Title: Whistleblower John Kiriakou On the Rob Kall Bottom up Show
Show: Rob Kall Bottom-up Show
Date: 2017-06-29
URL: https://youtu.be/P2t-xAWvn0g
Duration: 57:00

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[00:02] and welcome to the Rob call bottomup show my guest for this show is John Kaku he's a former spy and a whistleblower he worked for the CIA and was involved in the capture of Abu Zub then he was a counter terrorism consultant for ABC he's the author of The Reluctant spy my secret life in the cia's war on terror and the convenient terrorist AB Abu zubida which just came out but I prep for interview ing him for talking about his newest book doing time like a spy

[00:34] how the CIA taught me to survive and thrive in prison we'll talk a little bit about all of that stuff welcome to the show welcome back thank you Rob it's it's good to be back with you so you did time in prison as a whistleblower for letting people know that the CIA was torturing people yes and this book this book that's the one doing time like a spy how the CIA taught me to survive and thrive in prison talks about

[01:06] your time there and what you what what you used that you learned in the CIA now learning about you as a CIA agent you were you were a pretty kickass tough guy you know it it's funny because the people who have known me the longest just can't they just can't fathom that on a couple of occasions I sort of had to be a a badass um but yeah that's that's the life and that's the training and you find yourself in these in these situations in

[01:38] godforsaken places around the world and you just have to do what you were trained to do so yeah it's it's two separate lives to tell you the truth now you started off being an analyst and that's very different than the other side completely so you were an analyst for ex how many years seven and a half and then and and what did you do as an analyst let's start with that sure well I was recruited in graduate school I started working for the CIA uh the first

[02:10] week of January 1990 and I was assigned to uh Iraq uh to to work on Iraq from CIA headquarters and the reason I was given Iraq was um and this is exactly what they told me they said nothing ever happens there it's been the same cabinet the same government since the 1968 Revolution so it's very slow you learn the tradecraft you learn the CIA writing style and then if you do well we can transfer you onto

[02:42] something exciting like Romania and I said okay great it was so slow that there were some days that we wouldn't get a single Cable in nothing from the embassy nothing from NSA nothing from CIA not even a press pce I would just kind of sit there like well you know they're right nothing ever happens in Iraq and just at the time when I felt like I knew what I was doing Iraq invaded Kuwait and one of the

[03:13] old-timers pulled me aside and said I don't think you understand the gravity of this he said it's not unusual for the countries we cover to go to war but it's highly unusual for the countries we cover to go to war with us so he said this is going to make you well the day after the invasion um I have my best suit on I go into the office and my boss says uh

[03:44] don't sit down we're gonna go to the White House and an hour later I'm in the Oval Office with the president the vice president the National Security advisor and the CIA director the president asks a question and everybody turns and looks at me and I thought you talk you've given reports to a number of presidents right yeah who let's see I've spoken with George HW Bush Bill Clinton uh George W bush and then I was asked to brief uh Jimmy Carter he of course he

[04:16] was an ex-president by then but um yeah Jimmy Carter I I've I've met and briefed George HW Bush a number of times and then I spent a full day with uh with Bill Clinton at one point it was fun it was exciting you know any difference in how you observed they were in terms of asking questions and processing information yeah uh big differences the smartest one of them by far was Bill

[04:50] Clinton um but Clinton was also combative he wanted to to tussle and argue and and debate which was fun for me um George HW Bush was far more worldly and more sort of aware of the country's position in the world well he was also a spy he ran the FBI right head of the CIA CIA CIA he was ambassador to the United Nations he was ambassador to China he

[05:20] was director of the CIA so he was Mr resume in in that world W was the friendliest of all of them um the guy you want to have a beer with he really was um but uh not bright and not inquisitive and just you know W had this attitude where he believed he had hired the smartest people he could find and he surrounded himself with the smartest people and so he didn't need to be smart on these

[05:51] issues his people would take care of it for him and in fact what ended up happening was that his people ran rough shot over him what do you think about how Trump would be operating I know you haven't dealt with him but what do you think you know I I've said I've said publicly I I actually fear for the country for the first time in my life uh the problem that Trump has is is a problem that so many politicians that I've encountered also have and that is that they believe

