Title: Most Hated CIA Spy on Hunting Osama & INSANE Covert Disguises (Episode 249)
Show: Julian Dorey Podcast
Date: 2024-11-07
URL: https://youtube.com/watch?v=5_FDZozJ9zE
Duration: 2:56:44

---

[00:00] what did you think of the whole wmd angle there of all the CIA people working on some aspect of Iraq I only met one she was a mid-level analyst she was the only one who really believed that the Iraqis had wmd this was passed down to the CIA by the White House the White House said the position is there's wmd and that's why we're going to do this based on what you guys are the ones who were supposed to decide that or figure that out yeah I remember a knockdown drag out fight between the CIA

[00:30] wmd analysts and the department of energy wmd analysts and the department of energy they were like there's wmd we got to stop I'm wait and the CI is like we're not seeing it we're not seeing any wmd what's up guys if you haven't already please smash that subscribe button and hit that like button on the video and if you don't have time to watch this episode right now I'd really appreciate it if you saved it to your watch later playlist on YouTube finally if you'd like to follow me on Instagram or X those links are in my descript deson

[01:01] below John kiraku this is a this has been a long time in the Mak talking about having you in here I'm I'm glad to finally get you here and I think it'll be the first of many we do the pleasure is all mine I've been looking forward to this for a long time we'll have fun well I actually remember so when when Danny Jones first had you on the podcast that was like the first major podcast I think you had had done it was right in this new era 2022 yes I remember cuz he was up in Jersey with me at my parents house at my old Studio in May 2022 and he was finishing the

[01:33] edit the episode and he kept uploading it and it was automatically getting demonetized so we were we're like holy [ __ ] the CIA is coming after Danny and then we figured out let's put it in three parts and then it worked out and the rest is history and now know that yeah that that was the real story swear to God but in all seriousness I think you've done three with Danny as well as a fourth that was with Andrew Buon or Danny and my mutual friend who's been on our podcast a bunch that podcast was excellent we had a

[02:05] really good time and you know beforehand we normally I I just sort of wing these podcasts I don't really prepare for them because I I figure after all these years if I'm not an expert by now I'm not ever going to be an expert so I know what I want to say I know how to say it I don't prepare I started thinking a couple days in advance should I prepare for this uh Andy Bustamante thing and I thought nah I'm not going to prepare and it went very well I I thoroughly enjoyed that uh that debate yeah he was here the day

[02:36] before and we we had known that was going to be coming or whatever because Danny's been trying to make that happen forever but we were talking about you because obviously he hadn't met you before and I told him I said you know what I think you guys are going to end up agreeing on a lot more than you think and when you listen to that podcast there's like 80% of it you guys are lock step on very I felt like it was Danny did a really good job of keeping it on like high level broad strategic kind of issues did yeah and that last 20%

[03:07] obviously you guys have some huge disagreements which is I think motivated by your separate very separate experiences I think that's exactly right yes but would highly Rec we'll put that podcast actually Link in description because it so good and in fact I I said to Danny before before he even turned the camera on that I was a little bit worried that we might end up agreeing on too much and it wouldn't be interesting no it was definitely interesting because when guys like you and Andy even coming at it from some different perspectives when you have been out in the world in

[03:39] the field doing things and I say the same thing about all my special ops guys that I've had in here and guys like that it's not to say you're right about everything and I should just agree with what you say certainly not but there is a level of respect from you know gdc's like goddamn civilians in my seat where it's like all right these guys have seen these things so I have to understand that like they have a greater view on how [ __ ] really works in the world and it's very easy for me to sit here in my armchair and say you should have done

[04:10] this or or done that but it's not you know the world is very very gray oh it is very gray and you know I've met a lot of these special ops guys whether it's you know SEAL team members or Delta or whomever and you can tell uh who the real deal guys are and you can tell who the phonies are oh yeah yeah I I think I've told this story before I I was in The Green Room at um Fox News I used to go on the Tucker Carlson show a lot Tucker Tucker's a good guy yeah and um I

[04:41] was in The Green Room and there was a guy in there who I didn't recognize and uh and he said um who show you going on because they do fox and Fox Business at the same Studio okay so I said oh I'm going to go on Tucker and he said oh yeah me too you must be going on before before I do and I said uh he said uh who who uh do you for and I said oh I I'm on cuz I used to work for the CIA it's a long story yeah yeah and I don't know who this guy is so I'm not going to explain the whole background and nor nor would he care right so I said how about

[05:12] you he said oh yeah I'm CIA too and I said oh I mean there's this immediate thing when one CIA person meets another one and you always ask the first question who do you work for right uh I said what division are you or what uh what director are you in operations you know it's operations intelligence science technology and administration and he said I'm an Ops I said oh yeah me too what what division were you in and that's that's the real question right there because you can't fake that and he

[05:42] says and listen the answers are you know I was in counterterrorism I was in near East I was in you know Russia Eurasia whatever he goes I was in uh you know wet work uh Black Ops special special activities they don't say that right no nobody ever said that's from straight out of a so I just said oh that's cool and then I went in and did Tucker and we went to a commercial and I said Tucker I think the guy in The Green Room who's coming on the show I think he's faking it and he's

[06:15] like what do you mean I said he doesn't know any of the Linko that a CIA person should know he's faking it and he's like oh [ __ ] he goes I have to say something to the to the producer oh I kind of forgot about it and then a couple of months later here's this guy in The Washington Post he's arrested and charged with mortgage fraud because he went to the bank and said I need a mortgage but I can't tell you where I work it's a special lops wet work Black

[06:45] Ops secret CIA and they're like oh here's a mortgage and then he couldn't pay it Matt Cox would say that's bad fraud that's sloppy fraud that's sloppy that's sloppy at least back it up that's unbel unable that someone like that would end up on a mainstream platform though like no vetting like I worry about that here cuz I'm an independent guy what what you see so how much research are you going to be able to do exactly this is this is what you get but I will say with the with the spec ops guys I've had in and then we've only had

[07:17] in we've had in you now and then your story is very well documented and boo Deon and like Jim Lawler as far as CIA Go's great right so like I I really check those out as much as I could ahead of time but I remember even thinking the first time with Boon before I knew him because he had at the time he'd only been on Danny's podcast and so Dany had done some unbelievable podcasts with him that did like really high views numers but Danny wasn't a Clips guy so Andy for some reason like wasn't viral yet I was

[07:48] the clips guy so like there was like kind of like we both then ended up kind of sending him all over the place after that but I remember looking into it cuz I'm like what you know I'm I'm a backward hat dude in my parents house right now how the [ __ ] can I figure this out but to me there's no excuse if you are like billion doll company exactly like is listen Tucker had six producers on his show you mean to tell me not one single one of those producers could do a little bit of vetting yeah wow it

[08:19] doesn't now that I've seen it from the other side though it doesn't surprise me a ton like it at the time it's like of course you just think these people have it figured out but it's it's a weird world because you guys do still come from a place where yeah secrecy is the norm right and some people are off record I I had one guy in here where he had some stuff off record and if other guys had him vouched for him publicly who were known people wouldn't have believed it what's always strange to me though maybe you would know about this is when there are people like that guy you talked about in the room who are who

[08:50] are saying you know I was CIA or something isn't there some sort of law where like the CIA or someone representing them comes out and denies them there had been a law it was the it was The Stolen Valor Act and it passed about I don't know 12 13 14 years ago and then the Supreme Court found it to be unconstitutional it's not illegal to lie about yourself right unless it for the purpose is to defraud somebody and in that case we already have fraud laws on the books and so if you go around

[09:21] saying you know I won the Purple Heart and the bronze star uh no you didn't well shame on you but it's not a crime anymore that's CRA so so they don't they don't have an incentive to come out and stop it they're just like all right whatever no no not at all when I was at Deo and touch I went to to the Consulting from to tou after I left the CIA and so every time a CIA person applied to the company and there there were 40,000 employees at that company back then they would ask me to take this person out to dinner and just try to feel them out and vet them so I remember

[09:51] this one guy coming young guy very very aggressive uh in a good way and um I took him to dinner in DC and I said so um so were you um di or do director of intelligence or director of operations and he goes I did all that [ __ ] like that all right Vinnie sit down it's like wow buddy wrong answer wrong answer and I don't think I even stayed for the whole dinner I think

[10:22] I told him I had to go and I called the partner on the way home and said this this isn't going to work you should have had one of your Mobsters coming and say I think with theong guy to say you believe this guy we'll get to that later for people don't understand that's that's cool though that they had you like obviously you were very high up in the CIA we we'll get to that with your story but so deoe as a part of your job they were also having you vet the guys coming in can you check this guy out cuz he's telling us some really amazing Stories and we just don't know what to make of

[10:52] it now here's here's another question there this is interesting because it gets into some of the I guess like civil liberties and constitutional type things that you now are an extreme scholar on as a part of your own story but I gotta be careful how I say this because I don't want to I don't want to give up stuff I'm not supposed to give up but I have one guy who was called in to consult on an issue for I what I would call a major company this this is

[11:23] probably I don't know five six years ago maybe they're on their way right now sounds like but anyway so he's called by someone high up at this company that says listen we just had an unprecedented situation a pretty high-placed employee in our company just walked into the CEO's office he's been here a long time and revealed to the CEO that he is in the CIA and he has been put here to you know monitor some of the international

[11:55] deals that are being made you know because they were a multinational company and you know he now was given permission to reveal himself or whatever so that he could get more access to something like that which part of the part of the hold on a minute though here this is going to get nuts part of the whole like CIA thing is you can't spy on your own citizens it's part of the charter oh that's exactly right can't do that so I see you shaking your head there that's exactly what my guy did when he heard this he's like and and there's a process for this kind of yeah he was like no way like this is [ __ ]

[12:26] whatever long story short I don't know if the guy [ __ ] up like the process of how he supposed to do it but it was it was legit it's 100% legit and my guy was actually called in to consult on trying to figure out how you know they were going to make this work because they determined that the and I don't know if this is true but their best determination was that the the intentions here were actually not bad but again they were looking at this like you know we're not [ __ ] constitutional Scholars was this an

[12:56] American company or foreign company in America American company okay I I I have a couple observations if I if I may um there number one there's a process for doing this there are a lot of CIA people in American companies you don't say yeah imagine um but the process for it is you have to get the approval of the SE of the CEO and the director of security uh for a couple of reasons first of all are the obvious legalities right you can't spy on American citizens and the idea isn't to spy so much is as it is as you

[13:27] said to monitor the foreign activities of the company so that you can gather intelligence from foreign Nationals and pass it back to CIA okay number one so it has to be worked out with the CEO and the director of security and usually the board of directors has approved this this cooperation plan in advance number one number two if somebody's going to be planted in a company unbeknownst to the leadership of the company it almost

[13:57] always is FBI agent not a CIA officer yes and that that I've heard would scare the crap out of me because you love the FBI I know we're so close all of us all the stories I could tell you about the FBI we'll get there um but the point of the FBI is to put you in prison that's how they get promoted that's right right they're not there to be you know have coffee and uh and join in with the uh with the the company's activities and help them make money um

[14:30] and number three and I'm my my brain it's starting to leak out of my brain I can't remember what I was going to say oh yeah number three is payroll becomes very very complicated because you you're forbidden by law from collecting two paychecks so if you're collecting a paycheck from the CIA let's say you're a gs14 officer you're collecting a paycheck you're also collecting a paycheck from the company you can't keep the money from the company to the point where there is a dedicated office at the department of the treasury that will do your taxes for you right and whatever

[15:01] money you make from the company you have to give back that's the whole point of corporate cover so that sounds like a heap of trouble heap of trouble and one of the questions while you were saying that that I never asked that might be interesting here because we we have a real foggy area in the modern day intelligence Community now with contractors oh my God we have guys who post 9911 forget it right so perhaps this is someone who might have been contracted who was a longtime maybe C

[15:34] CIA guy who now isn't CIA but totally still CIA that's entirely possible yeah I'll tell you a lot of the a lot of the small and medium-sized defense contractors in the immediate post 911 era um had exactly that issue where literally every single one of their employees was a recently retired CIA officer there was a there there's a a company you know what just to be on the safe side I'm not going to say the name but there was a company that was set up

[16:04] as an LLC in the late 1990s just for these newly retired senior intelligence service Executives to go and use as a tax pass through and hang out and then they joined the golf course and they joined the country club and then lo and behold they started making money oh yeah and they end yeah they ended up hiring 250 people and they ended up selling to one of the big you know Fortune 100 they they made tens of millions of dollars

[16:34] each and everybody lived happily ever after we sure we sure they went Ever After and didn't stay in the in the present moment with that little sale right there H by now they're all Old-Timers okay I mean in my mind I'm still 30 I'm actually 60 so they've got to be you know 80 you're 60 I'm 60 God damn John getting up there bro I know right you look great though like appr you look like you lost a lot of weight too lost 115 lbs holy [ __ ] you know it's easy to get slow and fat and old and you

[17:05] know you're comfortable just watching reruns on DVR and and you got to you got to nip that in the bud how'd you how'd you lose all that weight you just start like working out every day or um I I had a really bad case of diabetes and so um it's a kind of a long story there there's an experimental surgery that a that a Scottish uh physician stumbled on by accident he had a he had a patient with stomach cancer who also happened to be a diabetic with uncontrolled diabetes

[17:35] and for whatever reason my diabetes was uncontrolled I was on literally the maximum dosage of every diabetes medication on the market plus four shots of insulin a day and the doctor told me you're going to die he told me I had five years you're going to die if you don't turn this around wow and I said what do I do I don't know what to do and he said well there's this experimental surgery and because it's experimental insurance won't pay for it it's going to be out of pocket but anyway the surgeon in in Scotland found that if you physically remove a person's stomach for

[18:07] reasons that they don't understand the pancreas starts to produce insulin again so you don't have a stomach no sir they took it out you have no stomach no where does your food go they created a a pouch that holds 4 ounces of food out of my intestine it's up here at the top so I can only eat what you can hold in the palm of your hand I I eat about 1,200 calories a day I'm full all the time like this you gave me a a cup of coffee and black coffee and a

[18:38] water and that's going to that's going to do me until 8 or 9 o' tonight and then I'll say but it has no calories I know but it's going to fill me and then I'm going to say at 9:00 you know I haven't eaten since 7 this morning I should probably eat something but then as a result the weight melted off me you know I used to wear this Dexcom right here you could see it in the podcast the diabetes just went away like magic oh it's gone it's gone gone I don't take any medicine my I didn't know that was a thing yeah my high blood pressure went

[19:09] away high cholesterol high trigly triglycerides and even my sleep apnea went away no kidding yeah completely turned my life around who it's pretty good yeah but even like can you eat like the feda cheese as a Greek and everything without getting full I mean I took my son to one of my sons to Greece in uh in um January where are your people from in GRE uh rhs all four of my grandparents came from rhs it's glorious there my best friend all my life is the Sal Nikki oh it's beautiful beautiful city yeah s so I I'm a dual citizen too

[19:42] as are my kids and uh I'm going back next week as a matter of fact wow yeah I love it there but anyway I couldn't I couldn't really eat the food the the the the changes that you have to make are obvious but even now what am i 2 years and 2 months posts surgery I can't eat beef I can't eat lamb it's too heavy too dense but do you feel good I feel fantastic that's great yeah that's I'll trade that all day I can run again I haven't been able to run in years yeah

