Title: REVEALS the Dark Reality of Intel Ops
Show: The Sharpe Exchange
Date: 2026-06-08
URL: https://youtu.be/7i5osl-M9do
Duration: 39:00

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[00:01] What the American government had done in the war on terror was wrong. It was illegal, it was immoral, it was unethical, and it was anti-American. Because if I had not told them that the CIA was torturing its prisoners, the American people would never have had any idea what the government was doing in their name. Always tell the truth because the truth always comes out. >> [music]

[00:33] >> I'm joined now by former CIA officer who led CIA counterterrorism operations in Pakistan after 9/11 and also was the one who blew the whistle on the CIA's torture program during the war on terror in 2007, John Kiriakou. Thanks so much for joining us. >> My pleasure. Good to be with you. >> Of course. Let's just start out because, you know, when I was telling people my age that I'm interviewing you, they were more excited than when I told them I was having Justin Trudeau on my show or, you know, for whatever reason,

[01:04] uh you know, I'm assuming it's because of your qualifications and because of your ability to tell stories, um but your name has just become, you know, it's skyrocketing in terms of popularity. Why is it that so many people know the name John Kiriakou? >> It It's crazy, isn't it? And And it's been like this for about 3 months like really at this level for about 3 months now. It's funny, the way it worked out was was just uh by happenstance. I gave an interview in January um to uh to Diary of a CEO

[01:36] podcast and um and it was a it was a good interview. I was proud of it. It was a It was an in-depth interview and um and uh after it was done and released a few days later, uh a young man from the University of Texas took it and chopped it into shorts and put the shorts out there, but he gave me an Alvin and the Chipmunks voice, he slowed my voice down, he had lasers shooting out of my eyes, and then released these shorts onto

[02:07] TikTok and it just exploded and took on a life of its own. And I have to say, it's all been in in good fun. >> Yeah, and a lot of people, at least my kind of interpretation of being a spy or being like an intelligence officer, their interpretation of it comes from Hollywood kind of portrayals and comes from movies and TV shows. So, I'm kind of curious and I'm sure a lot of people watching are if you could just kind of take us through that process of being recruited as a spy and then kind of once you're recruited, the training that you

[02:37] have to kind of undergo. Cuz again, a lot of people when they kind of are interpreting what a spy does, they only see what's happening in the kind of movie versions of it. >> Yeah, that's a that's a big question. So, the way I was recruited is not legal anymore. I was sort of plucked out of graduate school by my grad school adviser who was a CIA officer undercover as a grad school adviser. Now, it's it's far less sexy. You have to go to the CIA website and and click apply now and just go to the

[03:09] through the process or you have to um approach a CIA recruiter at a at a job fair, which is also quite common. Uh once you get in and it's a long arduous process. Once you get in, you start the training. Now, it depends of course if you're in the Directorate of Intelligence, which is the analytical arm, if you're in the Directorate of Operations, which is out there actually recruiting spies to steal secrets, maybe you're in administration, which is you know, they're the ones that make the

[03:39] trains run on time, the accountants, the logistics people, or the Directorate of Science and Technology, which is the scientists, the the forgers, the disguise makers. Excuse me. People like that. For I started off in the Directorate of Intelligence and went through all of the writing training. And then after 7 and 1/2 years decided that I wanted to do something completely different. And I made what at the time was a very unusual move over to counterterrorism operations. And so I because I I had

[04:11] already spent half my career in the CIA. >> Mhm. >> Um I didn't have to go through all the introductory stuff with what we used to call CIA 101. >> Right. >> And instead I went directly into you know, defensive driving, then counterterrorist driving, and then the uh it was called uh the operations course accelerated which teaches you how how to do the step-by-step of recruiting spies, steal secrets. >> And for people who don't know, you kind

[04:43] of originally are, you know, gaining your popularity from blowing the whistle as I said in the introduction on the torture program. Um it was classified information, but you have said repeatedly in interviews that you've done that you would do it again because you felt it was almost your duty to do. Um I'm curious though kind of what happened like after you revealed that information, you were in prison. What is that like being in prison as a spy? I mean, did you have extra layers of kind of protection compared to other people? It would be kind of again an enduring environment.