[06:23] they are the smartest guys in the room huis they're smarter than you are it's hubris it's Nar ISM they're smarter than you are so they don't need to know what you think about an issue and they don't need to surround themselves with smart people because they're smarter you know God bless him John Kerrey was exactly the same way John krey would would bring all of us into his office ask us really tough questions about you know foreign policy and intelligence and then utterly ignore everything we said so you know

[06:55] this is the top the bottom up show which looks at top down and bottom up and it sounds like these guys were totally top down a bottomup leader would depend upon rely upon and respect and value the information that the people he brings to him and top down leaders are going to look for confirmation of the opinions and ideas that they already have do you remember Robert mossbacher he was George HW Bush's Secretary of Commerce he was some kind of oil billionaire or

[07:27] something like that uh I briefed him one time he he had a real interest in Kuwait and I always wondered if his interest was was Financial for for once he left government um so he asked for some really comprehensive briefings on Kuwait and this must have been right after the war ended in 91 or maybe early 92 and so I went down to the Commerce Department with a whole gang of analysts and this was really bottom up and we went to his

[07:57] his office his private office he asked very smart and very well-prepared questions and I mean questions that went down deep into the weeds and and we answered his questions we were there for two hours and then a a I don't know a day or two or three later my division Chief which is my boss's boss um sent me a note saying that he had had a call from secretary mosbacher thanking him for sending these analysts over and said

[08:29] it was the single most comprehensive briefing he had ever had as Secretary of Commerce and I thought well that's the way you run something you know admit that you really don't know everything about some esoteric issue you don't have to Bluster your way through something and pretend that you're smarter than everybody you know I I'll tell you at the time I wasn't smart about a lot of things but there was nobody in the American government that knew as much about Kuwait as I did and I was was glad

[08:59] that he that he sort of recognized that and acknowledged it and gave you credit for it yeah one thing I've learned uh regardless of who you're dealing with even if it's just some convenience store clerk you give them credit I mean and if somebody treats me well and does a good job I go who's your manager how I want to tell the man your manager that you did a good job I did that a week ago so to people coming up to them that they kind of cringe and yeah I want to talk to you about Billy

[09:31] here and I go he did a really good job and that's such a surprise because they're used to getting somebody complaining yes I I did it a week ago at Target you know there was a cashier and probably nobody's ever paid attention this cashier and she was so dog on friendly and efficient that I stood in line for 10 minutes at the customer service desk just to tell her manager how excellent she was yeah it's it's it's it's a big deal okay so let's move on to the book so after seven and a half

[10:03] years you went from being an analyst to being what yeah I I switched over to counterterrorism operations which was you know really dangerous and really high stress but to tell you the truth I was so bored in analysis I just couldn't imagine spending another 20 years sitting in this cubicle writing papers about Saddam Hussein's next 12 months so it just so happened that a job opened in Athens and it also just so happened that

[10:36] I was the only person in the entire CIA who spoke both Arabic and Greek and the job was calling for someone with Arabic or Greek and so I went down to the counterterrorism center and I said listen I don't have any uh operational experience whatsoever nothing I don't know the first thing but I speak Arabic and Greek and I'm fluent in both and the guy was like oh my God he said well it's a lot easier and a lot

[11:06] cheaper for me to take a linguist and teach him operations than it is to take an operations officer and teach him how to speak Greek and Arabic so I got the job and then I started going through um the traditional oper Special Operations training yes what what do you learn there wow everything from counterterrorist driving to you know which is crashing through roadblocks and and trying to escape like the movies

[11:37] yeah just like the movies uh to weapons training on a wide variety of weapons from from sidearms and and light guns to uh to the big stuff Big Stuff Big Stuff 50 cows uh rocket propelled grenades we we blew a lot of stuff up oh um we learned how to oh a lot of fun we learned how to diffuse bombs uh which was nerve-wracking but important we jumped out of airplanes we

[12:09] had to swim across swamps to make a dead drop and then you learn just sort of the mechanics of recruiting spies to steal secrets you know the bottom line is I I have to well it's called the asset acquisition cycle I have to spot assess develop and recruit somebody that's the only way I'm going to get promoted is to recruit recruit spies to steal secrets and so over the course of this relationship I'm going to convince you that I am your best friend to the point where you love me to the point where

[12:41] you're willing to commit treason for me yeah and you know I found that I had a knack for it now CIA that means you're doing this in other countries only right correct the the US would not have the CIA operating in the in in the country would they I do not believe that I can comment on that that's not a no okay sorry so uh that's just fine thank