[20:13] you were running when you were catching abuzu beta I could barely run to the bathroom a couple of years ago all right well let let's let's get into your actual story cuz I know I know you've told it on on Danny Jones's podcast you've been on dton fiser podcast as well another good guy great guy he's like right down the street here too but you know you you were you were not just any guy at the CIA you by the end were were a very high level guy you obviously quickly yeah well you made

[20:44] your way to the directorate of operations National Clandestine services and and did a lot before that and and actually what's interesting to me is you know I I always ask different guys like how they got recruited because the CIA seems to have a lot of different modes to do this and somehow they're able to find people who match a very specific psychological footprint was was being a spy or working in you know some sort of clandestine type job something you had thought about

[21:15] as a kid that you wanted to do or did you kind of fall into this yes I thought about it a lot as a kid as a little kid um when I was when I was 11 years old I remember my mom and dad took my brother and sister and I to see our grandparents they lived in a neighboring town and when we got there my grandfather said did you see the news they killed the CIA guy in Athens that was Richard Welch the CIA station Chief and I remember my grandfather and my dad talking about it like all afternoon that day and I was

[21:46] fascinated by it I went to college and and I I was close friends with a woman named um Dimitra santis her we went out one night and and when we came home or we went back to her house she had a message from her mom saying that her father's brother had been assassinated in Athens he was the US defense atache so I used to think about this kind of thing a lot like why are they killing all these intelligence people in Athens and um you know when I

[22:16] was a little kid I I wanted walkie-talkies and invisible ink pens and stuff my parents always used to used to humor me with these little spy gadgets and stuff uh little little uh microphones and you know stuff that you get at the toy store for 10 bucks and it's worthless but it's fun and then I sort of put it out of my head when I was in college I got a Bachelor's degree in Middle Eastern studies and then I was finishing a master's degree in legislative affairs with a focus on foreign policy analysis

[22:47] thinking that I would either go into um the Foreign Service at state department or maybe do something on Capitol Hill or lobbying or whatever and then um do you want the whole story please yeah why you're here yeah that's true I I had a professor in in college who was one of the very few true Geniuses that I've that I've ever encountered I think what made him a genius to you he

[23:19] had he had a bachelor's degree from Harvard a master's degree from Yale a PhD in Psychology from Yale a PhD in political science from Yale and an MD from Yale medical school right the author the author of a dozen books all on psychology and Psychiatry and he was teaching a class called the psychology of leadership so this was this was my last

[23:49] semester of graduate school maybe like 8788 something like that yeah this would have been right this would have been the spring of 88 that's right and and uh his name was Dr Gerald post uh you know I had seen him on TV a bunch of times every time there'd be a you know on the History Channel they they would do these documentaries on Hitler's final days or the end of the Stalin era stuff like that and he would always give interviews on these documentaries so he was teaching this

[24:20] class the psychology of leadership absolutely fascinating class it was why do leaders take the actions that they do and then what historical impact these actions have and you might just like think right past it but one of the examples that he used and I'll never forget it was the Yalta Conference that helped to to define the postor War II era why was that Conference held in Yalta of all places in the Soviet Union can you venture a guess you'll never guess I've never

[24:52] thought about that it was because a spy told Stalin that Roosevelt was sick and so he in so Stalin insisted that the talks be held in Yalta and Roosevelt had to fly all the way around the war so he went from the United States to Casablanca to Cairo to Teran to Yalta all the way around Europe by the time he got to Yola he was exhausted yeah he was also near death yes and Stalin insisted

[25:24] that they begin negotiating as soon as the plane landed and just so he could get to sleep Roosevelt gave up Poland whoa so there's a lot behind these decisions yeah there's a lot behind these decisions fascinating class yeah so he assigned us a paper we had to Shadow our bosses for a week and then write a psychological profile of our bosses I was working uh at the United Food and Commercial Workers Union it at the time it was the

[25:55] biggest Union within the AFL CIO and I worked for a guy who um who I feared a little bit he was this mean big old school Union organizer he had participated in a strike at a previous job he was with the um the women's uh what was it the the fabric the whatever the women's you know clothing Union was whatever um and some

[26:28] scabs had beaten him up and they broke his back he wore this awful like brace that went from his neck to his waist just to hold his spine together he was just a mean tough oldtime guy yeah and on Wednesday of that week we got into an argument and I called him a racist which he was he was a racist oh he got so mad he bowled up his fists and he took a stand and I remember thinking to myself damn it I went too far this time and I I

[27:01] put up my hands to block the punch I knew the punch was coming and he goes my penis is bigger than yours and I said what he did and he goes my penis is bigger than yours you're like present it I said you know what I said you're nuts you're nuts and I quit and I walked out and I went back to my apartment I typed my paper and I said he was a sociopath with Psychopathic and possibly violent tendencies and then I had footnotes from

[27:33] all these you know psych journals and whatever so I hand in the paper a week later I get the paper back I get an A and he wrote two things in the in the margin Dr post did he wrote um I didn't say in the paper ID quit because it was irrelevant to the paper but he said I've never done this before but I urge you to quit this job I agree that he is a sociopath with Psychopathic Tendencies wow and then he wrote underneath please see me after class uhoh yeah so I went

[28:03] to see him I said Dr post you wanted to see me he says come down to my office it was in the same building so I walk down to his office he closes the door and he says look I'm not really a professor here I'm a CIA officer undercover as a professor here and I'm looking for people who might fit into the cia's culture and I think you would fit would you like to join the CIA now what's going through your head you're in your professor

[28:33] yes yes that's what was going through my head this is interesting though that he would pick this paper was specifically what you wrote about to choose you because when I've had guys in in the past like Boo Deonte like Jim Lawler I'm I'm actually G to site Jim Lawler on this one because he's the guy that talks about this a lot he he really digs into the psychological profiles that the CIA looks for in oh it's deep oh yeah it's deep but one of the things he says is

[29:04] that he's like the CIA for especially for covert spies yes they want people who are dangerously straddling you know what I'm going to say dangerously straddling the line of being a sociopath but they're not quite a sociopath we are we all straddle that line I'm glad you you raised that and I'm going to I'm want to respond to that and then go back to give you a little bit more detail after I left the CIA um um well I I met a guy at the CIA who became a dear friend and talk about a

[29:34] consant overachiever he he's a CIA psychiatrist so he has an MD and a PhD in Psychology he happens to be a brigadier general in the Army as well Army Reserve and uh we go to the same church we have we we are in the same men's group you know so we we hang out guy Greek guy so he told me that the CIA actively seeks to hire people who have sociopathic tendencies not sociopaths because sociopaths have

[30:06] no conscience y they're impossible to control and they blow right through the polygraph because they don't ever feel guilt right so if you have a sociopathic tendency as part of your personality you do feel guilt but you're still happy to break the law if you're instructed to do so and I'll give you an example when Dr post got me into the process and I'll go back to the beginning of that process in a in a moment um I was in a I

[30:36] was in a group of five other applicants and the the interviewer there said let's do an exercise he says let's say you're serving overseas as a CIA operations officer and you get a cable from headquarters saying that they need next Year's economic figures for Indonesia so you begin to develop the Indonesian economic secretary okay at

[31:08] the embassy in the country where you're serving and this guy becomes your best friend which is the goal yeah so you're developing him you're taking him to dinner you're hanging out your wives become friends you go on vacation together you're doing this for whatever six months 12 months and you determine he's not recruitable what do you do headquarters needs the information so what do you do and one guy raises his hand he says you double down you just

[31:39] keep doing it you go out with him more you spend more money okay what else would you do this girl raises her hand and she says you know maybe you get the wife involved maybe your wife can improve her relationship with his wife and then you get the wife involved I'm looking around like is nobody paying any attention here I raised my hand I said you break into the embassy and you steal it keep them he says that's exactly what you do that's exactly what you do well that's a sociopathic

[32:11] tendency like what are we wasting all this time for you break into why do we have all these people who can defeat alarms and pick locks what are they just going to sit at home doing nothing you fly him out you break into the embassy you steal it and everybody's happy now here's the question though you're thinking about about that even that hypothetical cuz you're not there it's hypothetical but you are thinking about it in the context of being a CIA spy paid by the government literally to have cart blanch in some ways to do things like this for National Security implications and I say that because if

[32:43] you're like of course I go in there and steal it and they're like sociopathic tendencies my one thing about this is if they were someone else not working for the CIA and they were painting this situation and it was just a regular you know American job and it had nothing to do with National Security would you ever say something like that or even think something like that is okay uh you know I'm embarrassed to say that yes I would think that way and I'll tell you when I went to Dee God you were perfect oh man all the torture stuff you were great when I went to deoe we had this mandatory ethics class oh no and I'm

[33:15] like okay that's fine I mean I've been I'm I'm a I'm a you know well how old was I when I went to deoe I was 40 something yeah whatever yeah 40 I was 40 so they're like uh let's say you've got this uh you know this Japanese company and you're on the the brink of signing a a big deal it's a $50 million deal but price price Waterhouse Coopers uh they made a bid it undercuts Us by 4 million

[33:45] and one of the Japanese says hey why don't we meet up at a strip club what do you say and I said let me go to the bank and get $200 in singles [Laughter] and they're like what no no that's exactly what you don't say but this this is also after your career though would you have said that before your career no probably not see there you go see then point being like you played in the Super Bowl your whole career and now even though you're getting paid a lot it's

[34:16] still waiting to big huge company you know this is like a high school football game compared to that but you're still in your mind thinking like it's a Super Bowl so [ __ ] it let's go to the strip club see some titties and get some information absolutely absolutely not not and then my boss comes up to me he's like the ethics people called me just I said oh relax not taking anybody to a strip club geez but anyway getting back to the application process um well what happens when when he tells you that and you're like yes like down in that

[34:46] classroom is there like a secret tunnel that goes under DC and they take you to Langley right there almost oh figuratively so we're I'm sitting in his office and do you know what a Rolodex is yeah of course okay well I thought maybe you're too young to know it a listen I still use that phrase my Rolodex my Rolodex so he had a Rolodex on his desk and he he's flipping through the Rolodex and I remember seeing Oliver North home and it had a number and I was like who who is this guy he's kind I mean Oliver North had

[35:18] just yeah been convicted right from Iran Contra so he calls this guy Bob and he says Bob it's Jerry I've got a good one for you and he says okay bye-bye and he hangs up and he says I need for you to go to this address in Rosland which is right across the river in Arlington Virginia and uh go to this address and ask for Bob I said okay so I it's only one one Metro station took me a minute

[35:50] so I get over there totally nondescript building that doesn't exist anymore it's been torn down and I go up to the sixth floor and there's a security guard up there and I said I'm here to see Bob and he points at a door so I go I go in and I Buzz the buzzer and they buzz me in but it's into a little vestibule that's like 6x6 and the second door has this big spin lock like like in a bank but a woman opens the door she just pokes her

[36:21] hat out and she says are you here for Bob and I said yes so she lets me in so I'm sitting there for minute and this enormous guy he had to be 66 67 350 comes bounding out of the office are you John yes I'm Bob how the hell are you doing hey great nice to meet you come on in here have a seat so I sit down he says Jerry says you're good and if Jerry says you're good then you're good with me so here's what I want you to do he says I want you to go to George Washington University Medical School

[36:52] auditorium Saturday morning at 8 we're going to give you some tests and then you'll hear from me I said okay and that was it I left so I go to GW Medical School auditorium uh Saturday morning at 88 there are like 300 people in there and they gave us three tests the first one was a map of the world and it was completely blank so you had to write the names of all the countries but I said in my first book I was a map nut from when I was a little kid yeah me too so it was just fun you know I just fill it all out

[37:24] there are a couple in West Africa that always hang me up like guinea basau and you know Guinea conre and stuff like that but I I pretty much did the whole the whole world and then um there was a current events test uh it was AB C or D and it was so simple as to be kind of embarrassing right and then the third one was thousands of questions but you just had to write agree or disagree there's a box agree

[37:55] disagree and it was stuff like I would like to conduct a symphony orchestra you know who who cares but there was one it said I like boxing and I honest to God don't really have an opinion on boxing but even to this day no I I I yeah to this day I would say yes I like boxing okay MMA has made it more exciting think you're right about that yeah yeah but at the time I was just nuts for Mike Tyson cuz he he had just

[38:25] come out he was young he was a East nobody could last more than a round or two it was amazing so I think I wrote agree but then like 600 questions later it says I like boxing and I was like oo what did I say the first time you oh and you can't go back uhuh it's like I think I said yes and then another thousand questions later it says I like boxing so I'm I don't know so I was the first one to finish out of these 300

[38:55] people and the Rector said you sure you're done I said yeah yeah I'm done I finished everything my wife I called my wife to come get me get in the car she goes how did it go I said I have no idea you were married I had just gotten married I was 23 is this your first wife mhm right okay so there's another one later got it yeah so um I went home I had no idea how I did like a week or two later Bob calls me he goes you blew the doors off those tests it was amazing I said oh great he

[39:27] goes here's what I want you to do I want you go to this address in Vienna Virginia and just knock on the door I said that's it yeah I said okay so I drive to vieta Virginia this little squat two-story building you'd never know it was there nobody would pay any attention to it that's how they like it yep park my car knock on the door this lady answers are you John yes come on in so I go in

[39:57] there's a table set up and there are three people on one side of the table and there's a chair for me on the other so on the one side it was a psychiatrist a psychologist and an anthropologist which was odd guys if you're still watching this video and you haven't yet hit that subscribe button please take two seconds and go hit it right now thank you you'd expect maybe a sociologist but no this was an anthropologist so I sit there and one of them says uh describe your relationship with your

[40:28] mother and I said oh uh yeah I my mom and I are close she was very nurturing and always encouraged me and you know drove me around to little league and whatever was your father the disciplinarian in the family and I said no I said my my dad's a big strong guy but he's very um he's very uh gentle and I think he he probably would be afraid you know to hurt us if if he were to be

[40:59] the disciplinarian it's just not in his nature he's a sweet guy have you ever betrayed a friendship and I remember how I responded I said ooh I don't think so I said let me let me think about it for a second and they go no no that's what we were looking for I said oh okay and then one of them says go into the next room we're going to take some hair some blood and some piss and then you can go home I said okay so I gave him some hair some

[41:29] blood and some piss I got home again my wife's like how'd it go I said I have no idea could you tell did they say anything about not saying anything to your wife about who you were talking to though they told me I could tell my wife but not anybody outside of that tell them tell her that it was CIA yeah I couldn't tell anybody just in case let you tell her yeah they let me tell her they're they they give you some wiggle room with your spouse but they also strongly encourage agency romances yes

[42:00] strongly which you know oh everything every thing from an lgbtq Club to quilting to gospel singing yeah gospel s oh listen I was in the CIA softball league for like eight years wow yeah where literally every team is just CIA people you you dress up in like the black site uniforms crazy yeah pretty much crazy so you're allowed to tell your wife about this though and that's like after

[42:32] you done the questioning after you done the questioning right there they're like go home again yeah just go home so Bob calls me he's like oh my God it was great you blew the doors off I said okay I said honestly Bob and I still don't know who Bob was I don't even know if his name really was Bob probably not I think I think because he was Jerry post's contact he was the head of HR like the actual head of HR the head of HR yeah for the CIA but I don't know nobody ever told me so he

[43:02] said two more steps he said your next step is you're going to go to CIA headquarters and there are four offices that are interested in interviewing you and then if one or more decide they want to make an offer then you go through the the in the uh background investigation and the polygraph and I said okay so it was near East operations they decided they were not interested in me uh interestingly enough there was um