[05:14] >> I'll tell you the truth, the only threats that I ever faced in prison were from the guards, not from other prisoners. It was the guards that were corrupt and violent. Um They It It's kind of a It's kind of a story. I actually wrote a book about it called Doing Time Like a Spy: How the CIA Taught Me to Survive and Thrive in Prison. And um >> [laughter] >> I decided the day that I arrived that I was going to use my CIA training to keep myself

[05:44] safe and at the top of the social heap and I I started that by forging strategic alliances. >> Mhm. >> On my very first day uh two Aryans, neo-Nazis, walked into my cell and I I put up my fists, said, "What do you want?" They [snorts] wanted a kind dozen or and uh because I was a child molester or a rat, they told me I could sit with the

[06:15] Aryans. But much more importantly one of the Italians took it upon himself when he saw in the New York Times that I was arriving in 4 days, took it upon himself to go to literally every one of the Italians and say there's a CIA guy coming here. He's not an FBI agent. The FBI are rats and cops and the CIA [clears throat] protected us from the terrorists. And so the Italians welcomed me with open arms. I made a point to not respect racial divisions

[06:47] in prison. Going to prison is like going back into 1950s America. All the blacks sit together, all the Hispanics sit together, all the whites sit together. Um and and never the two shall meet. And I didn't respect that. So I had friends among the blacks, among the Hispanics, among the Asians. Um and um it worked out for me. Like I said, the only real challenge I had was dealing with the guards and the administration. >> And I mean I would imagine that if

[07:17] you're speaking out against the CIA in the way that you are now, your former colleagues within the CIA probably have, you know, some problems with that. Not even just the people at the top, but some of, you know, the people who you worked probably closely with. Um I'm curious >> You be You'd be surprised, actually. Yeah, my detractors were at the top in the CIA and to a man, they're all either dead or retired. And there's this new generation of CIA officers now, and I hear from people a

[07:47] lot who are inside the CIA telling me that everything has flipped and that the rank and file in the CIA are supporters of mine, >> Mhm. >> not supporters of the torture regime. Mhm. >> And I want to kind of help people understand because you were for a good part of your career on the ground in Pakistan, you know, kind of Was it recruiting? You were doing counterintelligence, right? Kind of getting um a whole a hold of information basically in order to help the United States during um obviously post-9/11 and

[08:20] such as well. Um I'm curious though what the process is like when you're on the ground in an adversarial country and, you know, you're trying to recruit, you know, information and assets when you have, you know, people who could simply turn around and go and tell the Pakistani authorities. >> Yes. Yeah, that's that's literally the challenge that you face every day. It's very, very difficult. First, what you want to do is to cultivate strong liaison relationships, not just with the

[08:50] host country, but with other countries represented there uh that also have coinciding interests. Uh for example, you know, Al-Qaeda is an Arab was an Arab group, and so you want to have good relations with the other Arab countries who have embassies in Islamabad and work together when doing these counterterrorism raids. The very first thing that I did when I arrived in Pakistan was to come up with a standard operating procedure to take down a terrorist safe

[09:21] house. And then I went to uh the FBI, which was on the lower floor in the embassy, and um and coordinated with them, and then I went over to the Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI, to say, "I'm the new guy. I'm here to work with you. This is what my plan is. And within 48 hours, we received our first tip where I was able to go uh with the Pakistanis and the FBI, literally knock down the door of a safe

[09:51] house with a battering ram, and grab our very first two Al-Qaeda prisoners. They happened to be 19 years old. Both of them burst into tears. One of them asked if he could call his mom, which I said, "No, of course you can't call your mom." And then we just kind of took it from there. We got to the point where we were doing two raids a week, three raids a week, sometimes two in a night, and then the night that we that we captured Ayman al-Zawahiri and many dozens of other Al-Qaeda fighters, we did 14

[10:22] simultaneous raids. >> And going back to kind of my my previous question there, how are you like actively tracking in these situations, whether or not I mean, obviously in more of a direct sense, your life is at risk, but even when you were, you know, in the United States or in countries that weren't as adversarial, tracking if you're being, you know, surveilled or tracking if there's people kind of on your tail? >> It's a good question. It's all a part of the training, all of it. So, before 9/11, I had undergone