[13:12] you so uh you how do you identify somebody as a potential recruit well you know before 911 you'd go to diplomatic cocktail parties you go to business events and and just start handing out business cards and making chitchat over a drink and so if I meet you and you say that you're the um economic officer from the embassy of Switzerland I say okay nice to meet you and I go to the next guy because I don't care about Switzerland

[13:44] but if I come up to you and you say that you're the you know the Iranian media atache I'm very interested in you and I'm going to invite you to lunch and if you say yes I know that I've got a shot because the Iranians aren't allowed to say yes or if you are let's say that you're a you work at the Port I'm always interested in the port because things are coming in and out constantly um including perhaps precursor chemicals

[14:16] for U cocaine let's say or for heroin processing or bombs or bombs even better so if there's if if you say anything in that first meet anything at all I'm going to invite you to ask you questions about yourself what do what do you like to do in your spare time what are your hobbies oh you like deep sea fishing well I'm gonna Charter a boat and I'm gonna take you deep sea fishing and I'm going to show you the time of your life I assume you

[14:47] have a pretty good budget from the CIA to do that kind of thing post 911 it was practically unlimited yes you talk about how you know you you could use money that you know people needed money that you could use money to get them you know 80% of the people we recruited did it for the money yeah 80% of the people that we recruited knew exactly what they were getting into right because you you you're going to be subtle but you can't be that subtle that this guy doesn't know he's being developed by a CIA officer because

[15:18] they know you were a CIA agent eventually well you're you're going to begin hinting once you think that you're going to be able to get this guy and then when you get permission from headquarters to actually make a pitch and offer to recruit him you're going to just come clean what did they think you were when they first met you oh it could be anything a state department officer a pentagon civilian if you're under Deep Cover you could be anything you could be a you know a wildlife photographer a

[15:50] museum curator a businessman it could be anything at all is that your job to come up with or are you told how no no it's they assigned that headquarters and then they give you um a lot of training to maintain your cover so it's almost like you've got somebody or a team of people who are creating a narrative that you would base your identity on correct so it's you know I ran a conference for six years on the art science and application of story so it sounds like this part of

[16:20] working with this a CIA agent is creating a story that they can then live exactly f it's very complicated and it's very stressful and as a result the CIA has the highest divorce rate in government it's it's upwards of 80% you survived that well my second wife was a CIA officer okay until after they started just

[16:52] trying to destroy your life which is the way they handle whistleblowers yes yeah my my wife was a a very highly regarded and highly decorated senior Cia officer and she was fired from the CIA the day of my arrest only because she was married to me but you're right Rob that's that's what they that's what they do they set out to ruin you not just to charge you with a crime but to ruin you financially personally professionally to separate you from from your friends and your

[17:22] family members from from former colleagues from people who otherwise would be supportive of you and they make an example of you so that so that the message is to other wouldbe whistleblowers you see what we did to kiraku we ruined him you want the same thing to happen to you no then you better keep your mouth shut so you're not necessarily when you're doing this work being a nice guy no and and you'll see that in this book you know prison's a nasty terrible

[17:55] Place full of nasty terrible people and so I do not portray myself as the good guy in this book um nor nor when you're resp spy either I mean no because you're living a lie everything you do is a lie it's all fake it's all an act yeah fully half of the people who I recruited who I made think were my best friend uh I I wouldn't want to be caught dead with them on the street you know they're either they're either criminals or

[18:27] terrorists or or scum or you know whatever certainly there were there were people who in another life yeah we would be buddies I'd love to have a beer with them I'd love to have them over to my house for dinner but some of them were dangerous you know Killers terrorists you just have to put on that act you mention being in there with a mafia Don yeah um it was it was the Italians from the

[18:59] mafia in prison who became my closest friends really supporters you know I I gave a talk I I used to be involved in biof feedback and Stress Management so I gave a talk at a local prison to the staff on Stress Management and then they walked me around and I got to see a famous mass murderer who had eaten people uh and then they pointed out Don the mafia Don and this is a little short guy surrounded by six foot five guys and

[19:30] he was a lot scarier than the guy who ate people oh yeah oh listen I didn't want to have eye contact it was like get me out of here oh there you were friends with him huh I became friends there was a story that I did not put in the book that I'll tell you um you know people warned me too that the mafia has a very long arm and one of them came up to me one day and said are you writing a book and I said 'I am you put an Italians in that