[43:35] what's called the uh I forget what it is it's like some six-month program where you just get kind of a smattering of everything and then they decide where where to put you later they they weren't interested but then I got an I got an offer from the analytic branch that covers North Korea which I knew literally nothing about and a branch that Dr post created yeah that does only

[44:08] psychology for the Persian Gulf and that was a natural fit for me and then when I started on my first day they said we're going to put you on Iraq wait did you go to the farm or anything before no no they just I went to the farm later okay yeah I was there 4 months before I went to the farm okay yeah so so they hire you like you've just gone through these four different days where Bob was telling you to go places and they did the investigation they did the polygraph which freaked me out because I had never

[44:38] had a polygraph exam before right and and I what kind of questions did they ask you uh B well it's the the preh hire and after your first three years are are called um full lifestyle polygraph everything else is called a Counter Intelligence polygraph they only care about you know unauthorized contact with a foreign intelligence officer this was all about you know drinking smoking drugs you know weird sex crimes that kind of thing did

[45:09] you have anything you know that you thought would be a res a potential resume breaker in your past nothing no so you didn't have a problem with the polygraphs no blew right through it there was one question and I was I was freaked out when she told me the polygrapher told me uh you know you're reacting to one question and it's tripping you up and we're going to have to we're going to have to uh ask it again and I was like oh my God please don't let it be the gay question because how am I going to explain this to my friends ah I blew right through the whole process except now they think I'm

[45:40] gay right so I said well I said well what's the question and she says it's with your credit card usage and I said my credit card usage I said I only have but two credit cards like how I'm poor yeah right I was only eight making 18 Grand a year truth so uh they asked me again about my credit cards and I answered truthfully and then I passed and and they're not supposed to tell you if you pass so I said how did I do and she goes we're not allowed to say one way or the other and

[46:11] she Winks at me and I was like oh my God I can't believe I made it she probably got fired for that I made it I still remember her she was very attractive very attractive young black woman she's about my age so um so Bob called and he said hey congrats expect a letter from us and I got the letter and it said congratulations you've been hired uh into the uh director of intelligence office of leadership analysis and for the Persian Gulf for the Persian Gulf they told me that day I'm going to be working Iraq and I said Iraq okay this

[46:42] is like 88 still yeah uh this is January 6th of 90 oh so this is right before Desert Storm shit's about to get popping out there well but nobody knew that and so I said Iraq okay and my boss says don't be disappointed these his exact words he said learn the tradecraft learn the writing style and then after a year you can transfer to something more interesting like Romania and I said oh okay so did you speak Arabic not yet so

[47:12] I start working uh Iraq and I became Saddam Hussein's intelligence Community biographer right whoa yeah and but who ever heard of Saddam Hussein in January 1990 so things started heating up and then I still remember the date on June 30th we published a paper in which we said we believed Saddam Hussein was going to uh attack Kuwait June 30th so

[47:44] this was four and a half weeks before the invasion of quid and um the night before The Invasion man I was excited like like I I was so energized that I'm going to I'm going to be able to make something of myself here and the senior analyst came over to me and he said I think you're not understanding the import of what's happening right now and I said yeah he said it's not unusual for the countries we cover to go to war it's

[48:15] very unusual for the countries we cover to go to war with us the next morning August the 2nd 1990 I'm in the shower I back then we had these radio showers they were like plastic waterproof showers you put in or radios that you put in the shower oh yeah I've seen Good Fellas right exactly exact Jimmy you son of a [ __ ] I just watched that yesterday on the plane yesterday I've watched it a hundred

[48:46] times Good Fellas greatest movie ever made it's pretty [ __ ] awesome anyway um they announced the invasion of Kuwait so I rush into the office office I got there about 7: and my boss says don't take your jacket off we're going to the White House I had never been to the White House before so we get in the car we go to the White House I'm nervous as all get out but I am the leading expert on Saddam Hussein period so you had

[49:16] spent how many months studying n months nine months now so some some Secret Service guy takes us into into the Oval Office and it's the president the vice president the National Security adviser the CIA director my boss and me the president sits down I'm on a couch right and I remember I remember looking around like trying to be as serious as I as I could be and I'm looking around thinking my

[49:46] buddies would not believe this in a million years if I told them if I called them and said you won't believe where I am right now so the president sits down and he goes well now what do we do and everybody turns and looks at me and it I I was 25 years old so it it takes me a minute but I said well here's what we should expect saddam's next steps to be so we start plotting out what the heck we're

[50:18] going to do and we got up and left and my boss says um you might want to pack for Saudi Arabia so I didn't cover just Iraq I also covered Kuwait but Kuwait was so small that we didn't really pay much attention to it but nobody in America knew as much about the quati royal family as I did and so the in nine months you got all this down if this is all you do for 10 hours a day and then four hours on

[50:50] Saturdays I mean would you mind me asking I I don't know what's classified here or what's not but like they obviously you're a young guy but they're like hey congrats you're on Saddam or whatever early on which then leads to all these other things but you know this is preg gooogle era pre whatever that you guys are also the CIA you have resources all the files are in on paper so where this enormous like floor to ceiling rotating uh file cabinets so is that what you were doing you were just going through files uhhuh the whole thing uhhuh were you calling

[51:21] people in the field like like CIA contacts we had these Proto computers called Delta datas um the screens were like this big and they were all green but we would get cables constantly from the state department the CIA the uh NSA the defense department and then thousands tens of thousands of pieces of press so it's called allsource Uh traffic all Source cable traffic could you use keywords to type in yeah okay

[51:53] but you had to be cleared for the keyword like I couldn't type in uh China I'm not cleared for China at that point that all changed later but my job was Iraq and Kuwait and if the cable had something to do with Iraq or Kuwait I was going to see it I couldn't see operational traffic that also changed post 911 but I was already in operations by then so it didn't matter to me how would you amalgamate all this was it literally like you see in the movies where you know you had a giant room and

[52:24] a board with a bunch of pictures and [ __ ] on it and that's what you would do mhm mhm you know I remember I remember that day walking to the cafeteria there was a uh there was like a mini we we had our Operation Center up on the seventh floor and that they've got TVs going from half the countries in the world and everybody's sitting at these tables and typing and calls are coming in from around the world whatever but there was a place also on the first floor by the cafeteria and I didn't know really what

[52:55] it was I think it was I think the office of security had it and it had a map of the world and there were lights uh like like pins but they were lights in all the countries and like the whole eight nine months that I was doing my job like maybe it would be flashing in you know Nepal cuz somebody massacred one one of the royal family members opened fire on the rest of the ro royal family killed every last one of them right in Nepal yeah so that's why there's no royal family anymore oh wow I

[53:26] didn't know that yeah so Nepal is blinking or you know the the uh The Shining path is doing something in Peru so Peru is blinking I remember going to lunch that day and every country in the Middle East is blinking it was like a like a a police car and I was like oh my God this is this is bad so uh I ended up flying out to uh well the royal family escaped from from the town of ahmedi which is the the Kuwait yeah Kuwait it's it's in southern Kuwait it's where the

[53:57] oil fields are they escaped across the border into Dahan and Froman yeah that's a country no no it's a it's a city in the Saudi Eastern Province okay I was going to say like that's a new one no no that's it's it's a city it's where ramco is okay yeah and so from Dahan they went to TF which is just outside of Mecca so I went to T and was kind of the the liaison with the royal family is this in August 1990 MH okay so in in those months

[54:28] though where you were studying Saddam Hussein and becoming his preeminent biographer leading up to the meeting with the president of the Oval Office what let me preface this by by saying this I don't want to make any mistake out here Saddam Hussein was obviously a very bad guy he he he killed his own people oh my God it was legendary I mean his sons might have even been worse than he was like I would agree with that no doubt about that and I'm sure you know way more than I you forgotten way more than I could ever know that said you know we look at a lot

[54:58] of this hindsight 2020 eventually we'll get to the later Iraq war but to preface that right now it's like you know that we kind of went in there saying there were these wmds that there weren't there and when you look at the aftermath of what was caused as a result of us doing that it is arguably at best and pretty much confirmed that at worst that it was actually better with Saddam in there there's no no question about it right so 2 million people died so because of this at the time this is way back

[55:31] M are you thinking to yourself holding two thoughts at the same time going really bad guy do we have to get involved with this though no and I'll tell you why that's a good question really bad guy we need to push him out of Kuwait which was the original plan right nobody ever used the term nation building right that was that was the one dirty word nobody could utter because it was none of our business to start building Nations we're not good at it we're not good at it we I mean post

[56:02] World War II we can't point to a single success story really um like really not a single one well kind of Germany and Japan post World War I post World War II yeah but oh you're counting that yeah I'm counting that because of the aftermath of World War II yeah that's really our only success story yes so um you know and let me add something too about about the the cause of the war it was clear in the early summer of

[56:33] 1990 actually let me ask you do you mind pulling up a map of the Ruma oil field Ru m a i l a Ruma oil field so this is an oil field that's like 95% under Iraq and 5% under Kuwait on it so which one do you want John um yeah that that first one looks like it'll work right there yeah okay there you go now you see you see the the green it sort of ends at the qua border yes it

[57:04] goes across the quati border like a kilometer and the quades were slant drilling they were drilling diagonally under Iraqi territory so they could steal the oil and the Iraqis caught them right not good so the Iraqis said you're stealing the oil we're going to send troops to the border and the quers like oh my God they're starting to freak out so the Pentagon asked the US defense attache in Baghdad do us a favor drive

[57:37] down to the border and tell us if there's anything we should be worried about he drives down the border and he says the entire Iraqi military is on its way South how big was their military oh it was it was about 200,000 people it was big that'll do it was the fourth fourth largest military in the Middle East or third it was big it was big like Iran and Egypt were bigger but it was big so he's like we need to take this

[58:08] deadly seriously so the state department under Secretary of State James Baker sent a cable to the US ambassador to Iraq April glasby I loved April she was career Diplomat just an awesome person she lived with her mom in Baghdad her mom was old and needed you know elder care so she she was living in Baghdad with her daughter they were getting ready to go on vacation 4

[58:38] days before The Invasion and so Baker sent a cable saying before you go on vacation go see Saddam Hussein and she had only seen Saddam once it was when she presented her credentials so it was s didn't meet with anybody really that's so strange like thinking of it now like Saddam meeting with like a Us official person uhhuh crazy right yeah so April goes to see Saddam and she told Saddam exactly what she was instructed to tell Saddam right now I remember the talking points cable

[59:10] that went out and the point we wanted to convey was that the United States does not take a position on Arab Arab border disputes right oh wow not what I was expecting a critical mistake okay the conventional wisdom was the Iraqis were so angry about the romea oil field that they were going to take the quat part of the field so they were going to go into Kuwait we thought maybe five maybe 10 kilometers cuz the rest is just

[59:41] Wasteland and just secure the field nobody thought they're going to take the entire country and then it's going to fall in four hours right the whole country fell in four hours Saddam would never I know come on now well we figured cuz the the the Iran War Iran Iraq war had just finished like 18 months earlier like he really wants to start another War but Iran's such a formidable Big C like there's a lot there whereas Kuwait you know little that was the key and in

[1:00:14] his mind the American ambassador had just said go ahead and take Kuwait we're not going to interfere right I mean thinking about it though like just looking at this as a third party Outsider observing I mean sending 200,000 people to the Border seems excessive taking the entire country definitely seems excessive but seeing as they did drill into his country some sort of action actually does absolutely right absolutely right and if he had just

[1:00:44] taken the romea oil field y'all would have said okay that would be Iraqi today and Saddam Hussein or one of his kids would be the president of Iraq yeah that'd be a very different world you bet it would be okay so he invades the whole country though now what happens oh my God I'll add one kind of funny thing there's a a monument a memorial maybe is a better way to say it in Kuwait City for one of the royal family members he was he was like the fifth or

[1:01:15] sixth brother of the Amir at the time and His Name Escapes Me Now Fahad Sheik Fahad assabah uh there there are two versions of the story there's the official version and then there's the true version so it's August it's so hot that when you step outside your hair is in danger of combusting right that's how hot it is so 80% of quaes are out of the country they're vacationing the poor ones are skiing in Lebanon everybody

[1:01:47] else is in the states or in France or the UK this royal family member state in Kuwait the official thing is the Iraqis cross the border he realizes what's happening he grabs a gun he goes outside he starts firing and the Iraqis fire back and he's martyred and so his Lincoln Town Car they goldplated his entire Lincoln Town Car there's a giant golden fist coming out of the roof of the car and the

[1:02:18] bullet holes are still in the car from where the Iraqi shot him the truth is he was drunk he was passed out on the couch at his girlfriend's house she woke him up and said I think the Iraqis are invading he goes out there drunk like who shot who in the what now and they shot him listen John you cannot let the truth get in the way of a good story that's you should know this that's right so this freaking goldplated Lincoln like a 1988 Lincoln

[1:02:51] it's enormous it's in a traffic Island right on the corne with this giant golden fist coming out of it and that's that symbolizes the Royal Family's courageous uh they all ran for their lives was the truth but this is their courageous stand against the Iraqis but we went in and it was like the shortest War ever it was like what three days you yeah no uh yeah very very short there's something very important that I learned in that conflict um that I've fallen back on all these years

[1:03:22] um it is to determine whether or not a war is actually going to happen always watch the deployment of ships it's always about the ships uh the conventional wisdom at the time was that the Persian Gulf was too shallow to accommodate an aircraft carrier so we had never sent an aircraft carrier into the Gulf it's also we believed too narrow at The Straits of hormo to get in each carrier has 12 ships that go with

[1:03:52] it it's called a carrier battle group okay um by the time the bullet started flying we had six carrier battle groups in the Gulf we had more in the Arabian Sea the Red Sea and the Mediterranean like we we brought every every aircraft carrier we had in the world uh to just bombard the Iraqis and then one ended up doing it really I mean this was this was Visionary leadership by by General Norman schwarzkoff he was the commander of sencom

[1:04:23] right um it was a very simple and very Elementary like firste plea flanking move it was as simple as that so the Iraqis had utterly fortified the Kuwaiti Saudi border so we sent a couple tanks and they fought in what became known as the Battle of KFI it was actually just a diversion we didn't really intend to uh to fight at hafi what we did is we sent most

[1:04:54] everybody else around into Saudi Arabia up and around into Iraq and we struck the Iraqis from the north they never expected it and so as they're trying to flee Kuwait on on the the Iraq Kuwait Highway it became known as the highway of death um we're hitting them from the south from KFI and we're hitting them from the north from Iraq isn't that how they got skipio africanas back in the day yeah might have been yeah I hope I got that one right correctly in the

[1:05:25] comments and we uh we killed everybody everybody 200,000 soldiers in their military though wiped out wiped them out the only ones that Saddam kept behind were the Republican guard which was the the special forces and what was called the special Republican guard they were members of saddam's own family who were the final ring of security around him yeah now what now here's the trillion dollar question given that they had taken such

[1:05:55] an act of aggression at the time tried to take an entire Sovereign Nation and then given that we had to send the full force of our military in we moop the floor with them in like three days now that we're already there and already engaged and we've already knock these people out why did HW not finish the job and leave it for Cheney and and dub he was very clear at the time that if he were to order American forces to continue North we would lose the

[1:06:26] Egyptians and the syrians and that would make the Coalition fall apart it was it was a diplomatic miracle that we got the syrians to agree to go in with us and the Egyptians that was a pretty big deal too although we we were traditionally close to the Egyptians um and the jordanians asked us you know please don't do this half of our population is Palestinian refugees we can't afford Iraqi refugees to come too but that decision while it was the right decision was cou with a bad