[10:52] all of my operational training, and then I was asked to return to headquarters for for 6 weeks for a specialized course called Advanced Counterterrorism Operations. This is well before a year and a half before 9/11. And um I was one of only 14 officers worldwide chosen for this class because we were sort of moving up quickly in counterterrorism. And so, that included everything from weapons and explosives training to advanced counterterrorism driving, to desert driving,

[11:24] um to technical courses, you know, bugs and cameras and satellites and drones and all kinds of things like that. And then it just so happened that 18 months later 9/11 hit and we were ready to deploy immediately to the field. But you have to you have to take surveillance and counter-surveillance very, very seriously as well. You have to always always be on the lookout for for somebody following you, which unfortunately happens. >> Is there ever a sense now that when

[11:55] you're speaking out about this that you have a fear that you know, one day somebody might not be happy that you're talking as much as you are and revealing as many secrets if you will as you are? >> You know what? Why I I used to worry about that. And then I thought there's a greater good here and the greater good will only be accomplished if I continue to speak out and if I can inspire other people to speak out. I believed firmly, I believed in my heart that what the American government had done in the war on terror was wrong. It

[12:28] was illegal, it was immoral, it was unethical, and it was anti-American. It may have made us feel good in the short term, but it set us back over the long term. And I decided that I had to keep talking about it because if if the policy was going to be changed, I had to be the one to change it. And then in the end in December of 2014 the Senate torture report was released. And Senator John McCain stood up on the floor of the Senate and said that the

[12:58] American people owed me a debt of gratitude because if I had not told them that the CIA was torturing its prisoners, the American people would never have had any idea what the government was doing in their name. And then with passage of the McCain-Feinstein Amendment, torture was officially banned in the United States and I'm very proud to have played a role in that. >> Is there a sense because obviously there is a desire for information and for intelligence and it's more so problems with how the CIA and the American

[13:29] government more broadly were going about getting this information in the way of that program. Where is the line do you think in terms of, you know, the need for information versus still maintaining a sense of humanity in getting that intelligence? >> I'm one of those people who believes that I would rather face another attack than give up my constitutional rights. >> Right. >> If we're going to be the good guys, then we have to be the good guys. And there's a price that comes with

[13:59] being the good guys. Look, if if you're for torture, then you can be for torture, but you have to change the law. The FBI has been conducting interrogations since 1945. They're very good at it. And the way they do it is they simply build a rapport, they build a relationship with the subject, right? They don't beat him, they don't torture him, they don't they don't put tubes in his rectum and pump

[14:30] hummus up in there. They treat him with respect. They offer him a cup of tea and apple. >> that before about hummus. Is that actually true? They act like >> Oh, yeah. It's been documented in the Senate torture report as a form of torture, unauthorized form of torture, that was used only to humiliate and to degrade. If that's the kind of person that you want to be, if that's the kind of country that you want to have, >> Wow. >> then change the law. And don't be secret about it. Just say, "We're going to do

[15:00] it. We're going to torture." But otherwise, I believe that we are a shining city on a hill, a beacon of hope and light for human rights and civil rights and civil liberties. So, we're either going to be the one country or we're going to be the other country. We can't be both. We can't tell the world, "You have to do it this way. You have to do it that way. You have to respect human rights when we don't respect human rights. >> Right. >> So, one or the other, but not both. >> Have you ever because people listening right now I'm sure are thinking to

[15:31] themselves, of course he should have revealed that information. Like that was information that now as you will yourself point out has brought kind of you know light to the situation that was happening. Um but do you think there's any world in you know where the president or the administration federally in the United States would consider giving you a pardon of some kind because of how many people are now speaking out in support of you? >> From your lips to God's ears is what I usually say. I I hope so.

[16:02] >> Yeah. >> I I don't know. I I genuinely don't know, but I hope so. >> I mean >> I'm working hard. >> Obviously you have to make sure. >> I have asked. >> Yeah. >> Yes, I've asked formally. And there are some very powerful, very important people who have also asked on my behalf. >> Mhm. >> So, I'm I'm hoping for the best. >> What is that process like? I'm not sure how much you want to share, but what is that process like when you're asking for a pardon, you know, from the US government? >> Well, there's the official process and then there's the unofficial process. The official process is you go to

[16:34] the website of the US pardon attorney and you fill out a form. The unofficial process is you lobby as many people as you possibly can who are close to the president, personally close to the president. And you ask them to sign a letter asking him specifically to pardon you. Now, I've been told that the president has read the letter.