[20:01] book and I thought I'm not now I guess uh I I did but only in the warmest uh possible way but there was one incident we had the actual boss of the gambino crime family at Loretto when I was there um now that's a minimum security prison that you were in it's a low it it's called a medium low medium low so I I was not permitted in the uh in the min so they put me I mean this was a real

[20:31] honest to God prison with the double wall and and the barbed wire and the the guards patrolling around the perimeter in the whole nine yards so a friend of mine said the boss of the gambinos is in there little Nikki coroso you need to stay away from him he's a very very dangerous man and indeed he was doing um 12 years on 12 murder counts uh as part of a case so I did I stayed away and he he was a tiny

[21:03] guy he was probably 54 53 but surrounded like you say with these Giants well i' I'd see him walking around the compound with his with his crew and I kept a very healthy distance well one day I'm sitting in my cell and I'm reading a book and I see some movement out of the corner of my eye and I turn and look and it's one of his bodyguards this enormous guy like six fo six that we called stupid Tony because he had cross eyes and you could never

[21:33] really tell who he was looking at so I I turned and I looked at him and he all he said to me was the boss wants to see you let's go and I I said he wants to see me I hadn't ever met the guy let's go he says and my heart is just pounding like why in the world would Nikki want to see me so I go down to a cell and it was like a scene out of a movie Nikki is sitting in a chair there's a guy clipping his toenails for

[22:03] him and when he finishes getting his nails clipped he gets up there's a there's a sink right there he brushes his teeth and I'm just standing in the doorway waiting to be invited in he's brushing his teeth and he spits and he spits all over the Basin of the sink so he turns to a bunk bed there's a guy sleeping in the top bunk behind him and he punches the bunk bed and and he says hey get up clean this [ __ ] up and the guy jumps out of bed and says you got it

[22:35] Nick and he cleans up all of Nikki spit off the sink Basin so finally I cleared my throat and I said excuse me Mr coroso you want to see me he says come in sit down you the CIA guy and I said I am you write a book I said I did your book do good I said actually it did very well well I made New York Times bestseller list I made number five and he kind of nods and he says you're going to write my

[23:06] book and I said oh is that what this is about I said well let's think about this for a minute books in this genre are usually written by rats and they spend the first half of the book talking about all the cool things they've done and then they spend the second half the book trying to justify why they turn rat and I said you're clearly not a rat and you probably shouldn't talk about the cool

[23:38] things you've done and he nods and he says hadn't thought of that never mind but from that day on Rob I was invited to every Italian dinner every Italian party I went to watch the Super Bowl with them we exercised in the yard together and they became my closest friends wow it was a close call all worth it yeah

[24:11] so anything more that you learned when you were being taught to be an active spy that people would find useful I think so and what I the kind of stuff that you would used in the prison too I assume that's yeah and and I I also say in the book that it's actually applicable to to daily life I mean you're gonna the the reader is going to think this is cynical and it is cynical but I I put these 20 life lessons in the book that I learned in CIA training and

[24:41] showed how I applied them to prison life and some of them were sort of funny in that they were jokes at the CIA but I took them very seriously in prison like um uh admit nothing deny everything make counter accusations and again that was a joke at the CIA it was on coffee mugs it was it was on t-shirts but I actually did that with the cops in prison well why would the CIA say that why would they advise you that because you're you're undercover yeah and somebody would say

[25:13] oh I think you're CIA well no I think you're CIA how do you like that so it's deception it was deception yes so interesting because I I've been accused of being CIA because without a doubt I I I published a a Blog and because I have I have my own software for my site and they say oh only the CIA could have paid for that oh for software but that's that's a constant struggle overseas is constantly denying that you're a CIA officer yeah yeah so

[25:46] you know in prison I got called down one time to the Lieutenant's office and it was just to harass me and so uh one of the cops says uh why don't you tell me about that fight in the unit last night I said ' there was a fight in the unit oh you're going to get smart now I said I I didn't know there was a fight in the unit I I had my headphones on and I was reading a book like the the the dumb German sergeant and Ryan's heroes yes I know nothing I know nothing yeah Hogan's Heroes and so finally I said I I

[26:18] pretended to get frustrated with them and I said no I think you were fighting in the unit last night you seem to know all about this fight the only way you could have known about it is if you were there and you're trying to get me to admit it finally they told me get out of my office which is exactly what I wanted to do there are other life lessons too recruit spies to steal Secrets or anything else you need uh everybody is working for somebody when calm is not to your benefit chaos is your friend use the subtle art of deception seek and