[1:06:56] decision and that was to do nothing to protect Iraq Shia Muslims in the South we had we ended up having these no fly zones and the South and the north to protect the Shia and the Kurds but then uh the the big scandal at the time was it never occurred to us to to also ban um helicopters we had banned fix-wing aircraft uh from flying over the no fly zones we didn't say anything about helicopters and so Extinction oh yeah yeah rotary uh rotary wing and

[1:07:30] fixed wing and so said I'm sent every helicopter he had to just wipe people out wow and we were like o we wish there was something we could do about that and so it just dragged on year after year after year whoa mhm okay but we we pull out though and you're you're still like a young ass analyst here and you were just tossed into the middle of this you said you were sent to Saudi Arabia this went down yeah in September and then I went back to headquarters then I went back to Saudi

[1:08:02] Arabia in February of 91 and I went into quate city with the Marines on Liberation day okay so I'm just trying to understand this from the outside based on what your job full job description is here because you're coming in as an analyst so when you're brought in to do that it's not meaning like oh go out in the field under an assumed name or something no no no I was John kiraku the CIA guy right and so I was doing things like I one of the most important things that I did when I was

[1:08:33] in Tif as I wrote a cable back to headquarters and I said I think the Amir is having a nervous breakdown which is going to be a serious problem for us when it comes time to coordinate military action with the kuwaitis the Amir what made you think that yeah because all he wanted to do was tend to his rose garden and anytime you try to talk to him he would just mumbl nonsense Shell Shocked one of the things I learned with these psychiatrists that were in the office was there is no such thing as a as a nervous breakdown that's

[1:09:04] just a colloquialism that we've come up with to describe any number of of mental episodes and so um we decided not to deal with the Amir anymore we're going to deal directly with the Crown Prince and the Crown Prince had his [ __ ] together I want to make sure I'm understanding this the Amir you're talking about Kuwait yes the Crown Prince are you talking about Saudi of Kuwait yeah they were all in Exile in Saudi Arabia in the city of TF so the crown prin supposed to be lower than the

[1:09:34] Amir yeah the Amir is the king Okay in Arabic the word Amir is is Prince but for all intents and purposes it's King in fact the the Amir of Bahrain changed his title to King okay recently so is that like did that cause a problem though cuz you were going around the king no we invited him to Washington and he came and balled his eyes out and got a state visit and stayed at the White House and we told him we loved him and we flew Kuwaiti flags all up and down

[1:10:05] Pennsylvania Avenue and he was okay HW is back there like what a [ __ ] HW I have to say I had I'm a lifelong Lefty but I had mad respect for HW really why he really knew what he was doing what makes you say that there's a famous story from the the day after the invasion Margaret Thatcher who was the Prime Minister of the UK called him and

[1:10:35] said quote now's not now is not the time to go wobbly George and that's what sort of bucked him up but one of the reasons why I have such respect for him is that he surrounded himself with very smart people they made mistakes like everybody makes but for the most part they really did use diplomacy when w became president we had this ongoing joke at the agency that we had never seen an Administration work so hard to not talk

[1:11:08] to people as the George W Bush Administration it's ironic though because a lot of the people that were put in his administration were the same people yeah Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld being two of the the worst shape shifters oh yeah that I've ever seen in Washington you know Cheney was Cheney was a tough guy when he was the Secretary of Defense um and I remember once he complained to The Washington Post because they described him in an article as a moderate Republican and he wanted a retraction he said I'm not a moderate

[1:11:40] I'm a conservative and that should have been a warning for the rest of us yeah he's one of those guys like I mean the first word I think of with him is evil I can't see I can't see anything that he did and I won't even and I I've gone through a lot of his other history too but I won't even go back there I will say everything he did as vice president and on yes you know you talk you talked evil yeah I mentioned all these Special Forces guys that came through here and fought in those Wars it's the first does even the ones of them that are like conservative

[1:12:12] first words out of their mouth when they talk about it Dick Cheney he was perfectly happy to send you for your to your death uh for no discernable policy reason did you ever spend any time with him oneon-one or in a small setting uh in a small setting uh yeah several times what was that like it was educational and I'll give you an example uh the day before we invaded Iraq in 2003 it was our

[1:12:45] final our final meeting oh you were in there with oh yeah I was the note taker for George Tennant so we were in the I I at the time I was the executive assistant to the cia's deputy director for operations and so my job was to sit quietly against the wall and take notes so we had the final principal's committee meeting the night before The Invasion and the meeting is chaired by Dick Cheney so it's chainy and his notetaker Connie rice and her notetaker Colin Powell and his

[1:13:16] notetaker um who else was there the head of NSA uh the commander of centcom General Tommy Franks M um the chairman and Vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and us and so George is sitting at the head of the table like I am right now right and there's a microphone right here and I'm sitting directly behind him we're the only two people in the room and so like straight out of The Godfather it this was this is one of the most intense

[1:13:47] things that I've ever experienced in life not just at my CIA career so George is sitting there and remember the CIA is a policy Support Agency it's not a policy agency so whatever they're planning here we have no say so in it we provide the intelligence to allow them to make a decision in a perfect world that's the way it's suppos to right yeah so they had made up their mind they're going to they're going to invade Iraq they're going to kill Saddam Hussein in fact you know what I'm going to interrupt myself here and and say six

[1:14:17] months earlier when I got this job I just come back from Pakistan I was the chief of of counterterrorism Ops in Pakistan so I go my first day and I said so what are we doing I said to the deputy director and he says to me I actually can't tell you what we're doing you say it just like that I did yeah sounds right so uh he goes you need to go up the sixth floor sign your secrecy agreements and then come back down here and then I'll tell you what we're doing I said okay so I go

[1:14:49] upstairs sixth floor which is near East operations or at least it was way back then and uh because I'm talking 22 years ago so um I knew the guy that was in there he was the deputy director uh of of Ops and I said uh hey I said I'm here to his name was John I said John I'm here to sign my secrecy agreements he had them all laid out there were six of them he had them laid out no no no no this is a junior guy more more Junior than Brennan Brennan was the uh Deputy executive director at the time so I sign

[1:15:22] six secrecy agreements and I go so what's up we're going to Iraq he says well early next year we're going to invade Iraq we're going to overthrow Saddam Hussein and we're going to open the world's biggest Air Force Base in southern Iraq and then we're going to move all of our air assets out of Saudi Arabia so we can deprive Osama Bin Laden of the ability to say that we are polluting the land of the two holy

[1:15:53] mosques this feels like a Night Live skit and I looked at him like like my mouth was yeah and I it's so like [ __ ] with me I all I could blurt out was but we haven't caught ban yet I thought that that was the mission the mission was to capture kill Osama Bin Laden that's what we were all working on he starts laughing and he goes he goes dude the decision's already been made yeah the battle lines are already drawn oh my God he said the proar groups are ovp office of Vice

[1:16:26] President OSD Office of the Secretary of Defense and National Security adviser he said the anti-war groups are State CIA and Joint Chiefs and he said and we've been outvoted and this is interesting too because George Tennant gets a lot of [ __ ] for the for the quote slam dunk slam DK now now I read in the eye of the storm that was the name of his book right I read that years ago you know I always sorry but I always get very suspicious of the CIA guys and whatever

[1:17:00] however George Tennant is one of the guys over the years I've studied who ironically was in charge he was in charge from 97 to 04 which is when all the [ __ ] happen so on paper if you just looked at you'd be like well he must have been [ __ ] terrible I actually like George Tennant and I and I think George Tennant and I know that's just because you're Greek but that's that's 90% of it yes but I I don't think George likes me very much but I like him I think George tenant is actually a real guy he doesn't strike me as a spooky

[1:17:30] dude he's a real emotional dud he never in the CIA before being before being the the deputy director which which which also like is another perfect Point coming from the outside because he kind of has that he's not ingrained in it right but he took so much [ __ ] for this stuff and continues to but I feel like I believe you when you say that camp M I'm not saying I believe you for all of the CIA I guarantee there were some other dudes there who were about this oh totally

[1:18:01] totally you're right but institutionally yeah the CIA was so laser focused on Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda they didn't want to be distracted by a war of choice in Iraq another thing I learned is that in almost every one of these scenarios that came up during the course of my career The Joint Chiefs of Staff were the most anti-war of any of the uh the major policy uh entities that's I like that MH those I

[1:18:34] mean that's literally been their life yeah because their position was wait a minute wait a minute the state department hasn't even tried to diffuse this let the state department work work this first and then we'll see later on if we need to go to war because they know the cost too more than anyone they understand you're exactly right you're exactly right so I'm sitting in this uh in this briefing Cheney's chairing it and everybody else is just kind of sitting there and uh Cheney says to General Franks excuse me Cheney says to General

[1:19:07] franksen Franks why don't you start off with the order of battle I've said before I hate order of battle briefings I hate them they're so boring to me and I I'm not a military analyst so it's like we have elements of the first division are moving North Northwest and we have the fifth Cavalry or they're going here and then we've got the the Brigade of who cares first of all go [ __ ] hit him yeah seriously like do we really need to know these details just do what you do and tell us how it

[1:19:39] turns out so I'm writing all this stupid stuff down and then FR are you are you making faces while you're writing it I know right you definitely are I probably was so I'm writing it all down and George is just sitting there like a statue just sitting there like this not making any facial expressions or anything and again it's not his his position to talk here the policy decision's been made so our role is over pretty much so General Franks as he's wrapping up his briefing

[1:20:10] he says if all goes if all goes well we can be in teron by August and George Goes Like This he turns off the microphone and he turns to me and he says did he say ter or did he say Baghdad and I go he said teron oh my God and he says have these people lost their minds yeah and then he turns the mic back on and just sits there so the briefing ends

[1:20:41] I go back to the office the deputy director says how'd the briefing go and I said did you know we were going to invade Iran and he goes oh are they still talking about that oh my God he goes we're not can invade Iran these guys don't know anything about the Middle East and we didn't because we got bogged down as soon as you there was this one idiot from the uh National Security Council I don't want to say his name but I didn't like this guy from the very beginning and it was because he was

[1:21:11] demeaning like he he would call he would call Iraqi which really bothered me I found it to be racist and um and he had mocking mocking terms for the Kurds it just bothered me and so he said as Frank's ended his briefing he said as soon as we cross that border tomorrow they're going to throw flowers at us and I said to the deputy director afterwards I told I told him what this guy had said

[1:21:44] and I said these guys really don't understand that we are going to be an invading and occupying Force right like I don't if the Canadians crossed our border militarily I wouldn't be throwing flowers at them right so imagine if the Americans go Halfway Around the World to invade an Arab country yeah they're not going to be throwing flowers at us yeah but these idiots actually believed it i t i I've talked about this a bunch on the podcast

[1:22:14] but there's a story my friend Ryan Tate had told in episode 2017 and I could never remember if it was him cuz he was a Recon Marine doing these door knocks or if it was someone else and he just confirmed for me it was actually it was a story he had heard but you know when we were in Iraq obviously and [ __ ] was going south all the different units had to do door to doors from a safety precaution which we're not good at and even besides that though like we had created an environment where we had to do that and it's like the guys have to

[1:22:45] follow orders they have to go in there guns get on the [ __ ] floor whatever and the way the story went is that this they go into a house and they're getting everyone on the floor whatever head down head down and a seven-year-old kid comes up looking at him with the guns with a thousand yard stair and puts his hands up and then lays down on the floor head down and they're like no no you know trying to speak something to get him to be like no no you don't have to get on the floor whatever and they like pull him up and the kid looks at him with a

[1:23:15] thousand yard stare and just like almost like a ghost like floats into the next room where where they send him and you know like dead to the world because this was his reality and the point of the story was that kid when he's a terrorist in 15 years and blowing up innocence or whatever I'm not saying empathize with that act that's bad you know someone made that decision but if you can't see where the [ __ ] he was born your your eyes aren't open there are consequences that's right to our decisions you know

[1:23:45] I'll tell you one of the things that I learned in Pakistan was that of the the low Lev Al-Qaeda Fighters sorry of the low-level Al-Qaeda Fighters that that I participated in capturing and I mean like kids that were 18 to say 25 they they almost all told exactly the same story none of them could read and write I don't know what's the matter

[1:24:17] with me none of them you want take a drink yeah yeah go for it this this break is brought to you by John te so they couldn't read and write they had no uh skills no job training many of them had very poor relationships with their fathers which I never really understood but it's not my baileywick and they wanted to get married but what man would want his daughter to marry a guy who can't read can't write can't work has no skills and

[1:24:49] no future I wouldn't want my daughter to marry a guy like that sure so the local Imam uh would go up to these guys and say you don't want to you don't want to live in this terrible Little Village you should go make Jihad against the Americans and we'll give you $200 a month and if you're martyred we'll give your parents a $500 martyrdom bonus and so they'd go to Pakistan and be smuggled into Afghanistan they had no beef against the United States until we started droning

[1:25:20] their Villages yeah and that's when everything changed you know Iraq is different because we were busting down the doors being their daughters and killing their you know parents and all that stuff so in the in the places where we weren't at War Tunisia think Algeria Yemen whatever um they had no beef against us and then we started sending drones to blow up the hospital or the mosque or their house or whatever and we killed

[1:25:52] their cousin we killed their dad and we killed the grandfather and and now all they want to do is kill Americans yeah it's a never ending cycle man I mean you and you look at like October 7th which was you know it was terrible what happened there and the guys the guys who did that are are deplorable I I don't I don't want to be misheard here totally agree I I see where a 20-year-old floating over that border in a [ __ ] parachute who's lived in a 20 M Zone where he's not allowed to leave his entire life with no hope trapped in

[1:26:23] their life sardines which was you know there were two sides to that story too like I see Israel's position on that however it's like I see where that anger comes from I'm not I'm not in any I don't Advocate death and destruction but I understand the anger and and I also to that point look at Israel and I'm like what are they supposed to do though like imagine it was 2006 and instead of the Middle East Iraq was where Mexico is would you ever leave that border open no never right so what it it was like to me

[1:26:56] when they gave when they gave that away if you will in like 056 it it it was creating a cycle you know which then if they didn't give it away they'd be oh you're the langr like it's a [ __ ] or a fart type situation you're [ __ ] there was a reason why when Egypt and Israel uh signed the Camp David peace treaty the Egyptians said oh yeah yeah we want Sinai back but you can keep Gaza we want that back yeah yeah the Egyptians knew what they were doing

[1:27:27] yeah and it's and and a guy I really like a lot is is the king of Jordan oh yeah Abdullah do you know him I do know him you're another one that knows him I have people who have been everybody CIA knows Abdullah oh yeah yeah he's got a nice he's got a couple nice residences in the DCR I've I've SE I've seen one of them dude's dude's balling but what I what I like about him is when you look at his geopolitical predic in the last over two decades yeah he's

[1:27:57] right on oh my God is that guy right on so right when October 7th broke out this is maybe 10 15 days later I told this story in episode 224 of bamonte but I'll say it again he was asked oh if you care so much about the Palestinians why won't you take in the refugees and he's like I'm glad you asked I the country's palestin ref he's like he's like first of all that but secondly these ones right here in Gaza are now a part of an ongoing geopolitical war and if I take them in I