[17:04] I've been told that he has been told in no uncertain uh no uncertain way that this is something that these people want, but they said to me, "He knows where we stand but we can't force the man. It could happen in 6 hours, it could happen in 6 months, it could happen never. Maybe he doesn't like your face. >> Yeah. >> So, I'm I'm just hoping for the best. >> Um for the average person watching just to kind of talk a little bit more now about the realities of the CIA. I've

[17:35] heard you say before that in order to be in the CIA, you don't need to be a sociopath, but you need to have some form of sociopathic tendencies. Um what did that look like in kind of a more like operational day-to-day capacity? >> Oh, that's an easy one. Somebody with sociopathic tendencies has a conscience reacts on a polygraph exam, but is very happy to work in legal, moral, and ethical gray areas because he or she believes we're the

[18:06] good guys. >> Mhm. >> And so, if I'm instructed to break into somebody's house and plant bugs by God, I'll break into the house and plant bugs or cameras or do a false flag operation all because it's good for the United States. Uh a normal person wouldn't break into somebody's house and plant bugs and and uh and cameras, but I would. >> Mhm. >> That's a sociopathic tendency. >> And what do you think in terms of if you

[18:36] know, you're kind of illustrating to people what the difference was from when you were operating in the United States giving kind of you know, information to the president and such compared to when you were in places like Pakistan. What was kind of the difference in the day-to-day? >> Oh, there was no comparison. Um when you're working in Washington at headquarters and your job, especially in the Directorate of Intelligence, is to is to write papers, articles, briefing bullets

[19:06] for the president. There's a certain writing style that you're highly trained in. You keep it short and punchy, and you tell the president, you know, the fact and the analysis. And that way, well, you know what? Let me tell you what the former deputy director of the CIA used to tell me almost every single day, like a mantra, he would repeat it. The job of the CIA is to recruit spies, to steal secrets, and to analyze those secrets so that the president can make the best informed policy.

[19:36] And that's really what it is. That's the two different jobs. Recruiting spies, steal secrets, and then analyzing the secrets so that the president can make the best policy. Now, of course, there's a lot more, there are a lot more moving parts, but when it comes right down to its basics, that's really what it is. >> And what was kind of like if you were kind of comparing say post-9/11, the days after 9/11, compared to, you know, a more normal time? Like, what was the difference in terms of the relationship that people in the CIA had with the president? Obviously, he gets the daily

[20:08] brief, the presidential daily brief, but how, you know, was that different? And is there ever points where, you know, I'm sure there are, you kind of, you know, break in and tell him that this is urgent information, you need to hear this right away. >> That's a tough one. Um, the relationship with the president became even closer than it had been. I mean, the relationship between the president and the CIA is always going to be close. Most presidents

[20:38] make CIA director a cabinet position. Not all, but most. And, um, so the relationship is automatically close. Depending on who's president, the president's going to be briefed 6 days a week. And also depending on who the president happens to be, many of many of those days the CIA director is going to be in on the briefing as well as well. So, there's there's a very, very close camaraderie between the president and the uh CIA director. And add in the

[21:09] National Security Advisor and in many cases the Vice President as well. Well, after 9/11, the president kind of did a deep dive. So, it wasn't just the CIA director and deputy director that are briefing the president and and the and the daily briefer. It's the head of counterintelligence, the deputy head of counterintelligence, I'm sorry, counterterrorism, the deputy head of counterterrorism, the the deputy director of counterterrorism for operations, the Osama bin Laden unit, the the DDO, you know, this guy, that

[21:40] guy. There was a parade of people going over to the White House every day every day. And then you had a vice president who was even more hands-on than the president was. And then the vice president is saying, you know, "Kill everybody." >> Right. >> There's kind of a famous quote made by Cofer Black, who was my boss at the Counterterrorism Center, saying that when he finished with Osama bin Laden, there would be flies on his eyeballs. He meant it. He meant it. And he told the president

[22:12] and the vice president that that we would not stop until there were flies on the eyeballs of Osama bin Laden. And that set the tone for the response to 9/11. >> And so, whether it be kind of like after 9/11 or whether it be even recently with President Trump when he captured and the United States captured uh Ali Khamenei, like what is the extent of the resources that the CIA, you know, will go to to try and capture some of these targets?

