanks a lot for having me. I appreciate it and good to see both of you. Yes. Oh, and anything you want to say for uh about Assange or Oh, free Julian Assange. You know, without Wikileaks, we wouldn't have any idea what our government was doing. You know, I think he's a publisher. I think he's a a journalist. I think he deserves our thanks. And uh honestly, I don't

[1:17:17] believe that the US government has has any legal cause to hold him. And shame on the British for caving. Yeah. Great. Thank you so much, John. Thanks. Good to see you. You, too. Bye. Bye. Bye. That was great, huh? Yeah. Great. Great interview. Great interview. Great. I mean, really good storyteller. Very interesting person. Yeah. Very interesting stuff. Very interesting stuff. Yeah, next time we're

[1:17:47] going to have to ask him about the raids. I'm kind of curious about this stuff then. Thank you, Frank Havitt. Katie, this is the best show ever. Mind-blowing. Wow. That should go might John should use that on his next book. Blurb. Yeah. You know, when they say praise for like praise for other things, praise for previous interview. Yeah. Outside sounds agrees for podcast appearances. Yeah. previously previous reviews of podcast appearances.

[1:18:17] Yeah, that'll get you that'll bump you on the New York Times uh bestseller list right there. But uh yeah, the people have spoken. That was really interesting. And um it's so weird how much the FBI and CIA's pissing contest [ __ ] everyone. Not to put too fine a point on it, but well, you know, I'm a big big true crime

[1:18:48] fan, right? This is something this inter departmental agency scuffles and stuff. It's like all the way from the bottom to the top. Like other police departments, police departments in the same state, you know, the trooper, the state troopers in the local PD, none of them get along. None of them want to talk to each other. All of them have janky ass equipment that they bought from their cousins, uncles, whoevers. Uh that is not compatible with any of their stuff.

[1:19:19] Like they're like it's so wild like how uncoordinated is. I guess it's you know it's getting better. I don't but it's not better. That's just like oh they're getting better at like tracking people and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. Really uh despicable. The torture stuff is despicable. I I heard him on this other interview with Robert Shear again like just describing how they would be sleepd deprived which your mind like you start

[1:19:49] losing your mind after a certain number of days and then your organs also start to to fail after a certain number of days. I think it was like 12 days or something and the CIA was allowed to do it for 14 or something totally obscene. I mean, this is all obscene obviously anyway, but obscene within even pretending to care about any medical rules. Yeah, it's completely obscene. It was just straight up a torture pro program. And the thing about it, like it just didn't work. And they lied about any

[1:20:21] information they got from it was a lie. They got all the information from like, you know, the regular interrogation techniques where you like buy them a cup of coffee and Yeah. I've seen I've seen those shows. Yeah. Well, even like I mean obviously cops don't use those techniques in real life. They like our cops like using torture too for some reason. It's almost like the point is not it's almost like the point isn't to stop crime or anything. It's probably maybe it's just a bunch of sadist. That's what's scary is that you get statist, but then you

[1:20:52] also get people and I don't, you know, the show is not a source of propaganda, but you get people who I think they sometimes actually think that they're going after the right person even though it's the wrong person. But I guess it's one of those things. It's like, are they lying? Are they stupid? or they're paid lot paid not to know, you know, like when they bend the rules, do they actually sometimes think mistakenly that that the bag that the innocent guy is guilty? I mean, let's let's I can break it down

[1:21:23] because I'm listening to this really great uh true crime book. Let me pull up the name of it. uh if people are interested in I know there's lots of true crime heads out there and this one's really good because it's a really it's a really academic one. So it's called American Serial Killers the Epidemic Years. It's a brand new book and it comes at it from a very academic perspective about like serial killing and like what are the sociological factors that create people who become

[1:21:55] serial killers. But it goes through like all these stories about like It's appropriate for a CIA show. Yeah. Yeah. But all these cops and stuff and how they react to these crimes and then they open the story with like the Jeffrey Dmer case. And I don't know if people know this, but the cops actually walked back one of Jeffrey Dmer's victims to him, a child who had who was like bleeding and had been tortured. and they walked it back because they assumed that oh it was just some gay thing.