[1:28:30] am going to give the worst people of Israel's government exactly what they want they are now going to be a part of my country and they are effectively going to be what you would call ethnically cleansed out of Gaza and the population will be gone and therefore Israel will have room to come in and take it whereas if I don't take them in maybe there's some sort of solution we can come to here while those people still stay in the land he's 100% right I think he nailed it you know there was a piece published today let me see if I can find it real quickly uh yeah here it

[1:29:02] is um the Israeli American businessman pitching a $200 million plan to deploy mercenaries to Gaza us authorizes CIA mercenaries to run biometric camp in Gaza Strip what this is is a proposal for an Israeli settlement in Northern Gaza right because remember in the peace treaty the the deal was you had to destroy all the settlements in Gaza now they're talking about reinstituting the uh settlements beginning in the north

[1:29:33] but putting these impenetrable walls around them well this is a this is an act of ethnic cleansing you can't do that it's a violation of international law but this is exactly what the Israeli government's policy is yeah I I'm I'm a big believer that when people say things out loud listen to them so I I I don't want to come across as defending Netanyahu here I I think Netanyahu needs to retire and get the hell out of there I think the guy's a disaster the one

[1:30:05] thing I I have empathized with him in this scenario with a little bit is that the guy the guy's very conservative compared to his cabinet he's like a lefty he's a screaming Lefty compared to and some of that's his fault Mar benav and smotrich and all these other guys the words out of my mouth so smotrich says the the financial Minister says the Finance Minister who also happens to have authority over West Bank security somehow oh that's interesting yeah he's

[1:30:35] so he's he's a he's a multi-tool asset if you will that's right but he said and I'm paraphrasing this right now so people go pull up the exact quote so you can read it for yourself but he essentially said that something to do with like the I don't know if it was the Bible but like ancient text says Israel should have parts of Lebanon parts of Jordan parts of Egypt and parts I'm missing one country in there but he also said parts of Saudi Arabia which made me laugh out loud and I'm like I'm like so

[1:31:06] when you have a top level Guy saying something like this yeah so I'm not crazy for thinking that no no these guys are dangerous you know uh SM was it SM or no it wasn't it was benir benir he's the worst he's the worst he had a picture of uh yeah gold yeah in his hanging in his living room he's a kinist he's a kinist and he's also a convicted felon having been convicted of anti-muslim hate crimes and

[1:31:36] that's the guy that you put in charge yeah see that's crazy to me because it makes it like my my my friend ER Eric ziger who's been in here he was also on Danny's podcast before me great great episode but you know he's this you would love him he's actually kind of like you like he comes across as like happy go-lucky aloof but he knows every [ __ ] thing that's going on and his whole thing was after college he's probably in the CIA but after college like he traveled around to all these countries that are Without Borders right

[1:32:07] so that aren't official like the Kurds all the way down to like [ __ ] liberland and he eventually becomes you can't make the [ __ ] up the Ambassador for liberland into Somali land which is another unrecognized country I've been to Somali land okay but that one's like big Liber land's like 15 people wow he got that job on the back of a jet ski with the president of liberland who like wanted to pay him a Bitcoin or something long story but anyway so he has this amazing quote CU he's like a walking Vice documentary like the old Vice when it was good I'd like to meet him he's

[1:32:39] like he's like people are not their governments MH and I'm like H and it's so simple but when you think about it it's 100% true because it's like so many people in Israel right now don't support like what SMR or doing in fact in fact Netanyahu who who heads the the biggest party within that Coalition has an approval rating of 19% that's right so he does not represent the Israeli people yeah and benav and smotrich have

[1:33:09] minuscule followings it'd be like saying Dick Cheney represented us exactly it's like we all hate I mean anyone normal hates Dick Cheney we know he a bad guy you know maybe people didn't know as much as they should have before he went in office all right well then he showed who he was right and now he's not there anymore but it makes these situations so complicated because you know we're naturally tribal around the world and so people want to make it all about this versus that and there's so much more Nuance among the people if not in the government oh yeah you can say that

[1:33:40] again yeah so anyway we we got off topic with that because we we were back in your story when when you got there and were in the meeting with Cheney and you know they say Tyron and all that but you know you had you spent I want to say it was like eight years where you were doing a lot of time working the Iraq angle is that fair to say eight years all right so now in 2003 it had been seven years or something since you did that but obviously you're still extremely knowledgeable about the whole thing what did you think of the whole

[1:34:10] wmd angle there oh you know of all the CIA people working on some aspect of Iraq I only met one she was a relatively well I shouldn't say junior she was a mid-level analyst she was the only one who really believ that the Iraqis had wmd yeah you know this was this was passed down to the CIA by the White House the White House said the position

[1:34:41] is there's wmd and that's why we're going to do this based on what you guys are the ones who were supposed to decide that or figure that out yeah I remember a knockdown drag out fight between the CIA wmd analysts and the department of energy wmd analysts and the department of energy they were like there's wmd we got to stop them we and the CIA is like we're not seeing it we're not seeing any wmd there's kind of an interesting story there and this is this is my own

[1:35:13] observation um sanam's two sons-in-law Hussein camel al-majid who was the minister of Industry and Military industrialization and Saddam camel al- maid who was the head of the special security organization uh I'm sorry to the head of the special Republican guard they were married to saddam's two daughters um ragged and R what an unfortunate name I know

[1:35:44] right so um s sanam's eldest son UD who was an absolute psychopath yeah bloodthirsty cold blooded murderer y he would women and then throw them off the roofs of hotels um there they are that's that's UD so um again so I have to make a when I'm doing that by the way John I have to make a mark to alessie unfortunately like with

[1:36:15] YouTube's monetization policies there certain words that got to get like bleep so when it you're great you no no no no no you say whatever you want but it's stupid words like the r word that just came up so I got to like silence that on YouTube so when I'm doing this nothing's wrong but he's just making good think but yeah go ahead about UD so UD um his second son Kus was you know nuts and a killer but but a little bit more responsible we liked him than UD we we hated him less we hated him less but

[1:36:47] anyway Hussein camel and Saddam camel were afraid of UD and UD saw both of them as potential Challengers once Saddam had Departed the scene and it got to the point where you know I I can't say what the what the in there was an incident in which Hussein camel and Saddam camel became so frightened of UD they decided to defect to Jordan yeah it was bad when is this uh

[1:37:19] this was 1990 like January of 93 all right so way before yeah okay so they defected to Jordan and King Hussein invited a group of CIA people to go to Jordan to interview them um a bunch of us went one of the things that struck me immediately was they were wearing

[1:37:49] sidearms and I thought what what Bad Manners you're a guest of the king you're asking for refuge in a Royal Palace and you're carrying a sidearm like who do you think you are so we sat down at the table Saddam not Saddam campel Hussein campel says all right we need uh weapons we need tanks we need air cover we need secure Communications and my boss is like whoa whoa whoa whoa we're not here to help you overthrow

[1:38:20] Saddam Hussein we would never do that no we're here for you to tell us where the wmd is and he's like I'm not I'm not telling you where the wmd is you're going to help me overthrow Saddam Hussein so he didn't deny it no I'm confident they had wmd in 1993 Define just just to be clear out there Define wmd um definitely chemical weapons because they had used chemical weapons against the Kurds and the and

[1:38:50] the Iranians um maybe biological weapons you know you can create BW in in your kitchen it's impossible to say oh that's a lab for BW because you can do it anywhere with a sink and a you know in an incubator yeah I I just want to make sure we Define that because for what it's worth I I had Danny Hall in here who's a legendary Silver Star winner long time special forces guy and so we did two episodes EP episode 2117 like 8 minutes into that one he talks about how he he did witness in the invasion in '

[1:39:22] 03 he knows they did have biological weapons where people get hung up as the nuclear things they didn't have nuclear didn't exist right uh the biological weapons I would I would believe what he said yeah yeah CW was the big thing because that was most of the of the Arsenal the wmd Arsenal was chemical weapons yeah so but they weren't giving it to you no they weren't telling you and we weren't going to help them so we ended up sitting there staring at each other for an hour and then we just said we're flying back to Washington and so we did

[1:39:54] but what we did in the meantime was we leaked a story a false story to the Arab newspapers saying oh my god there was a secret CIA delegation in town and they met with Hussein camel and Saddam camel and they gave them everything the Iraqis they told the Americans everything oh you burned them and we think that Saddam saw the article and destroyed all the chemical weapons whoa so that was successful that's a good leak uhuh the only remnants of chemical weapons we were

[1:40:25] able to find after we invaded Iraq had been buried in the desert and had been there for a decade and what were they uh they were Rockets legitimate Delivery Systems where CW could be loaded okay I one of the one of the most shocking revelations at least to me it was shocking that I've ever had happen in my studio was episode 129 with Jim Lawler who we mentioned earlier yeah Jim's great so Jim was by the end of his career if he ever left CIA probably didn't but he was in there from 81 to 06

[1:40:56] officially and he's been a great and valuable employee since then but in ' 03 when we're going to do this he was if not their most senior anti- wmd spies around the world he was one of their most senior absolutely and maybe about an hour 40 or an hour 50 into that episode I asked him what his involvement was in the wmd investigation leading up to the invasion of Iraq and he said he had no involvement I looked at him I said and I said what I just told you which you know making sure

[1:41:27] I was right that he was literally if not the most senior or one of the most senior guys goes no that's right I said so one of our most senior or the most senior guy in that job description was not involved in the intelligence gathering for what was going to be the biggest invasion in decades for America he was like that's what I'm telling you that should tell you a lot about Dick Cheney and about the the decisionmaking process at the White House oh yeah because that is absolutely true what he said and Jim's a huge fan of George Tennant and very close with him and and

[1:41:57] a big defender of him and when I was putting those two together I'm like you know I will say you know I mentioned earlier George probably doesn't like me because of my post CIA you know career but I had deep respect for George tenant um George was a very difficult guy to get along with really yeah I I I kind of told tell a a funny story you know maybe it's funny in retrospect it wasn't funny when it was happening but you know when he became when he became the director

[1:42:30] that was a a glorious day for every Greek American in the CIA we had a little club we would meet once a month for lunch so that the senior people could help the junior people and you know gust abatus who was who was played by uh Philip Seymour Hoffman in Charlie Wilson's work gust was my mentor and uh you know we traveled together doing operations and all kinds of stuff so George becomes the the C director and it's like oh my God this is a great day for for Greek America and so um you know I'd bump into him at church

[1:43:02] every once in a while his parents uh was it his parents or his in-laws his in-laws they never missed a Sunday and um and then as I got more and more senior at the CIA I would be closer to him MH well when I was still on the analytics side he stopped me in the hall one day and he said hey where are your people from and I said they're from roads all four of my grandparents uh immigrated from RADS and he says Ah an

[1:43:33] Islander you think you're better than I am because his people came from epidos which is along the border with Albania MH mountains and I said no I I don't think I'm better than you and he said yeah you do all the Islanders they think they're better than the mainlanders and we're like we had a chuckle and he walked his way and I walked my way there was a Sunday that Saddam did something I don't remember what it was and I got a call you got to come in and brief the director I said okay I put on

[1:44:05] my best suit I go in go up to the director's office it's George and John mcglaughlin the deputy director the National Intelligence officer for the near East Ben Bon who was a great friend of mine and general I don't know what his first name was they called him soup because his he was General Campbell so Campbell soup it was anybody everybody just called him soup I called him General Campbell so um so I do the briefing very straightforward and George did something

[1:44:36] during the briefing that offended me but I didn't let on so I'm wearing my best suit McLaughlin's wearing mclin was the best dressed man at the CIA so he had this fabulous suit Ben Bon didn't have any kids so he had the money for you know a $200 tie in the best suit and general Campbell got his three shiny stars and he's in his uniform George is wearing a pair of jeans that are torn at the knee he's got a lumberjack shirt on cigar always yeah never lit always chewing on it always chewing on it it

[1:45:06] was disgusting and he's wearing these Timberland boots and he took the boots off and he took his socks off and he picked his toenails while I'm giving the briefing and later on Ben Bach said to me that was so [ __ ] disrespectful I can't believe he would do that I said he did that on purpose because it was me but anyway I finished the briefing and I said Mr director if you have any questions I'm happy to take them and he says to to the

[1:45:39] general he thinks he's better than I am his people are from an island oh my God mine are from the mountains and all the Islanders think they're better than the mainlanders which is actually true we do but I I mean they do I don't I don't care where he's from besides we're both born in the United States so what do I care yeah so we I said sir I I don't I don't think I'm better than you I don't know why you say this and afterwards Ben Bon and I get in the in the elevator there's a dedicated you

[1:46:10] know the director's elevator that goes all the way down and he's like what the [ __ ] was all that about and I said Ben he does this to me all the time I don't really understand it and um he's like you know the the thing with the picking his toenails that that was so disrespectful and I said he did that on purpose because it was me and we have some beef I have no idea what the origin of it is but I think he genuinely doesn't like me and it's only because my people come from an

[1:46:41] island so so we move on from that and then I was in a meeting once oh my God it was like George John McLaughlin all of the six Deputy directors Steve Hadley was the National Security advisor I think Colin Powell was there and it's like a fantasy football draft to people and they're all in the director's conference rooms this is a big deal right so we're we're doing our briefings one at a time and everybody

[1:47:12] they have the you know the Iraq military guy and the Iraq political guy and the Iraq oil guy and then I'm there cuz I'm doing Ops and he's like uh you believe this guy he thinks he's better than I am again and I was like are you [ __ ] kidding me so I just sat there and took it and afterwards the deputy director says to me what's the beef with you to I have no

[1:47:43] [ __ ] idea I don't know I don't understand why he does this unless he really is see in his book in his book he did say that he had that uh what What's it called like fraud syndrome or whatever it is where uh oh what's the term imposter Sy imposter syndrome he has that impostor syndrome he grew up above a grocery store yeah right and all of a sudden the guy's the the longest serving CIA director in

[1:48:13] American history yeah and he this was probably a self-esteem thing on his part yeah I think so him not knowing that my mom and dad were're Elementary School teachers right and I probably have the same impostor syndrome that he does cuz who am I I'm nobody and and he just decides he's going to come after me now there were other Greek Americans that he thought come after them no he promoted there was one that he just promoted all the way into the senior service and I remember saying you know Andy's great but sis2 like seriously what's that all

[1:48:46] about did was it you didn't he meet your parents at one point yeah at the Greek festival at St George Church in Bethesda Maryland now when was this uh he had just been named deputy director okay so he met them and he still okay tell the story please I I was standing in line with my brother at the Greek festival Greeks have this this little dessert or treat called L mothers it's just fried dough and they pour they pour honey and cinnamon on it I'm in the Lu's line I didn't notice that he was standing right in front of me and I said to my brother you know what the best luu

[1:49:17] Mothers I ever had in my life were on the island of hios my my first honeymoon and uh he turns around and he says the best lukumades I ever had were at the island of hios and I said oh I said Mr tenant I'm I'm John kako I'm one of your analysts and we met and I said oh this is my mom and dad this is George Tennant and then I took them to family day we have a picture yeah Family Day N uh 2000 he's director now two yeah he's

[1:49:50] director mhm and my mom is like oh my God there's George tenant I want to meet George tenant and I said I said no no the [ __ ] you don't no no no don't do that and she's like no I want to meet him he's a mountainer and his wife was there and she had just published this cookbook that CIA women had published and and she's selling the cookbook there's a CIA women's cookbook yeah I need to see that [ __ ] you know I will say he did one solid for me um when I was station in