[22:44] >> Well, they they killed Ali Khamenei uh in a rocket attack. But, um the extent is literally to do anything to to accomplish the mission. Whether it's snatching President Maduro or killing uh Ayatollah Khamenei or or, you know, literally it's whatever the president tells you to do. You have to You have to carry it out. Now, post 9/11 what the CIA began doing is borrowing special forces, uh Navy SEALs, Delta

[23:16] Force, Army Rangers, um and seconding them to the CIA because the CIA really didn't have that kind of expertise. Not, you know, bear crawling for 3/4 of a mile and, you know, doing these practically inhuman things in training. So, we borrowed special forces. They were under CIA command, but then at the end of the operation they would go back to the Pentagon. >> [laughter] >> Yeah. And what do you think in terms of just like cuz I think people are hearing that and they're getting a sense that

[23:47] obviously the CIA has endless resources, they can do practically whatever is necessary. How does that compare to cuz I've seen you say before that the CIA obviously does collect and surveil Americans as well. Um how does that compare to what they do to get information or obtain things about Americans domestically? >> See, this is This is one of those issues that's that's still sort of in the shadows. It is patently illegal for the CIA to collect information on American citizens or to surveil American

[24:18] citizens. >> Mhm. >> That is supposed to be done exclusively by the FBI. But we know, thanks to Ed Snowden, uh and and other whistleblowers, that NSA does it as well. I believe the CIA does it as well. Um you know, the problem here is really a lack of congressional oversight. Ever since 9/11 and the um the amended Executive Order 12333, which initially had banned the CIA

[24:50] assassinations, um 12333 in the aftermath of 9/11 allowed CIA assassinations and then finally under the Obama administration allowed CIA assassinations of American citizens. Anwar al-Awlaki was alleged to have been a spokesman for al-Qaeda. Anwar al-Awlaki was never charged with a crime. He was an American citizen born in the United States. He was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Never been charged with a crime. Never formally

[25:21] accused of a crime. Never faced his accusers in a court of law. Never judged by a jury of his peers. And we assassinated him. >> Right. >> And then 7 days later, we assassinated his 16-year-old son and his 16-year-old nephew just because. And that's illegal. You can't do that. >> Is there any sense of like because obviously all of the information or at least most of it is classified that people within the agency or at least those at the top just don't really care

[25:52] if they're doing anything remorseful because they know they have the classification to protect them? >> Yeah, I think that's a an important part of it. Another part is that everybody at the CIA really has convinced themselves that they're the good guys. And that the ends justify the means. And if taking somebody out, whether legal or not, is going to protect or save American lives, then by God, they're going to do it. And they convince themselves that they're, you know, that they're doing their patriotic

[26:23] duty. >> Um I wanted to quickly switch before we finish off into a couple foreign policy questions because obviously the United States and Israel, specifically with Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump, um despite the recent kind of reporting that there was that kind of very tense phone call between the two of them, um there's been a very strong relationship historically between the United States and Israel. And obviously you saw that with the United States again taking out Ali Khamenei, the Ayatollah. A lot of people have always been saying Joe Kent even for example the ex-counterterrorism

[26:55] director that a lot of that was you know in part because of Israel's kind of calling for the United States to do that. I wonder from your perspective just what you know as a CIA former officer as it relates to the relationship between the United States and Israel and how that might kind of justify and kind of help explain some of what we've seen recently. >> I think that the closeness between the United States and Israel right now is extraordinarily dangerous for the United States over the long term. Listen, whether we like it or not,

[27:25] whether we like to admit it or not, Israel is an outcast nation around the world. It is not a signatory to the IAEA convention. It is not a signatory to the International Criminal Court or the International Court of Justice. It It just doesn't believe that it needs to follow international law. And so it does anything it wants. And more often than not Israel's actions are not in the um in the best interest of the United

[27:56] States. I'm confident that Benjamin Netanyahu convinced Donald Trump that the Iranian government was a house of cards. And as soon as the first missiles flew, the Iranian government would collapse and that was just simply not true. It was Netanyahu who testified before Congress that as soon as we took out Saddam Hussein, there would be peace in the Middle East. As soon as we took out Muammar Gaddafi, there would be peace in the Middle East. As soon as we took out the Iranians, there would be peace in the Middle East. Nothing that he tells us is true. Nothing.