[1:22:26] Yes. So it's like that was so disgusting. I heard about that from someone and I like wanted to throw up. And did you know that it almost happened twice? No. when the people who the cops who actually arrested Jeffrey Dawnmer very similar situation a guy escaped and he was handcuffed and the cops were you know trying to like brush past it even after walking into the apartment spelling the dead bodies they and the guy was telling this guy is trying to

[1:22:57] kill me he told me he was going to eat my heart the cops were still like oh this is just some gay thing now they kept looking they it until they actually saw the pictures of like dead bodies and actual people. They were still of the mind of kind of like this is just some kind of gated some caught at this point. They didn't like this kid back in the clutches of Don. No, but they were about to until they actually saw corpses. Even the smell didn't stop him. It was it was the pictures of the actual

[1:23:28] corpses and when they actually discovered the corpses there up until that point they they smelled the corpses. The guy was saying, "This guy's trying to kill me." But they were still like, "Oh, this is just some thing. Let's we don't want to fill out the paperwork." Oh my god. That is honestly it's it's like one of the worst stories I've ever heard about walking them. I I can't even I knew that. I didn't twice. It happened. I mean, the second and so this idea that we always have that the that the cops are the vanguard

[1:24:00] against all this like No. No, I never thought. Yeah, I never thought that. But even in those cases, that's disturbing because they actually think and it's like for [ __ ] up reasons, right? Cuz they're like they like pathize gay behavior. Yeah. But that's even it's like scary that they actually I mean I guess that's the bias, you know. Yeah. And this wasn't a 100 years ago. This was like the 19 you know this is pretty you know. So this Yeah. the dimmable line is not something that you know protects us even like even and so

[1:24:31] that's the real problem with propaganda like even though you know everybody who watches all those cop shows knows that they're fake and not real you assume that some it's like 10% of the cops might might like that when it's more like you know it's a whole system and nobody acts like this like yeah the the cops aren't aren't this line of defense that are helping us and protecting us from the they're the accessories a lot of the times, you know. You know.

[1:25:01] Yeah. Well, uh I wanted to It's so It's so disturbing. I wanted to uh because we're talking about 9/11, I thought it would be a good idea to um look at a a video that Meet the Press put together. Hold on one second. Well, there are two videos I wanted us to look at. Um, one is an interesting CBS uh uh piece

[1:25:35] and then one is on Face the Nation. Let's look at this. Let's look at this one first. The FBI has released a No, not that one. Sorry. I was going to just play I'm sorry I didn't but hold on. Hi. Hi, Nick. Everyone say hi to Nick. One second, please. Um, okay. This is a good one. Welcome back to Face the Nation. Late

[1:26:05] last night, the FBI released a newly declassified document related to the investigation of the 9/11 terror attacks. No, not this one. Contact hijackers had with Saudi associates here in the US. It did not include any evidence that the Saudi government was complicit. Holly Williams is in Riad with a look at how that It's not moving for me. I just Oh, yeah. It's not moving for me either. Alrison, Saudi Arabia. Hold on. What's happening here, guys? Uh, it's not working.

[1:26:38] Let's try that again. Uh, also where is my Hold on. Okay. Um, I'll just Should I play it? Okay, I'll play it. Hold on.

[1:27:12] Tell me if this works. Can you guys see this and hear this? Yes. Welcome back to Face the Nation. Late last night, the FBI released a newly declassified document related to the investigation of the 911 terror attacks outlining contact with Saudi associates here in the US. It did not include any evidence that the echoit is in Riad with a look at how that

[1:27:43] country is fighting. Maybe just mute your mic while it's playing. I don't Will you be able to here? Let me try this. What about this against extremist now? Can you hear it? Yeah. Okay. Here. At Alrison, Saudi Arabia claims it's reforming convicted terrorists with music sports. This is your coffee shop. Yep. Exactly. And even a coffee shop the prisoners run themselves. Our guide was an inmate, Yasa Isam Hamdi, born a US citizen to

[1:34:29] When the towers began to collapse, the entire country shuddered. And I said on the air at that point, wow, this changes. It was a a a shock to really the the presumption amongst the American people that we were somehow immune from attack. We came together in a way that I've never seen in my lifetime. And what was really powerful, okay, Joe Tory, was they were bringing pictures of their lost relatives and friends with