[26:49] utilize available cover so I have 20 of these and then I go through the book showing how I use them to protect myself so give another example from the ones you just listed sure it's not a nice example and I think your listeners are going to think that I'm not a nice guy with this example but you know I say in the book that that sometimes you just have to take the bull by the horns there was a guy in in prison with me who had dated

[27:23] an A-list movie star and he stole from her and he stole from a bunch of other people in Hollywood and he ended up getting something like five and a half years on um embezzlement and fraud charges so he was always bragging about how he had been in People magazine and he had been in variety and he had been in Hollywood Reporter and he had been on TMZ and my God I was just tired of listening to it in addition and this is what really bothered me he was

[27:53] constantly trying to steal money from people to to to trick them into transferring money into his account or into an offshore account uh that bothered me a lot and he cried constantly he would cry when he got a visitor he would cry when he didn't get a visitor and I say in the book we could even hear him crying in the shower and so I told one of the Italians one day I've had it up to here with this guy I'm gonna take this guy down and he said no no don't do that you're going to end up

[28:24] in solitary I said I'm not going to be so gross about it that I'm going to do it right in front of his face I'm going to do it the CIA away so what I did was one of my cellmates was um was being released and when you get released the uh prison administrators give you a a form that they call a merry-go round and on your last full day in prison you have to go from office to office to office getting a signature on this thing you don't really need any of these signatures it's just to keep you out of trouble that last day and so I went up

[28:57] to this this of mine Jesus I said Jesus can I borrow your merrygoround no questions asked he said sure take it so I took it I made a photo copy gave Jesus back his original then I Whited out Jesus's name and number I put this guy I'm gonna call him Wallace I call him Wallace in the book I put Wallace's name and number made a clean photo copy so he couldn't see the white out then I stole a duffel bag from laundry uh which they give to Indigent prisoners when when they leave a prison

[29:28] to take away their belongings I waited until 5:00 on Friday afternoon and I put the the forged Margo around and the duffel bag on Wallace's bed so he comes in to the room he says hey guys I'm sitting there with one of the Italians I said hey Wallace how you doing he walks over to his bed and he gasps I said what happened he holds up the merry around he says I'm being released I said what you're being released how did that happen

[29:58] and very proudly he says I won my appeal I said gez Wallace nobody ever wins their appeal he says well I have the best attorneys I have to call my attorneys he runs to the phones well even fancy attorneys are gone by five or six o'clock on a Friday afternoon he calls the courthouse they're locked up tight he runs to the unit manager's office he's gone case manager's gone everybody's gone he comes back to the room and he's positively giddy the Italian says hey

[33:09] in the Press but um it's a very very large I'm sorry say that again you don't you don't want to say any more than than then can you tell us what happens there what you learn there yeah it's the primary CIA training site so it's something like it's well over a thousand acres most of its Wilderness uh but but virtually all CIA training takes place there everything from the new analyst course to you know counterterrorist

[33:39] operations to you know everything in between I mean I I took a class in in leadership for example that was at the farm sometimes you go down for a day sometimes you go down for six months but it's where all the action is what did you learn in the class one leadership honestly uh I learned that the CIA has no idea how to identify potential leaders really no idea they think they do but they're winging it you know and

[34:10] this is an ongoing problem at the CIA a CIA psychiatrist once told me and I I put this in the book as well that the CIA actively seeks to recruit people who have sociopathic tendencies they don't look for sociopaths because sociopaths have no conscience and with no ience they blow right through a polygraph but they're impossible to control because they never feel guilt people who have sociopathic tendencies do feel guilt they will get tripped up on a polygraph

[34:41] but they're still happy to break the law when it's in the National interest and I'll give you an example when I was being interviewed for my CIA job I was being interviewed by a panel of experts it was a psychiatrist a psychologist and an anthropologist and one of the questions they asked me yeah one of the questions they asked me was was this let's say you've been tasked with recruiting uh a person overseas because this person has something in his

[35:13] office maybe something on his computer that the CIA needs so you develop this guy for six months or 12 months and you come to the conclusion that he's just simply not recruitable my apologies he simply not recruitable so um what do you do and I said you break into the office and you steal it and they said that's exactly what you do well that's frankly a sociopathic tendency the average