[28:27] And now we've got Americans coming home in body bags and for what? For Israel's foreign policy? There's no upside for the United States being involved in this war. None. And if Israel wanted to wage war against Iran, then Israel should have waged war against Iran. It shouldn't have been up to the United States to do Benjamin Netanyahu's dirty work for him. >> And I've seen you talk as well about some of the tactics that the Israelis would use even just throughout your time as a CIA officer in terms of trying to

[28:58] turn Americans against their country. Maybe if you just want to tell you kind of walk people through um what that process was like and then I think people might kind of put some of the pieces together relative to what's happening right now. >> Sure. Israel actively spies on the United States. Excuse me. The United States does not spy on Israel. We are not permitted to do that. We have not done that in many many many decades. But Israel actively spies on the United States. It has undercover Mossad and Shin Bet agents spread all

[29:28] around the country, mostly in American defense contractors, stealing secrets to pass back to Israel. Now, we give the Israelis 98% of what we have. And they're out there trying to steal that last 2%. >> Mhm. >> So, in my view, at least from a counterintelligence perspective, Israel was a hostile country. It remains a hostile country. And there's this disconnect between intelligence and Capitol Hill where you've got members of Congress wearing IDF uniforms on the floor of the

[30:00] house. You have members of Congress, including serious senators, like Senator Tom Cotton, the chairman of the of the Senate Intelligence Committee, that have Israeli flags outside of their their offices. Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, flying Israeli flags. Well, where is your loyalty? Is your loyalty to the United States or is it to this foreign nation? Because it can't be to both. >> Yeah. And on that topic, do you think because of obviously what Israel and the

[30:31] United States, their partnership is, Iran starting to become more like motivated to have some type or at least their proxy groups or some kind of attack on American homeland? Are you worried about that? >> I'm not. That was another lie perpetuated by Benjamin Netanyahu. Um in in the day, you know, the day before, the day of, the day after the attack on on Iran, Netanyahu um made very serious allegations that there were Iranian terrorist cells in cities

[31:01] all across the United States. And that was made up out of whole cloth. It was a bald-faced lie. No such cells existed. No such cells ever existed. He did it just to try to propagandize the American people and to sway them into supporting this illegal attack on Iran. >> In terms of just before we finish up cuz I want to ask you too about Jeffrey Epstein and you've talked a lot about that. You've said that you think he was a spy. You said he you in another interview, I think it was the Diary of a

[31:32] CEO one that you thought he was an access agent um potentially for the Israelis even. Um but I wonder like does that mean that that whatever government it was that he was presumably a spy for could have been involved in perpetrating the very serious crimes that he committed? >> It's entirely possible. And I think it it comes down to really the the basic, which is the source of his money. We don't have any idea the source of his money. Was it a foreign government? Was

[32:02] it Les Wexner? Was it the Rothschild family? We don't know. He never explained. Investigators were never able to find out. But uh it it's certainly possible that a foreign government set him up, you know, in in a life of luxury so that he could serve as an access agent for them. It also could be that he kind of stepped into that once he became wealthy. We're we'll never know. We'll never know what the truth was. >> On the topic of uh the president uh in

[32:33] the United States and his numerous assassination attempts, but the primary one, the one of the first ones in Butler, Pennsylvania, a lot of people I think are wondering like what's happened to that. We haven't heard a lot of information about that. Is there like a sense right now that, you know, more information around that is not a good thing, or why is it that we haven't heard more from your perspective? >> Oh. Oh, I know I I've long been a supporter for for, you know, complete and open investigations. I think not just,

[33:03] you know, the American people today deserve an explanation of what happened in Butler that day, but I think for history, historians, future generations deserve to know what happened that day. It it it The facts as we know them just don't make sense. Unless Unless the Unless we accept the notion that the Secret Service is just a collection of incompetent boobs, and I don't think that they are. So, how can this 18-year-old kid

[33:35] get a free shot at the president of the United States when others when when Secret Service agents saw him on the roof, saw him preparing to fire. Uh how How did he get inside the event? How did he get on to the roof? You know, what were the circumstances of his planning? Why wasn't he shot before he got the shot off? Questions that we're just never we're never going to know the answers to.