[1:35:04] Yankee caps or Yankee jerseys, uh, jackets, and saying what big fans they were. I I realized that baseball was necessary for, I guess, to start the healing. in the first day he just did to baseball what he went CBS did to uh Saudi Arabia the Muslim faith is not a faith of of terror it's a faith of love a lot of people's commitment to our country was brought into question um overlooking the fact that there are

[1:35:35] scores of Muslims who serve in our law enforcement communities I was one of them one of the greatest spontaneous series of remarks by any president in history were the remarks that the president gave at ground zero. I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon. The authorization to use military force

[1:36:05] was passed on 914, three days by three days after this horrific uh terrible attack. That was the wrong time to pass such an overly broad uh authorization. We underestimated the uh complexity of the war that we were about to get into. And I think a lot of people thought we could just walk in and clean it up. We got into some I wonder why they thought that we had to quote because you told them to that that was going to happen. In many ways an endless war probably the right

[1:36:36] uh narrative the right I mean we send people to their death in Korea. I think that would have been the right way. My friend, we cannot remake. Yeah. So this guy, it says homeland security. They leave out that he's at Rathon on the border of Rathon. Can you imagine? I say it's really offensive. We need to think about Afghanistan. A sad mistake that we went into that started to end that sense of unity. Look at that hair color. Oh god. Torture analogy would have been Korea. Walk in and clean it up. we got into

[1:37:07] some sense that we had to quote end the war and it is in many ways an endless war. Probably the right uh narrative the right uh analogy would have been Korea. I think that would have been the right way to think about Afghanistan. Why what so can you expand on your objections? Well, first of all, that's that's an insane thing to say. Korea and Korea is like actually a country of like a people that was split in half by us, not Afghanistan. Like that's a complete

[1:37:39] those countries are not nowhere near comparable. The re like I don't even that's just a bizarre thing. Like that's just a bizarre comparison to make. Like we still occupy Korea like like we're still occupying uh doing it. Maybe that's why she's comparing them. That's not like a good thing and that's not like that's not good for Koreans who are cut off from you know people who they knew their families the other half of Korea like

[1:38:09] that and I hate Condi so much because she I mean all the Bush admit admin officials got away with it but people like praised her just because she was a black woman like and straight up like she was the first black woman who was such and such such and such but she was like evil and she's just treated like with respect. They allowed her to get into the NFL cuz she loves football. Like she has never faced any sort of like even like negativity really for and

[1:38:40] like she's personally like close to George W. Bush. Not just like she didn't just work for him. They are personally close to one another. So like she is absolutely complicit in anything that that administration does. But nobody has a problem with her. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Hey, and Jed Johnson is the guy who who they don't announce is um is that Rathon. It may be the other company. What's the other big one?

[1:39:11] Rathon and um oh what's the other one? Lucky Martin. Yeah, it's one of those two. Forgive me if I'm wrong about which one. Um okay. not remake a whole country and prop up another country's government in a distant land. Bad mistake that we went into Iraq that started to end that sense of unity. Our response over time particularly when we got distracted or you know refocused

[1:39:41] on the Iraq war again the narrative that the Afghanistan war was a good one became very militarized. I worry. Wait, did she say we became very militarized? Hold on. Our government would be too polarized to our response over time, particularly when we got distracted or, you know, refocused on the Iraq war became very militarized. I worry. So, we became f militarized in our focus

[1:40:11] that if there were another 911 today, oh, this is good. our government would be too polarized to summon a national response. So we couldn't even do nation building and uh invade another country. That's how you know in today's political climate just too polarized to thank God we're it wasn't like that back then. We could get two wars under our belts. Um I mean addition to all the all the other ones to that event. I worry that if we don't

[1:40:44] deal with our internal divisions, we'll never be able to do another war. We'll be vulnerable to another kind of degradation of uh America's security, America's values, and America's future. We've got to come back. You're the one who degraded. I know the torture attacks happened under your I mean, but to be fair, why would she know? It only she only got a a daily presidential briefing that said n uh Osama bin Laden to attack inside the United States.