[1:50:21] Athens I recruited a guy who was a Bonafide terrorist right but we had this Clinton era prohibition on recruiting people who had committed murder in a terrorist Act was this a Palestinian or a 179 guy a Palestinian okay and so the the Europe division they're like sorry you can't you can't formalize they formalize the relationship

[1:50:53] well this guy's willing to give us you know 17n information on 17n U revolutionary organization 17 November which is a leftist organization in Greece yeah yeah right so they they just won't won't do it so I flew home for the CIA Christmas party and every year at the Christmas party the director stands in the lobby of the old building you know where the famous seal is on the floor and the wall

[1:51:24] of Honor with the Stars and all that stuff it's very it's a very uh you know emotion provoking right set so I went up and I said uh I said Merry Christmas Mr director and he said how are things in Athens I said actually that's what I came to talk to you about that Merry Christmas was [ __ ] it was I don't give a [ __ ] what is Christmas is like happy Hanukah too so told him I said the division won't let

[1:51:54] me recruit a guy and this this guy's the real deal and I mean 24 hours later I had permission to recruit him wow he did going back though if I remember correctly like he actually did meet your parents or something and didn't he like give him something or like say yeah he gave my mom a uh a piggy bank with the CIA seal on it and he said it was basically like a Greek stick together kind of uhhuh but still after that he still like this guy thinks

[1:52:24] he's better dumping on me about being from roads he's one so psychologically speaking hearing all this it sounds you know you'd never think something's textbook talking about a guy who's like a spy but it sounds pretty textbook where it's like that's how he gets out his insecurity but he secretly likes you I hope so because I mean he did that for you that thing I'm in I'm asking him for a favor I emailed him yesterday and I'm asking him for a favor so we'll see actually I'm going to see if he's responded like a little little pardon type favor maybe yeah little something little

[1:52:57] little something there's not a payment to Giuliani involved with this one [ __ ] juliani that's another thing we can talk about what what did he do to you let's take that tangent [ __ ] Giuliani [ __ ] guy talk about this guy's an arch criminal and and I think you're probably right about I'm gonna make a prediction Rudy Giuliani dies in prison that's my prediction I don't know that you'll be wrong about that so you know I have been actively seeking a pardon from before I even left for prison I was

[1:53:27] convicted in 2012 of violating the intelligence identities protection act of 1981 it's a incredibly obscure yeah uh law I'm one of only two people ever been that's ever been convicted of it and the other person was actually a spy for the government of Ghana right so the guy that wrote The Laugh those imagine imagine shots fir she was she was screwing the uh she was screwing a a a Ganan uh intelligence officer oh and

[1:54:00] she gave him the names of all the CIA uh spies in Ghana oh yeah nice of her yeah she got she got far less time than I did she got eight months I got 23 and I never did anything like that right the guy that wrote the law that I was convicted of violating Morton Halper former assistant Secretary of State assistant Secretary of Defense and senior director of the National Security Council um Mort wrote a letter to President Obama saying that this is not why he wrote the law and that I should

[1:54:30] never have been charged in the first place so I've asked several important people and we'll come back to that story later by the way I want to let people out there now I just don't want you to get off this several important people to uh you know put in a word or sign a letter I've had some success this year uh that's not goinging process but anyway at the uh during the Trump Years A friend of mine said a republican friend of mine said oh you

[1:55:01] should talk to Rudy Giuliani Rudy's got the president's ear if anybody can get you a pardon it's Rudy do you have a path to Rudy and I said I might um the former New York what was he the police commissioner Bernie Carri yeah I think that was what his position was when I first got out of prison he emailed me and he said hey he um I think you and I should go to college campuses and do a like a speaking tour together I said hey that's a great idea nothing ever came of it but it was nice of him

[1:55:32] to reach out so I I emailed him I said Bernie I know that you're still in touch with uh with Giuliani and I'd like to apply for a pardon uh from Trump can you put me in touch with him so he says yeah I'll put you in touch with his guy so he puts me in touch with Rudy's guy his guy yeah and I I email him the guy calls me he says actually we're going to be in Washington next week why don't we meet at the Trump Hotel uh on Tuesday and I said okay I get off at 2 how about if we

[1:56:05] meet at 2:30 and he said actually he says Rudy is not very good by 2 o'clock and he makes this motion yeah and I said I can't believe I'm surprised by that yeah I was like oh okay he said it's going to have to be earlier let's call it 11: and I was like oh so I took the day off right so my attorney and I my attorney is also one of my best friends in the world he used to be the deputy attorney general under Reagan what's his

[1:56:36] name Bruce Fine shout out Bruce shout out to Bruce Harvard Law Berkeley Deputy attorney general general counsil of Federal Communications Commission the guy's done everything he's an awesome guy so Bruce and I go go to the Trump Hotel and and this is 2018 20 yeah 2018 and I had hired Bru Bruce introduced me to a to a republican lobbyist who had run the 2016 Trump

[1:57:08] campaign in Florida so I hired her and I go to I go to see Rudy and Rudy and and his guy and then some other hanger on that I I don't I don't even know who it was and we're sitting there you know thank thanks for seeing me nice to meet you so we're sitting there and he Rudy's like uh oh the weather's great today in DC he like yeah yeah it's really nice and how about those Mets it's like yeah great I'm a pirates fan but the

[1:57:38] Mets are really good this year and I'm thinking what the [ __ ] is he doing so I said Mr Mayor oh M you hit him with Mr Mayor you have to right I said Mr Mayor there's this issue of a pardon and he says he goes like this anybody know where the pisser is and he stands up and he walks away and I said to the guy what just happened and he says you never talk about a pardon to Rudy you talk about me you talk to me and I talk to Rudy oh my

[1:58:10] God and I'm like all right all right and the guy says Rudy's gonna want $2 million isn't this illegal absolutely this is a felony absolutely yes so I go $2 million and I laughed I go look first of all I don't have $2 million I will never have $2 million secondly why in the world would I spend $2 million to recoup a $700,000 pension John kiraku Answer ever so I

[1:58:42] said I'm sorry for wasting your time and Bruce and I got up and we walked out what did Bruce say to this I mean that's as we're walking out Bruce just said criminals Criminal well that night I was invited to a book launch at the uh at the Republican National Committee buddy of mine had written a book the Republicans love him so I went and there was another whistleblower there uh Robert mlan who's an awesome guy Bob is a TSA whistleblower he's TSA whistleblower and he's a serious serious whistleblower

[1:59:13] someone wasn't wearing their shoes right no he this guy has sued TSA a million times and he's won a million times what's the story there like what's what what did he blow the whistle on they were lying to us about Air Marshals being on the planes there were no Air Marshals on the planes and then you know those super fortified doors so you can't get into the cockpit they were fake there was nothing to those doors you don't know why we're reacting like this God wait wait wait a minute

[1:59:44] wait a minute please do EXP band on that he actually designed a truly impenetrable door got a patent on it and TSA fired him and then when the judge ordered them to reinstate him they put him in a basement office with no windows and nothing to do he played video games all day so he sued him again and again and again and he keeps

[2:00:15] winning what years is this oh this is it's ongoing he still has Suits pening oh my God yeah Robert mlan he's an awesome guy you should talk to him all right we don't cut things around here we do it honestly you have no idea why this is happening right now so I run into Bob hold on I got to cut you off John this has nothing to do with you but um do you believe this think we got to write up an issue of yeah no I I I listen I we had a podcast number 167 no

[2:00:47] 168 with Ashton Forbes where there was there were a lot of different arguments in there and ended up creating a whole internet controversy and everything and one of his claims about 42 minutes into that podcast was that quote he could get through he said I've sat in a lot of planes before I've seen that cockpit door I could get through that no problem because he's an investigator for the MH370 disappearance oh sure and so we had evidence that showed that these doors were [ __ ] plutonium and you

[2:01:20] can't get through them and you you are now telling me that even if they said that was the case that's not necessarily the truth so and not all the planes have the good doors all right unless you pop in here I'll say to your credit though the thing is he didn't cite what you're saying you know what I mean it's like he's saying this being that oh you can get through the door but it's like we know for fact from what we're hearing that the doors are impenetrable but if he cited your Source it'd be more compelling the fact that he didn't that's like oh wait he's just running on

[2:01:51] this either either way like I pride myself on calling it like it is including when we're wrong so if that is the case Ashton on that point I apologize that's going to get clipped a lot hey I always said I'm I'm G be honest with you so please continue this story that's now yeah yeah sorry about that so I'm at the RNC and and Bob walks up to me and he says hey how you doing I

[2:02:22] said hey I'm okay how are you he goes how's your day and I said oh dude I said listen to this listen to how my day was so I told him and he goes That's a felony and I said you bet it's a felony shlock you bet it's a felony he goes did you call the FBI and I said no I don't I don't talk to the FBI and I said B besides what are they going to do just kind of smile politely and and send me on my way so um our buddy you know did his book reading and and I left couple of days

[2:02:54] later I'm at Bruce's office not for any reason we just kind of hang out and uh and I get a call on my cell phone and it's from Mike Schmidt at the New York Times And he says a little birdie told me that Rudy Giuliani tried to extort $2 million from you for uh for a pardon and I said oh that damn Rob Mclean I said he was a real whistle blower right and he said he was so

[2:03:27] angry that night that he called the FBI and he reported it and the FBI said an not interested for a blatant felony uhuh so and and I'll I'll Circle back to that in a minute so Rob is like screw the FBI then I'm calling the New York Times that's the next best thing and and Mike Schmid's a two-time pullets Prize winner he's a serious guy he's a front page guy so I told him the story and um he said

[2:03:58] you willing to go on the record and I said Bruce am I willing to go on the record and he said hell yeah go on the record Giuliani needs to take responsibility for what he did so front page of the Sunday New York Times is you know Rudy Giuliani tried to extort $2 million for me so Giuliani they call him for a comment he says I have no idea who this guy is never met him before and I said Mike Mike Schmidt called me back and I said that's funny then he doesn't

[2:04:29] remember us posing for a picture together oh no so I sent it to him uhhuh and so in the article it says you know Giuliani denied ever meeting me never heard of me and then it says the New York Times has seen evidence that the meeting took place yeah and they didn't publish the picture I don't remember if they did or not they may have I don't remember so interesting though like they were that blatant about it that's just it was ridiculous look at that Giuliani so

[2:05:02] uh so months pass and it just kind of that story goes away but anyway this this lobbyist that I had hired said forget Giuliani I got you in with Sebastian Gorka oh and I was like I I don't like that dude at all I don't like him at all he wears his father's Nazi party lapel pin like he's not a he's not a Neo-Nazi he's an actual

[2:05:33] Nazi the the lapel thing is that blows my mind and you know why he didn't last at the National Security Council cuz he couldn't get an FBI because he couldn't get a little FBI clearance and I'm want to slap that accent right out of him too I hate that accent you think the accent's real no you don't think so he probably talks like this he probably does President Trump has never made a mistake in his life ever ever not once I am the only non-trump family member to

[2:06:05] be followed on Twitter by the president which is why I went to see him so my lobbyist says Sebastian gorka's got a book coming out there's a big party at the Trump Hotel and we're going to get him we're going to pigeon hole him for 5 minutes bring your checkbook she says and I go oh so that's how it's going to be huh oh to Sebastian too so I said you know what I'm a big boy I've been in Washington for more than 40 years I'll bring my checkbook so I said how much is he going to ask me for she says he's going to ask you for 1,500

[2:06:37] bucks and I said what do I get for my 1500 bucks and she said he's going to Tweet at the president pardon John kiraku it's a cheap date yeah I said all right I'll spend 1,500 bucks on that okay but I'm not buying his book Nazi so I go to the Trump and everybody's there like every Republican member of Congress and Don Jr and Tucker Carlson everybody's there so she takes

[2:07:07] me up to see Gorka and he says sir you're the man who wants me to tweet at the president and I said if you're so inclined and he says give me $5,000 and I said seriously he goes give me $5,000 and I said you know I've been around for a long time and I understand the nature of Washington but I'm not going to let you shake me down like I'm some two bit guy off the street I go

[2:07:39] [ __ ] you I turned around and walked out and she's like that was just his opening price he would have gone down to, 1500 and I said [ __ ] him I'm not doing this I said these guys are all criminals I'm not doing this so I walked time passes and have you heard of Noel duny I don't believe I have she was an aid to Rudy Giuliani and he tried to get in her pants and he yeah and she went to the New York Times

[2:08:13] with her story he tried to get me in bed he he sexually harassed me sexually abused me he did this he did that and and she she's she's very very bright but most importantly she's she's bright all right most importantly from my perspective is that Giuliani went back to New York after our meeting and he said uh I tried to get $2 million out of this guy for a pardon today and she kept

[2:08:45] that to herself until Giuliani put the moves on her and then she called The New York Times and said said everything John kiraku said was true that he had confessed to her that night oh my God he tried to shake me down for $2 million all the years this guy's been around and he's still dumb enough to get trapped by some by a nice red dress yep look at the title this yeah could you honestly could you imag Rudy juliani demanded oral sex while on the phone to Trump could you

[2:09:16] imagine just scroll down so we can see that picture hold on could like like from a female perspective could you you can't give me all the money in the world to touch that no sorry not a chance not a chance he's disgusting she alsoa can't get it up either that wouldn't surprise me at all it says there she also claimed he went on alcohol Dr rants yeah yeah if the guy's Wasted by two in the afternoon then yeah sure I could see his alcohol drenched rants

[2:09:46] unbelievable that like that's the case yeah his when he when his wife divorced him she like put in the papers like can't get it up like as part of the reason you know those she or somebody close to her leaked those papers to the New York Times and some of the things that were in them were revelatory for example he is a member of 16 country clubs can you imagine he spends $110,000 a month on cigars on cigars you

[2:10:17] didn't get him for free have a guy in Cuba see and he can't stop him self from defaming people and now he's lost everything yeah he really is just a caricature man I I told you I was going to circle back around to something yeah um this is not a appropo of anything that we've talked about so far but in 2020 I was offered a job the job of a lifetime being the Chief Operating Officer of a small investment company and so I accepted it it was split time between Washington and Athens and so I'm

[2:10:50] so excited I'm meeting with important people and I'm 6 weeks into it and I realize these guys are committing bank fraud and money laundering and so I downloaded 15,000 pages of documents onto a thumb drive and I resigned and I went to the FBI I said I have evidence of a massive fraud about $150 Million worth I've got all the documents and I need to talk to an ENT

[2:11:22] not interested so I said to Bruce what do I do here he said I'm going to call this friend a mutual friend of both of ours who used to be the deputy director of the about Bruce Fine the lawyer y so we call this friend and he says I'll get you into the Washington field office so he gets us an appointment with this FBI agent and you know my position on talking to the FBI right not a fan I'm not a fan but this was important enough to me that I needed to swallow my pride so I go into the FBI with Bruce this is

[2:11:53] before you're arrested right no no this is this is uh 2022 oh this is I I misheard that I thought you were saying 2012 I'm thinking this is right before they're going to arrest you no this 2022 recent got it so we go to see this guy oh Bruce is calling me right now there you go answer it yeah let's say hello shout out to Bruce we're on air hey Bruce how are you tell him we're on air he's got we're on the we're on the air right now and I am just talking about you and your name just now came out of my mouth when you

[2:12:24] called All Good Things Bruce All Good Things oh I think something's I'm just going to commentate here because I can hear it a little bit I think something good is happening oh you've made my day I think there's a Parton in the future day that Uncle Joe's going to wake up for Johnny he's going to wake up rise up and pardon oh Bruce man thank you thank you thank you that's exactly what I was hoping to hear fantastic I'll call you from uh