[34:06] And I think that's unacceptable. >> And like to that end, because it was similar, obviously Charlie Kirk isn't a government official, but he was a very public-facing figure. He had millions of followers, and similarly, I mean, part of it I guess with him was the nature of how he did his events. They were on campuses, there were thousands of students there, and they were outside like I kind of I think a recipe for disaster in some ways, but you have a number of conspiracies circulating around his assassination as well, and how someone could get that close to him. Uh Is there any kind of and what do you

[34:36] think when you hear some of the conspiracies that are coming relative to Charlie Kirk's death? >> You know, I've said in interviews that I am the least conspiracy-oriented person that I know. I really am. With that said, there have been conspiracies over the last conspiracy theories over the last 6, 8, 10 years that have actually proven to be true. >> Mhm. >> The COVID lab leak springs to mind, for example. Where you you were a crazy person if you believed it was a lab

[35:07] leak. And then, lo and behold, it turned out to be a lab leak. Um Jeffrey Epstein, another one. And so, I've gotten to the point where I believe we should not make any judgments until all the facts are out. Of course, this this guy who's the alleged shooter was caught. He allegedly confessed to his friends. He allegedly confessed to his dad. But there just It seems like there just has to be more to it. Like it's impossible to break down that gun so quickly, for example. How did he get off

[35:39] get out scot-free? There just so many questions for which we don't have answers yet. I think that I think we need to wait before we make a decision on whether or not this was a conspiracy, whether or not perhaps a foreign government was involved. We need to wait until all the information is out there. >> And on my last >> That said, >> Yeah. >> I I sorry to interrupt you. I I'd like to know why in the world the FBI is involved in this case. >> Yeah. >> Because the alleged shooter

[36:10] left his home in Utah to go to northern Utah to shoot Charlie Kirk in Utah. He drove back to his home in Utah, told his friends in Utah. There's literally no federal aspect to this to this crime at all. None. >> Mhm. >> This should be This should be an investigation headed by the Utah State Police and the Utah Attorney General's Office. So, why in the world is the FBI involved? Unless they know something that we don't know. And if that's the case, they need to

[36:40] come out with it. >> Is there too like a sense right now because you have like all of the whether it be Donald Trump's assassination attempts or whether it be the assassination of Charlie Kirk looking back, you know, the attempted assassinations on the congressional baseball game, Steve Scalise and all those people, Gabby Giffords. There's so many threats towards people right now in office and yet it seems anytime one of these threats and one of these like attempts takes place, it just gets moved beyond very quickly. Like it gets thrown aside. In the case of Donald Trump, they

[37:12] went right into the RNC. They weren't really talking about it very much at least from a perspective of concern afterwards. Is there not a sense that like we should maybe back up a little bit and talk about how this is happening, why this is happening, maybe bringing down the polarization a little bit. What's your thoughts on that? >> See, and that's the key right there. I've been in Washington for 44 years. It has become a hideous, angry, ugly, backstabbing uh city. It's nothing like it was when I first arrived in Washington where

[37:43] where as soon as the work day was over, you know, members of opposing parties on Capitol Hill put their differences aside. They shared group houses together. They went to church together. They played poker together on on Friday nights. Those days are gone. >> Yeah. >> Where there's there's like active hatred and disgust of one another and nothing gets done. And the country just becomes more and more and more polarized. >> And just lastly before we finish up, I want to ask you my final question about

[38:14] kind of the confidence or optimism you might have despite all of the kind of, you know, doom and gloom and negative things as talking about. In the sense that it's can feel very easy I think based off of the way that the world is going all of the conflicts all of the tension to have kind of a feeling as if nothing will ever get better or nothing will ever be improved but I hope that people who have listened to your story over the course of this interview can you know feel a sense that they can speak out what's kind of your I guess just final message to people in terms of the way

[38:45] that things are going and how to remain optimistic despite all of the negatives. >> Oh this is going to sound simplistic but it's but it's not always tell the truth because the truth always comes out sometimes it takes a while sometimes it takes years but the truth always comes out and you're going to want to be on the right side of it. >> All right we will leave it there John Kiriakou thank you so much. >> My pleasure good to talk to you. >> Thanks so much for watching if you're

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