[1:41:15] Yeah. Weird. Jesus Christ. Enough with Okay. Um enough with 911. It seems the epitome of neoliberal hypocrisy to mourn that event 20 years later when this event killed millions of people. No one outside the US can even bear to read this. I mean, I don't think we do a bad job on this show of uh ignoring the uh the fallout in other countries of 911. Um know your audience writing the

[1:41:47] writing a message. Thank you for the $10. Who are you talking to though? Like I think you're talking to us. I think maybe maybe they were talking to the people on MSNBC. Yes. Who was doing? Yes. Okay. Yes. So, thank you for knowing your audience. Yes. Um, so but moving to on to more important stories uh and more important wars and beefs. Leslie, you want to tell us something about uh Nicki Minaj? So Nicki Minaj finally finally finally is canled. Finally.

[1:42:18] Thank God. I I feel such a relief. I've never been a Nicki Minaj fan. And finally, the Barbs have been defeated online because Nicki and Barbs are um Nicki fans, right? Nikki's fans, right? And so for some bizarre reason Nicki Minaj, who I think has never been an intelligent person, right? Has nothing of value to say as far as I know. For some reason, she was propped up as like some sort of feminist icon around like 2015, but I think it

[1:42:48] was just like a like white writers at like Jezebel and [ __ ] who were like trying to vampirically like suck the cool the black coolness from her, but uh I never knew why they propped her up. Cardi B is actually cool, but Nicki Minaj I never thought was actually like cool or had anything really going on besides her music. And I mean, we I don't even want to get into the dark [ __ ] with her husband being like a [ __ ] rapist or whatever. I don't know. We don't even have to get into that. But uh she decided to take to

[1:43:19] social media to complain to warn people about the fact that she heard from her cous. Yeah. Yeah. She heard from her cousin that he got vaccinated and his ball his paws went that big or stretched out something. I I actually forgot because I have in my head um this Trinidadian uh newscaster who gave this commentary on it's very funny and he said you go

[1:43:50] around telling people your cousin got a flat tire. Do we have that? Can we watch that? Oh yeah. Let me pull that up. Let's pull that. Actually that's the that's the best thing actually. Yeah, we got the clip from Joy. So, you saw and this turned into a big thing because Joanne Reed responded to it. Joanne Reed responded to it because and just with the typical like how dare you say this about you know the vaccine they did the liberal you know thing which I'm not complaining about especially in this instance but you do see like you know it's it's a pattern at this point. some

[1:44:22] [ __ ] celebrity says something about COVID that's not real and then we make a big show of like how stupid they are and how stupid you but it doesn't really seem to like change like anything as far as like or like get through to any other side. Uh but this one was actually like at least it was funny. At least it was funny with with the news. But let me Okay, I can in the meantime I can also um I can I It's so funny. Every time you like that video was all over the internet all

[1:44:53] day. The second you want to find it, it's like it's always like that. Well, here's here's here's the Okay. Um so she's she said this came this this was because she wouldn't get vaccinated for the um Met Gala. Here it is. Can you guys see? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They want you to get vaccinated for the Met. If I get vaccinated, it won't be for the Met. It'll be once I feel I've done enough research. I'm working on that now. In the meantime, my loves, be safe. Wear the mask with two strings that grip your

[1:45:24] head and face, not the loose one. And then um uh in response to a fan uh who said that blogs may drag the story, Nikki shared that she's not worried. Who cares what blogs going to do? Y'all always worried about blogs. This is my real f, you know, FKN life. they can choke. And here was where she like started making a public health announcement. Um, my cousin in Trinidad won't get the vaccine uh cuz his friend

[1:45:56] got it and became impotent. His testicles became swollen. His friend was weeks away from getting married. Now the girl called off to the wedding. So just pray on it and make sure you're comfortable with your decision, not bullied. Yeah, I'm sure that happened, Nikki. I'm sure that 100% happened. Yeah. So, uh, someone wrote, uh, some random guy in Trinidad blamed CO for catching an FBI while cheating, and now look what he caused. Yes. Everybody was saw immediately that that was totally a [ __ ] madeup story.