[2:12:55] from the road all right thanks Bruce bye-bye so Giuliani accepted your 2 million no listen my my I I have a reputation for being a litigious prick because I've realized that nobody's going to give you justice you have to seize your own Justice and so I sue everybody good for you and that was one of my suits it's going forward oh good so that wasn't the pardon no no no that's ongoing process okay so um so I go to the Washington

[2:13:25] field office with my thumb drive with 15,000 pages of documents and I said well you know I was hired to be the COO of this Investment Company and and the guy goes who whoa wait wait wait wait wait one second he goes I'm going to save you a little bit of time if this doesn't have the words terrorism Russia China or January attached to it we're not interested oh my God and that was the end of the meeting that's the FBI yeah so one one of my good friends

[2:13:57] is this guy Jim diorio who's been on the podcast between like co-hosting me and everything like 11 or 12 times now but Jim was he was a West pointer 86 went into the Special Forces for eight years his roommates at West Point were Mike Pompeo and Mark es wow and he was a he while in the forces he one of his things was he was an undercover guy which is like yeah a very big deal the best of the best like they're not going in there to capture you know going in there to take care business so he gets out he

[2:14:29] gets offers for he's the most connected guy I've ever seen at all agencies he gets offers from everyone he decides to go to the FBI 25 years in the FBI 20 25 years 11 on and off undercover some deep cover [ __ ] wow and then his he was a major Casemaker but his other specialty was he was an international interrogator and I know this is one thing you've actually spoken highly of with the the FBI they are really good at interrogations right so he he was one of the guys who would be called in around the world for some of these things like Ali sufan was right to do that and you

[2:15:02] know when he talks about leaving the FBI in 2018 and and like he is brutally honest about the FBI now I mean the first podcast we ever did like I couldn't even get him to do it for like 10 months he was like so nervous to do it and two hours in he's like yeah [ __ ] Jim Comey as a staff record label and as a mother [ __ ] like he was just going off good for him but he it's an outlaw organization well he Tau I I don't know that he goes that far but what he is saying is that you know there is it's

[2:15:32] not about I'm putting some words in his mouth right now but this is essentially what he's saying it's not about Justice anymore so much as it is about what is the headline for and that is exactly the example you just gave right there in practice which is really a shame to see because like it or not it's supposed to be like our top police unit in the country and and it feels like whatever if there was any kind of culture there that some of it was good and I know there's people out there who would say it was never good maybe that's right but you know that that doesn't that appears

[2:16:03] to be really lacking today I couldn't agree more and there's something to what you just said you look back at things like uh co-intel Pro right uh in the' 60s into the 70s can you tell people what that was coel Pro was Counter Intelligence program this was was a program um that the FBI came up with in the 60s to spy on uh anti-war activists peace activists and black liberation groups it with the black liberation groups especially um the Black Panthers

[2:16:35] uh they got violent and actually killed people in Cold Blood like Fred Hampton for example Fred Hampton was executed in Cold Blood by the FBI because jedar Hoover the FBI founder and director feared what he called uh the black Messiah right he was that's you know thus the the title of the movie recently um he was afraid that that there would be one black figure that could unite black people in America and would make

[2:17:06] them a formidable force that the FBI would lose control of yeah Martin Luther King was killed so he was no problem uh Malcolm X oh and there are still very important unanswered questions Malcolm X was killed so he wasn't a problem Fred Hampton was doing dangerous things like opening food banks and you know proposing job training programs and other subversive actions and so they just executed the

[2:17:37] guy you ever hear the Jay-Z lyric about that no I was born on the day Fred Hamp to die real bleeps just multi I was like that's some Poetic Justice right there right it is indeed every time I hear that I'm like that's a bar that's bar yeah I like it but anyway going going back to some stuff like you you've previewed a lot of stuff we we got to talk about today with with with your story so I'm trying to keep you know make sure we get some of this linear and and go back with it so if there's some things people have heard that you're like oh I want to hear more about that we we will get there

[2:18:07] especially like your case and the craziness that happened there but you know those eight years from like 88 is or ' 89 to 96 97 when you're working on the Persian goal specifically Iraq at some point the year analyst and you go to places as you said as John kiraku but at some point you get pulled into the directorate of operations which is the National Clandestine Service to now officially be a spy right before we get there you had said I think it was like four months into your career you went to the farm yeah okay so this is this is in

[2:18:39] that that nine months buildup to the war you go to the farm how long did you go to the farm for uh the original training was six weeks best of my recollection but then I went for like very specific operational training in 98 okay so let's stay with the farm for one second yeah in those six weeks did you get the reason I was bringing it up is did you get like real spy background there no none of it okay it was all

[2:19:10] about writing for the president six weeks of writing and writing and more writing to make sure one of the things that the CIA is actually pretty good at is you know you've got thousands of analysts and every every day you're writing the president's Daily Brief it's briefed him at 7:00 in the morning and no matter which one of the thousands of analysts writes a piece it has to sound like it's all coming from one person so there's a very specific CIA writing style in fact when I wrote my first book

[2:19:43] I gave it to my wife to read the first draft and she came back and she Saidi hate it is this wife too a wife too and I said I go really and she said honey I have listened to you tell these stories a thousand times and this reads like a dry government report she said you have to start back at the beginning and write the way you talk yes and I completely changed my writing style I can switch back and forth now but it's like writing like a lawyer versus wrri exactly same

[2:20:13] thing MH yeah so it was all about writing those six weeks then when I switched to operations in 90 seven what precipitated that I was Bor stiff it was clear that Saddam Hussein was not going anywhere under the Clinton Administration and every day I'll tell you exactly what it what it did there was one there was one precipitating event that made me say either switch to operations or resign I got assigned to write a

[2:20:44] National Intelligence estimate an ni now this is the most important document that the intelligence Community uh produces and it is it is the position of the entire intelligence Community all whatever it is 19 intelligence organizations in the American government so the National Intelligence officer said to me I want you to write this paper and I want it to be called Iraq colon Saddam Hussein's next 12 months

[2:21:15] and I said okay so I wrote it I said Saddam could threaten the CDs he could threaten the Shia he could threaten Kuwait big deal right I might as well have just taken the previous one and change the date on it so we he calls together representatives of all of the intelligence Services right we're talking about the defense Intelligence Agency State Department Bureau of intelligence and research um

[2:21:46] Commerce Department uh the Pentagon you know the the uniform services Army intelligence Navy Air Force everybody everybody gets a vote so we're all sitting around the table I'm in the middle with the with the nio the National Intelligence officer and you go literally sentence by sentence so these things can take weeks like okay the first sentence is the purpose of this paper is to examine Saddam Hussein's actions

[2:22:17] potential actions over the next 12 months Dia do you agree with that INR do you agree with that Army Navy Air Force Coast Guard everybody agree with that Coast Guard yeah seriously everybody's a Commerce Department like they know anything and then you go to the second sentence we finished this paper in four hours and the nio says to me that was the fastest coordination session I have ever gone through in my career and I said Ben I'm ashamed of this paper

[2:22:51] it says nothing new it's the same paper as it is every single year right nothing ever changes Ian and the thing is is if you're asked to write an ni you're getting promoted this is a very big deal he goes no you know this is a policy problem it's not an intelligence problem you did what you were expected to do and I said I'm going to either quit or change to operations cuz I am bored to

[2:23:23] tears and then it just so happened that this job opened up in the counterterrorism center and they were looking for an operations officer who and it at the end it says um either Greek or Arabic strongly desired oh and I was like hey it's like they're talking to you and as it turned out I was the only person in the entire CIA who spoke both Greek and

[2:23:53] Arabic so I applied and I went down to the counterterrorism center and I sought out the officer who had listed it he was a big shot you said this is like 976 very late 97 okay and I said I don't know the first thing about operations but I speak Greek and Arabic fluently and he's like are you kidding me and I said no and he said are you willing to be tested and I said 'oh of course I said actually I just was tested in

[2:24:23] Arabic a couple of weeks ago but I'll I'll take whatever test you want me to take and it turned out is Not only was his secretary Greek like Greek Greek naturalized American she was from roads so she comes out and she starts speaking to me in Greek tenant worst nightmare yeah and I'm answering her in Greek and she says he gets the thumbs up from me like that and he's like he said to me it is a lot easier and a lot cheaper to take a linguist and teach him operations than it is to take an

[2:24:55] operations officer and teach him how to speak Greek and Arabic yeah they're hard languages too hard languages both langues and they have nothing in common yeah and so I got the job and uh and they sent me to the farm for the real training I was going to say so you've never at this point like you've learned to think the way they think culturally at Langley you know I'm sure there's a lot of discretion and maybe some natural good healthy paranoia you have in life because of who you are but you've never had to be the dude walking in jeans and

[2:25:26] a flannel through the streets tracking another dude you know end up being good at it oh yeah I've I've heard but like but like was there a part of you right when they said all right you're in where you're like oh [ __ ] this is a whole new no I was so into it I was so into it disguises and dead drops and brush passes and it was just all the stuff you see in the movies you know you know in

[2:25:57] the James Bond movies there's always always always a scene where James runs into the CIA guy right yeah because that happens every time like you go to a dinner party and you hear hello John you're like [ __ ] [ __ ] hello Nigel stay away from the shake Nigel he's mine like every time yeah so anyway I go

[2:26:29] down there and um I did not have to take you just alluded to something that's important I did not have to take what is colloquially known as CIA 101 right I was already midcareer I know how the CIA works I know what the offices do I know what the different job you know descriptions are so I didn't need any of that stuff where they take you you spend six weeks in this office then you do six weeks in that office and six weeks in disguises and six weeks in lockpicking I didn't have to do any of that stuff so so we went straight into the you know

[2:27:01] shooting wait you didn't have to do like lockpicking and disguises and stuff like that no cuz they were introductory like if you're just hired out of high school or not high school out a grad school you know about that I don't need to know about it I all you need to know is that it exists okay and so if you need somebody to pick a lock you send a cable they're there the next day they pick your lock enough yeah so um my first day the the course is called crash in bang right because you crash cars and shoot stuff and

[2:27:33] so my first day we're sitting there it's like a dozen of us and the instructor says okay let's start he says I got to ask who here does not own a gun and I put my hand up God damn it John I know and I look around and I'm the only guy with H my hand up and he says you don't own a gun and I go truth be told I've never actually touched a real gun like who the [ __ ] let this guy in the guy goes oh

[2:28:05] [ __ ] he's like all right he goes everybody else go pick a gun you come with me you get the wooden one I did I got the wooden one but only for the first day the wooden one with the orange tip they gave you that in a whistle at least I made a bulge under my shirt oh my God so he's like look you know you got to learn the parts of the

[2:28:36] gun and I had to take the gun apart and put it back together again it was a Browning a Browning 9mm okay um which ended up hurting me because the Browning for whatever reason has a the the hammer has a big kick and it it me here so I was bleeding all over the gun did you report the cut sir this cut me I didn't say anything cuz I wanted didn't want to be a dick to everybody but there's a medic of course on site all the time he's like oh your buddy you're bleeding I was like Yeah The Hammer keeps hitting me so he wraps my hand up and they're like okay you can't use a Browning

[2:29:06] anymore so I I got a desert eagle yeah don't touch your vagina next time that's right it turned out I ended up um not just testing first in the shooting um but one of my instructors pulled me aside afterwards and he said have you ever shot competitively and I said no these guys were ragging on me because I I'm was the only one that you know never used a gun before and he says you could shoot competitively like ski and so I

[2:29:36] did wow and and then I ended up doing well so you were a natural I was a natural I have very steady hands yeah did you have glasses back then too no I I only got the glasses in my 40s okay so good eyesight steady hands yeah it's always the people who least want it that get the most of it isn't that the truth yeah so uh you know we we we certified in the in the 38 the 9mm the pump action 12 gauge uh and then we played around with

[2:30:07] rocket launchers and 50 cows and oh you got to play with rocket launchers you doing this in the fields in Virginia yeah just chilling wow those are nasty and then did something that was really cool you've probably seen it on TV you go into the shooting gallery the shooting house so you're you're walking the your instructor's right behind you with his hand on your shoulder and you're using live ammo and you know somebody pops up in the window and it could be a guy with an Uzi or it could

[2:30:37] be a woman holding a baby and you have less than a second to decide whether to shoot or not oh boy yeah so I go through the shooting gallery and you got to have the gun down and you're like bang bang bang bang right always the double tap I ended up getting a 97 the reason why I didn't get a 100 is cuz one guy I hit him in the throat and the shoulder instead of the throat and the chest okay but if you only have half of a second to get the two shots off you know I declared Victory and went home yeah um

[2:31:10] there was7 was a good score 97 was good um nobody else got that high and then you you use live ammo too out in the field where you use a car you're in a car and um and they shut the engine off remotely right and then somebody takes a shot at you so you have to unbuckle your seat belt roll across the the seat get out the passenger's side lay on the ground

[2:31:42] try to see where the shots coming from and then you have to shoot back well it's a robot that's shooting you I couldn't get a clear shot at the robot so I put my head up a little I shot out my own windows and then I shot the robot and I I succeeded I scored 100 the instructor's like damn it karako that was my last decent car shot the windows out I said you told me I I got to shoot the robot I couldn't

[2:32:13] get a clean shot because you disabled my engine [ __ ] the windows Bill I know right but man that was fun fun fun and then you have to crash through roadblocks they they teach you the proper way to do that there there is most definitely a wrong way to do it what's the wrong way to do it it depends on how the road block is set up if it's set up in a V which is the most difficult to get through always hit the light side of the car don't hit where

[2:32:43] the engine is right you got to hit where the trunk is and the car will fly out of your way but if it's in a V even if if it's the the backs of the cars forming the V the V will it's like a it's like a wedge where it'll it'll strengthen on its own so you have to hit the engine it it makes it more difficult and then we did um wow um surveillance yeah did they

[2:33:14] drop you in a city and do that whole thing like for real I'll tell you one funny thing yeah it was only thing that I distinctly um uh did not enjoy was um parachuting right so this is well before 911 and um I said to one of the guys why do we have to do why do we have to jump out of planes I don't want to jump out of a plane I'm going to be making my recruits my recruitments at diplomatic cocktail parties right like I'm offended

[2:33:46] they're wasting my time here I could be do something doing something uh you know productive after 911 I'm sitting in the back of a C12 and the back opens up and I said to this guy next to me I can't [ __ ] believe I'm G jump out of listen can't say they're not prepared so they're teaching you every bit of spycraft and then they flew us out to the desert out west and we did Advanced counterterrorist driving what does that mean uh mostly sandunes oh so so they're

[2:34:20] preparing you for the hills of Afghanistan yeah and then I actually flew back from Athens to um to do a class called uh Advanced counterterrorism operations that was that was deep yeah when you say deep is that like you're putting masks on and learn how to do all that too no we did that in the original training how good were the masks back then in absolutely absolutely first class Jon Manz in charge of that at the time she's a genius yeah she tells a story that cuz she went way back with HW Bush she knew

[2:34:51] him from the early days yes and she went and gave a briefing to him when he was president at this point in a full mask and suit and he had no idea it was her and this is like 1990 she made a mask for me it was a bald head with a comb over right and a mustache and and really thick glasses so the only seam was right here on the bridge of my nose right and the glasses covered it up so they shipped it out to to me and I put it on and my chief said that is the best