[1:46:28] Um, I just sent you the video of the response. Oh. Oh, you can play. Yeah, play Joy. Should we play this one first? Okay. Yeah, I haven't seen Joy. Oh, I'm sure this one is probably going to be annoying. She does seem broken up. Nikki always sucked. Like I don't know what the what's new. Nikki always sucks. She never had any. I'm sorry. I never liked her. Well, did you see her response though? Oh, this is what happens when you're so thirsty to down another black woman by the request of the white man that you didn't bother to read all my tweets. My god, sister do better. Imagine getting your dumb ass on TV a minute after tweet

[1:47:00] to spread a false narrative about a black woman. I mean, I don't see how it's false. Nikki, I'm sorry. I don't I Joanne was right. I don't know what you're I know it's weird to say that, right? Isn't it a weird feeling? Tomiana purpos and then she calls her Tomiana. Um Uncle Tomiana, she called her another tweet purposely chose to ignore these tweets and others. I wonder why. Uh and then uh Uncle Tomiana asked why on who on earth would trust us, the FDA guys? Uh

[1:47:31] it is very funny. And Nicki Maj is getting in a fight with Joanne Reed on Asan got into it. uh to um Hassan [ __ ] Hassan Per not not not Hassan. Yeah, Hassan [ __ ] got it into it and Nicki Minaj quote tweeted him. It wasn't anything testy, but it was there when she revealed that the you that the president reached out to Nicki to talk about her uh like to talk to her about this. Did you know that this part that no the president is

[1:48:02] Biden our president or Yes. Yes. our our president has uh reached out to my president. Uh yeah, I did not know that. Yeah, I sent it's the second link I sent you. Okay, hold on. One thing she did say is that um that uh Minaj said she called Joyce a lying homophobic coun. I can say it. Okay, you want to say it? So say the three words together. She Yeah, she called Reed a lying homophobic [ __ ] which shows that Nikki She looks up her

[1:48:35] Ah, sorry. Oh my god, that was the worst moment. I meant to to Sorry, say that again. She looks up I I closed on you instead of the instead of the screen. Yeah, she looks on her up her opponent so she knew to look up Joanne Reed stuff and wasn't just like right uh out she wasn't just popping off. Yeah. And she I mean, look, again, I'm I'm It's very weird. I agree with I don't agree with Minaj, I'll say, on this, but she is right about the lying homophobic part. Yeah, she is. I mean, that is true. So, she, as you

[1:49:05] said, she did her research. Okay. So, uh Nick, can we play the the video that's in the that Leslie sent? I sent this. There's two link. I sent three links. This we can look at the second one, which is the um Jen Saki. Okay, one second. Oh my gosh, this is going to be good. Calls to be a difference of opinion between Nicki Minaj and the White House about there's a difference between Nicki Minaj

[1:49:37] and the White House. An invitation to Nicki Minaj to come here. We offered a call uh with Nicki Minaj uh and one of our doctors to answer questions she had about the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine. Uh this is pretty standard and something we do all the time. It was a very early stage call at a staff level, staff to staff. Um and we weren't even at the point of discussing or we're not even at the point of discussing I should say at this point um the mechanisms or the format or anything along those lines. It was simply an offer to have a conversation

[1:50:07] and uh an early stage call. You think that's going to happen? We'll see. I don't have anything to predict for you. making the not just 22 million Twitter followers. Why not invite her to the White House? Have a conversation and make it a big public. Is this a Barb and Undercover Barb recommendations on our communications advice? Karen, you are quite experienced. Um, look, I will say um you may note to call her and we've a bunch before that we are not always the right um platform or the right voice, right? Sometimes that's because people

[1:50:38] may not like the president. Um Whoa. Humble, Jen. Okay. Yeah. And then we can watch the other one which is a really great summary of it. Is that the first or the third? Third one. This one dropped yesterday morning and as the story dropped it was excitement. Now Nicki Minaj no stranger to controversy. Um I mean she was here for carnival in 2020 and that was a bakanal which

[1:51:08] well her husband now husband an Iowa um she would have made some outlandish statements over the years but this one takes the cake. This is almost like what you would hear by a parlor where somebody will tell you well your cousin friend neighbor say xyz. I mean come on Nikki you have 180 million followers. People listen to you, people follow your particular lead. You going on the social media space and talking about your

[1:51:40] cousin friend, take the vaccine and get impotent and all of a sudden, you know, marriage call off and some kind of bakanal story. I mean it's irresponsible on all fronts irresponsible based on the misinformation that is going out there regarding this vaccine. Um you know there was no verification of the story and furthermore even on a personal note even if this is the case to expose your

[1:52:11] cousin friend's flat tire in the public domain like that. If the man have a flat tire, okay, he will work on that. You know, the just herbs and and and and punch and the man could eat and bring back our vibes. But don't come now and talk that kind of talk. The thing get so hot. Jake Tapper on CNN yesterday at 4:00 talk about this with Dr. Fouchy. Dr. voucher is of course the US uh that's their their lead leading mine and and

[1:52:42] and specialists with this whole co 19 uh push back and the fight against the 19 I love the light you know like the man was blindsided answer I mean I don't think we should per se but but Nikki better than that I I honestly expected better and besides um obviously that outlandish statement and she always talks about Trinidad and she's from Trinidad. She's yet to collaborate with somebody from here. What? That's a talk for another program on

[1:53:13] another day. Whoa. Can we get this guy on the show? We very very good. That was great. Wow. Flat tire. Flat tire. It happens. He makes it sound like he knows that condition. Is that a thing? I mean, he Well, I think he just means like is impotent. Impotent. Oh, that's what it is. I thought it was I thought he was saying Oh, okay. I just want to drop. Oh, I thought it was by the balls. I Okay, that's why I was like flat tire. I thought in the public domain like that.

[1:53:43] Got it. Okay. Okay. Okay. Please playing there. Every man has a flat tire. In the public domain like that. Every man have a flat tire. Okay. He will work on that. You know, there just herbs and and and and punch and certain things man could eat and bring back our vibes. Yeah. bring back. I see. Okay, got it. So, he's saying that you can find medical cures for uh imp his cousin in the streets. Yeah. Seriously.

[1:54:15] Um flat tire. I see. Yeah. I Okay. I like that though. Punch. I like a punch. Is there a punch? That's That sounds There's a punch. Yeah. Anyway, well, this was a great show. Uh, do let me see any Patreons that we got. I mean, we got a lot of generous uh donations. Oh, come on. We got to get one Patreon, guys. No, if you like this show, guys, did you

[1:54:46] like the show? I know a lot of you did because a lot of you guys said how great the show was. So, you know what to do. You just go to patreon.com/thekatyhelper show. Again, that's patreon.com. I can't do it. patreon.comthecatyhelper show. I always when I try to do a Caribbean, it like turns into Scottish. I don't know why. Um, and just drop some some Patreon love. patreon.com/thekatyhalper show. Let's see.

[1:55:16] How do I do this? It's so demoralizing. Leslie, what do you do? You just ask. You just say how great it is to join and then people do it. Yeah. Yeah. You just And just talk about the recent episodes. That's it. Oh, recent episodes. You know what you'll get on Patreon? Oh, really great stuff, actually. You'll get me unfiltered on uh Well, let's see. Let me think of a good Patreon. Oh, well, we're coming soon is a really great Patreon on uh the Texas uh Texas

[1:55:48] abortion ban. This is an audio Patreon. Let me think of what's video Patreon. Um, oh, you know what you're going to get soon? A little Rose McGawan. I could actually tease some of that without you because I know you have to go. But yeah, you guys want to hear from Rose McGawan. Rose McGawan, guys, become Patreon supporters. Unreleased. And here's what you're going to get if you're a Patreon. First of all, you should be like, "Oh my god, this show was so good tonight that I should become a Patreon right away."