[2:35:24] disguise I have ever seen and I said they told me it was the first time they had ever done a bald head with a comb over and he says we got to go to the Ambassador so we go to the Ambassador it was uh it was Nick Burns who's now the ambassador to China we go in he says Mr Ambassador I have an expert uh who's visiting from Washington I wanted to introduce him and I said how do you do Mr Ambassador he says well welcome to Athens nice to meet you who are you here to see and I started making something up and then my boss started laughing and then I

[2:35:56] started laughing and he said what am I missing and I went like this and I pulled it off and he's like oh my God and I said pretty good right and he's like that's the best disguise I've ever seen this is in the 90s in the '90s I have no idea what they're like now now you're wearing them right so you go put it on alone in your room or whatever you know you're wearing it cuz you're the [ __ ] person wearing it when you naturally that means you're you you're

[2:36:27] biased to see flaws when you looked in the mirror did you were you like I don't know or were you like holy [ __ ] that's a great question and it's not unique to my disguise but to all disguises one thing that never feels natural is the mustache cuz you use glue it's all real hair right and it's it's on mesh so you can't can't see the mesh it looks like a real mustache but if I have a real mustache it moves naturally with my face a glute

[2:36:57] on one doesn't it looks stiff when you watch TV shows and people are wearing fake mustaches you can tell that they're fake that's right because their upper lip doesn't move naturally you have to careful now how do you work against that do you just like try to not say anything in front of your yeah and you can't smile broadly because the glue will come will attach you know like it's it's pliable enough to move as you're speaking but if you smile it stretches too much and the the mustache

[2:37:30] will start to come off you got to be careful what is it made out of are you allowed to say that real human hair no no no not the mustache the suit like what what I don't even know rubber you know it was just like like a rubber M it was it was finer than what you would buy at a costume store yeah does it like adhes to your body no no so it's not going to move at all like someone hit nope nope I recruited this one guy Jes and I sent him out to a town

[2:38:00] in the western part of the country yeah that's going to be we'll be whatever excellent yeah um I I recruited this guy and uh and we weren't really sure if he was dangerous was he a dangle a plant we weren't sure and he had only known me as the Baldhead combover guy oh my God and so I looked 20 years younger in real life than what this disguise made me look like and um I told him to meet me you know at at

[2:38:33] an intersection in this town and um and I walked past him like walking toward him so he looked me right in the eye and um didn't register at all no idea I went back to the hotel I put the disguise on I came out and got him I just wanted to make sure that there was nobody around him he wasn't carrying a gun he had no idea now when you put it on though your eyes are still your eyes right yeah your eyes are still your eyes although you can use you can use um contact contacts

[2:39:05] and some cases colored contacts I've got this I've got this thing this aging thing it's called Arcus cilis where my eyes are starting to turn blue around the edges it's just a a function of Aging my grandfather had it so if I were in the CI today I would have to wear brown contacts because otherwise if I'm close enough you know that we're looking at each other and having a conversation you can see the blue right and that would be a giveaway so you got to be careful about it so is it just your head with it

[2:39:36] pretty much they don't have like the hands you can do a belly you can do hands and what's that it does that look like real skin well it's under the shirt I know but like if someone told you take your shirt off they and they'll match they'll match the color of the of the prosthetic to your skin so the prosthetic of the com over matched your skin oh there was a woman who came out she was an artist and she spent days matching the prosthetic to my skin color it was so you didn't have to wear it

[2:40:07] here or anything like that no it was perfect mhm what does it feel like if it's just on the head it feels very natural how th but it is it like if it's thick it could make your head look so big so like how it's is it really thin oh no it's very very thin yeah very thin yeah so it looks natural mhm it really does it's getting scary out here yeah it's good and you know this is becoming more and more important in the age of uh

[2:40:38] facial recognition software if you're undercover or Worse you're under Deep Cover or you're you're traveling in Alias and you have to cross borders go through airports I mean how do you do that if facial recognition software is scanning you can it scan your eyes though that's the thing like the eyes be the giveaway that's going to be a problem even with contact lenses I feel like like the sh it'll be able to get the shaping of the pupils and everything I I would be worried about that if I were still at the SE all right so you get you learn to

[2:41:11] shoot you learn to use rocket launchers you learn to jump out of planes they drop oh we we got off this they drop you in a city I've had guys like Joe tedi and Shan Ryan in here who work with CIA ground branch and GRS like they talk about that and Andy's talked about it where they drop in DC or something were you right in DC doing it uh yeah almost all of it was in DC I had to fly out to San Diego at one point and got on a sub and um we went up to the uh Oregon coast oh like a submarine a submarine yeah we

[2:41:41] went up to the Oregon coast and we were they took me you know whatever it was a half a mile a quarter mile off the coast and they they Rose and I got into a little dingy and I had to row myself to shore you stab the dinghy you bury it in the sand you pick up the message that's hidden in the bottle and then that's your instructions for the next thing [ __ ] Tom Hanks ey here it was hard [ __ ] it was hard when you went when you were doing the drills though in DC is it the like the way the other guys have

[2:42:12] described is they'll be like all right you have to steal a shirt from the store and not get caught and stuff like that or you've got to get onto into an apartment on the 10th floor of this office build or of this uh apartment building and come out onto the balcony and Signal us how' you do that um I bought a clipboard and I bought a shirt and put a little name tag and I told the woman that I was a maintenance inspector you didn't get a ladder too I told the woman I was a maintenance inspector and I needed to check on the uh on the

[2:42:42] condition of her of her balcony so I went out there with my clipboard I pretended to uh write something gave the guys the thumbs up and pass the uh the exercise that guy told you about Jim diorio has a great quote called politeness and familiarity breeds access amen and so he he tells a story about like he he's out of his [ __ ] mind but like he's done some he works with Boost Deonte now put that in perspective but he was like right after he retired from the FBI he was taking these crazy contracts and so one of his guys who was

[2:43:14] like the CEO of a [ __ ] fortune like 50 company told him that his security for his company at their headquarters was phenomenal and Jim's like the [ __ ] it is and he's like no no it's phenomenal and Jim's like so I could test it he's like oh yeah you'll never you'll never be able to to get in there maybe we can splice in the gim story here but I'll tell John while while we're in here but he so Jim go goes to the [ __ ] Starbucks outside the outside the headquarters he's like loading his gun

[2:43:46] making sure it's unloaded like outside the Starbucks people are looking at him he's like all right get in the game mode walks in the front door like literally goes to the front desk he goes oh oh well yeah yeah I'm I'm I'm going to see so and so on the third floor like yeah yeah okay go ahead gets up to the third floor goes up to the front desk has I think he had Donuts or something and he goes ah yeah sorry I'm late with these I was supposed to bring them yesterday but he he's in right oh yeah yeah he's in yeah should be five minutes walks in there sits down at the desk or walks in there the CEO sitting down at the desk

[2:44:17] goes through the door holds up the gun to his head and says you're dead we need to talk it was that easy oh my God that is brilliant like two steps that's brilliant crazy but like you know you you guys have to learn how to do that common sense at CIA I've said in other podcasts I was always the good cop when I was in operations always and I found success to be far easier than it was for the guys who were the bad cop yeah yeah I I I could see that because like you the way you strike me

[2:44:48] and I've listened to you for years now because of Danny show and you know I I just think the way you break down like geopolitics and stuff is so good but like you have this air of obviously like you're very friendly so that that's disarming but you give off this air that's completely untrue that's an incredible tool which is you give off an air of complete aloofness I don't know if you know this I mean maybe you I never really thought about it yeah you you walk in like the guy like oh yeah this place is great wow

[2:45:19] how long have you been doing this like you don't know a [ __ ] thing that's going on no but you've already charted out the whole place and you're ready to Slit the throat of the family member of the guy sitting across from you and feed it to him sometimes you have to do things I I'll give you an example I'm going to skip way ahead skip way ahead so I get to prison right and the judge had had ordered that I be sent to a minimum security Work Camp no bars on the Windows no locked doors you free to just come and go as you please you're on

[2:45:49] your honor not to abscond and they put me in the actual prison right the agency just the the victim my Victim objected right so um so I said well I gotta I gotta protect myself here but I'm trained to do this so I had we can come back to this but there was one incident where where the uh the arens just weren't quite sure what to make of me and so somehow this rumor got started Ed that I was an

[2:46:19] assassin for the CIA and I thought I'm going to go with it so one of the Aran uh stops me in the yard and he goes is it true you were an assassin with the CIA and I go hey we all did stuff that we weren't proud of it was wartime and that was it from the Aryans they're like oh you can sit with us at our table I like okay until the the Italian said why you sit with those Nazi

[2:46:51] oh sorry yeah no you're good keep going and U and so I was with the Italians after that but you know you just got to go with it yeah yeah like you're very it it it's a psychological power for sure that's why it's so fascinating to listen to because I can see like guys like you what's what's Jim Lawler's line he's like I have to make people trust me to be turn become a traitor for their country exact exactly I say all the time what makes this job so hard is you have

[2:47:23] to convince people that you are their best friend to the point where they love you so much they're willing to commit Espionage for you that's right or in some cases they're willing to commit treason for you just because they love you what's the difference Espionage and treason I mean when you're talking to guys in foreign countries it's I mean it's pretty much always going to be that right yeah Espionage is you know providing secrets that's not treason

[2:47:53] treason is providing Aid and comfort to the enemy how's so if I if I recruit a guy from you know Mexico to give me information on the Corn Harvest which might be important to the Department of Agriculture in some way that's not treason it's Espionage most definitely but treason is if I convince a Russian or Chinese a Cuban a North Korean you know an Iranian okay they're going to hang for that all right so there's a small distinction yeah I got you yeah I mean there like

[2:48:24] like we were talking about earlier with the psychological tools I could I could see where they see that in you cuz like you're you're like happy to be about the action but you are make no mistake about it beneath there is a very serious guy like you you understand implic you're not there's no real aloofness to you you know exactly what you're dealing with you just know kind of have a a soft exterior for people so that they can kind of be taken in by that and I think that's why I was successful yeah yeah

[2:48:56] like I remember a guy I had recruited a guy he was in dire Financial Straits and something happened in his life I don't remember what it was but he he triggered a meeting which was highly unusual and I go to the meeting and um and he's got a he's got a shopping bag it has all of his wife's jewelry in it and he said can you give me $5,000 for this jewelry and I go what am I [ __ ] Jeweler like seriously that's what I told him like what do you want me to

[2:49:28] do I was watching on the plane yesterday I was watching Good Fellas you remember the scene where where um where Polly is uh well uh Joe pesy Tommy he's just done the what I make you laugh scene and he smashed the bottle over the owner's head and the owner goes to pulie and says come on you got to come in come in uh on the business take a piece to the restaurant and Paulie's chomping on his cigar he like what what the [ __ ] do I know I what do I know I know how to go

[2:49:58] in the restaurant and order the meal that's all I don't know anything about the restaurant business so what you want me to take a piece of this restaurant it's the same situation yeah you go in I'm like what the [ __ ] do I know okay you want listen keep your jewelry keep your jewelry what I need from you is I need two hours in your embassy's code room how about that do that yeah I'd rather have that than your wife's jewelry they should make that a Visa commercial Priceless yeah that's it right we good we happy right let's have

[2:50:30] a drink yeah so you so you get pulled the you're doing all this training in like 97 how long was the was the now spy training that first time not the not when you came back it was like eight months nine months okay so you're in there down and dirty are you your second wife was in CIA right yeah yeah she was a senior Cia officer okay are you with her at this point or is that uh no I went to Athens with my first wife and then we split up at the end of the Athens tour now was it was it

[2:51:02] hard being married to someone who you really couldn't tell anything oh my God it was awful it was awful especially in Athens I mean I was doing dangerous [ __ ] in Athens and yeah I remember my my son my son my oldest son was like six at the time and I had seven cell phones right I kept them in in a we had a rather large house so I used one room as a den and I kept that door locked but he saw when I went in one time I have seven cell phones and

[2:51:33] he said why do you have seven cell phones and I said there are a lot of people that need to call me yeah what are you g to say to a six-year-old and then he says why do you carry a gun and I said well I have a dangerous job at the embassy and he said Mikey's dad works at the embassy and he doesn't have a gun and I said well I'm a detective at the agency I I mean at the embassy and that was yeah I've done that more than once and uh that that was

[2:52:04] acceptable to a six-year-old but then you know I'd get a call at 11: and you know he says uh the rain in Spain falls mainly in the plane and I say marid do and doy does and little lambsy Dy which means meet me in 3 hours at the Marriott coffee shop and so I split and my wife's like where are you going I got to work now my first wife was a ballet teacher she didn't know anything about the CIA was she Greek yes so she spoke Greek yes so she wasn't

[2:52:35] miserable living in Greece no no she loved it okay so I start a three-hour surveillance detection route I go to the meeting spot we do whatever it is we're going to do I do another two hours to go back I get home 6:00 in the morning just in time to take a shower and shave and go to work right and she's waiting she's like so what was her name she knows your CIA though but she

[2:53:05] can't wrap her brain around what it is I'm doing in the middle of the night that I can't do in the middle of the day right and I said one time I have been sitting in a garbage dumpster for 2 hours waiting for somebody to throw a bag of documents at me do I smell like I've been with a woman seriously and if I was going to be with a woman you think I would have her call home to trigger a meeting in the middle of the

[2:53:35] night I said you have to understand what I do for a living and she just could not accept it and so she left that's hard yeah High divorce rating jobs like that the highest divorce rate of any governmental entity yeah it's interesting though that like she knew like because I've heard other stories I think maybe I'm misremembering this but where people say work at the state department and their CIA and their spouse doesn't know MH and like that I can see but like when the

[2:54:07] spouse knows like I've never been in the CIA and and maybe I hear a lot more stories let's say I didn't do a podcast but I know what the CIA is I know they're [ __ ] spies I know shit's crazy like you know it's hard to put yourself in those shoes but like I feel like some of that I would understand it wouldn't make the lifestyle easier though because your hours understand it you're not on the clock I'll give you another example um I was winding up my tour in Pakistan and I was dating the woman who

[2:54:38] would become my second wife who's in CIA CIA senior Cia officer on the analytics side so we had been making plans to go on vacation to Santa Fe i' had never been to Santa Fe New Mexico right everybody says it's so beautiful great art scene good food we're going to go to Santa Fe and after Pakistan I needed to decompress so we're coming up to my very last day and I get a cable like five hours

[2:55:12] before I'm going to leave saying don't come home go to this other country there's a team waiting and you need to break into this house and get this stuff and I was like [ __ ] so I called her and I said I am so sorry she said no no I saw the cable go do your break-in she gets it yeah we'll go on vacation when we can go on vacation and I was like oh my God I I got to marry her and I

[2:55:44] did and then that later was an is she with with all the other stuff but real quick John I got to run to the bathroom we got to get into your time in grease working against 17n and also some other stuff there we got to get into your time in Pakistan you've alluded to a ton and like 9911 what was going on you obviously had a I mean you were the guy running the abuu beta capture so we we'll get into that and then obviously what happened in the transition of your career with CI and all that so sounds good if this is going to be a new episode we'll see you

[2:56:16] for the next episode and please subscribe thank you guys for watching the episode before you leave please be sure to hit that subscribe button and smash that like button on the video it's a huge help and also if you're over on Instagram be sure to follow the show at Julian Dory podcast or also on my personal page at Julian D Dory both links are in the description below finally if you'd like to catch up on our latest episodes use the Julian Dory podcast playlist Link in the description below thank you