[1:56:19] But then you know what else you can come for? Come to the Patreon for forthcoming interviews with never before release interviews with Rose McGawan and Gabbor Mate. Rose McGawan. Gabbor Mate. Uh we'll be doing more self-care stuff also. Um you know I don't agree. I said this before about the Rose McGowan

[1:56:50] thing. I don't like Larry Elder and I wouldn't endorse him even though I also have disdain for Gavin Newsome, but I'm not going to judge someone who had personal experience with Gavin Newsome's wife. It reminds me of the Wanita Brick thing. I get this uh this a lot when I mention her, but I don't know like if you had something happen to you, I understand why you're going to support that person's opponent. And so Rose McGowan says that uh Gavin

[1:57:21] Newsome's wife tried to uh like discredit her and smear her. And uh I think that that makes it understandable just like I think it's understandable that Wanita Brick who says Bill Clinton raped her uh endorsed Donald Trump even though I don't like Donald Trump. But we can't keep expecting people to to not live by their

[1:57:52] through their own experiences. So, you don't have to like Larry Elder, but I don't know. So, anyway, but I have this really amazing interview with her where she goes through why uh why she does not consider herself a Democrat and she talks about the Clintons and she talks about uh Kla Harris and it all starts with how upset she was over Kla Harris speaking with Bill Clinton at an event on empowering women and girls.

[1:58:27] Yeah. Anyway, what else? Anything else, Leslie? Oh, no. Um, by everyone, make sure to check us out. Um, uh, check out Struggle Session. Uh, if you enjoy the show at patreon.com/struggression. We, uh, going to have a upcoming episode on Candyman, the old and the new version. I think I talked a little bit on the show about how great the old version uh, was and how it's about like gentrification and all this stuff. very very uh good movie. We uh have an

[1:58:57] upcoming episode on some pro wrestling. And in fact, if anybody's, you know, if you're staying up tonight, head over to twitch.tv/ uh struggle session tonight because I will be doing a wrestling show. It won't not on my channel. It's just that if I tell this guy's name, nobody's going to remember it. But at least if you go to struggle session, you'll find where we're hosting because we're doing a little pro wrestling show after the fact. His name is Nude Tane Salary Mane, but you you might not find on Twitch,

[1:59:27] but just follow me on Twitter. Twitter.com Leslie Lee. I'll tweet out in a second if you want to watch some wrestling in about an hour. Yeah. Um, all right. I'm going to stay on for five more minutes, but have a you you get ready for your show, Les. All right. Thank you so much. Have a good night, everyone. Thanks. You, too. Bye. Just want to make sure that people understand. Uh my point is not that Larry Elder is the same as Gavin Newsome. My point is that if you have

[1:59:59] something happen in your personal life with someone that may determine your politics and I can't judge people who do that. You know what I'm saying? Does that make any sense? I don't know why I respond to one person in the chat who seems to think that I'm equating Elder and Newsome. I mean, Newsome is a [ __ ] li and a disappointment and he has blood on his hands, but uh, you know, Elder is worse. That's what I say. But I also get what she's doing. If I had an interaction with uh Newsome's wife, I'd

[2:00:30] probably be trying to get my story out there. And sometimes the media doesn't pay attention to your story unless you do something like that. So the point is you become Patreon supporters, you'll get access to that interview and it's and it's uh a longer interview. Other people are going to get uh very small little little gems. Uh all right, I will uh see you guys all soon. Thank you so much for coming to the Katie Haler Show. This was a great interview. I'm going to do another one

[2:01:01] with uh John, which will be Patreon only as well. and I will see you either next week uh maybe Sunday. Not sure if I'm going to be doing a show then, but uh make sure you subscribe because I do some kind sometimes I just do these um you know shooting from the hip uh not planned just reacting to the news shows. Also, please put in this comment in under this video, put in the chat uh some shows or movies on Amazon that you would want me and Leslie or me and other

[2:01:33] guests to basically do a um mystery science theater with, you know what I mean? And then we'll donate some of the the the the'll have to be on Twitch and we'll donate that'll be a Patreon only thing but we'll donate some money to uh you anti- Amazon organizing because that you have to do through Amazon unfortunately. Okay. So any Amazon Prime shows let me type this up actually. Please suggest

[2:02:03] series or movies on Amazon Prime. My thing has to be you want us to uh have parties. Mr. Science Theater.

[2:02:34] All right. See you guys soon. Bye everyone. Thanks, Nick. Thanks, Brad. Thanks, Rushka. Thanks, Tyler.