[35:43] American is not going to just leap to the conclusion that you break into this poor innocent guy's office to steal something from his computer well you know I I I've done a whole lot of interviews with experts on Psychopaths and sociopaths and narcissists and a couple of psychopaths themselves yes and I did one with a guy who was the president of this an organization that studies psychopathy and he did or a team of his associates did a team a study of looking

[36:15] at presidents in terms of wow ethic characteristics and they come up higher than average just like Business Leaders do yes and at the CIA and this is my point you've just made it at the CIA just by their nature sociopaths and psychopaths are going to slip through the process and because they're Psychopaths they're going to rise to the very top of the cia's leadership and and we saw that in Spades

[36:48] we left out one other group and that's members of Congress I would be fascinated to know how many members of Congress are psychopaths or sociopaths and ones that get appointed to run spy agencies indeed yeah okay so let me go on with my questions here so what is counter surveillance you talk about learning surveillance and counter surveillance what's counter surveillance

[37:19] right let's say that there's a surveillance team that's following a Target the C there's a counter surveillance team usually hostile that's following the surveillance team when you're when you're doing surveillance against somebody you're so focused on that Target you're not paying attention to who's behind you looking at you and so if there's a um a probe a probe is somebody who's sent into an American Embassy as a walk-in and I I

[37:49] talked about this in my first book let's say somebody walks into an American Embassy and they say um I want to talk to somebody from the C so I'm going to put on a disguise and I'm going to meet them in a walk-in room and the guy says listen uh I'm a member of heala and I've been sent to um kill uh your Ambassador I wanted to tell you because I don't want to do it well why

[38:19] why is he telling me this if he's a member of his Bala the chances are very high that he's made the whole thing up he's not working for his Bala he's working for the Russians the Iranians the Israelis who knows but he's looking to see where the cameras are he's looking to see how thick the doors are are they reinforced with steel how many people are armed that he has seen since he came in here am I wearing a disguise or no and if I am have I forgotten to

[38:52] take my badge off can he see my badge with my real picture and my true name so so the Iranians are particularly aggressive in this way they do this all over the world all the time well if I suspect this guy is working for the Iranians or any other hostile power in the world I'm going to tell him I don't want to meet you here let's meet at excuse me six o'clock tomorrow morning in front of the Marriott and so I'm GNA be there at six o'clock the next morning in front of the Marriott I'm G to pick him up in a car

[39:24] with a security officer in it and I know that the Iranians are going to be surveilling me because they're going to want to know where I'm taking this guy as we have this conversation but what the Iranians don't know is that then I have a dozen guys behind them taking pictures of them and their license plates that we can run through our databases to see is this the Iranians is it the Russians is it the Chinese who who's trying to run this operation against us that's what counter

[39:55] surveillance is how many fractal layers of this are there it can be Iranians probably have somebody following the people who were following you and and they actually did at one point on motorcycles which we thought wow good for them that was really sophisticated but what they didn't know is that we had another layer behind that na that one so this is the Rob call bottomup show uh you can listen to it on progressive radio network on Pacifica uh

[40:27] you can access it at opednews.com podcasts I publish opednews.com it's a a Blog that reaches a couple 100,000 unique people a month we publish 500 to a thousand articles a month we publish your work thank you for the permission to do that thank you thank you for getting the word out yeah so uh tell us a little more about what you learned that helped you in prison what else what are that that you that not

[40:59] only in prison but afterwards since then has helped you what is the number one thing that you think people could use that that that you learned as a CIA agent that they could take and use in their lives in their work very simply it's to trust no one uh you know prison is such a terrible Place everybody something like 85% I read a study 85% of people in prison suffer from mental illness 85% most of those people suffer from

[41:31] antisocial personality disorder uh so it's you know not serious which is a step away from psychopath or sociopath exactly exactly right and so no one in prison just like no one in the CIA or no one in Congress or no one in the white house is going to do something for you out of the goodness of their hearts they're going to do something for you because it somehow benefits them and so so I learned to trust absolutely no one

[42:01] and it served me well you know that sounds so awful it does but but it served me well in prison you know and another thing too in prison you got to keep a low profile and one of the ways to really keep yourself safe is to is to get others to do your dirty work but make them think that it's their idea you know I tell another story in the in the book there was a serial killer of women in the prison with he was a long-distance truck driver and um he was murdering prostitutes all

[42:33] along his truck route in the Western United States well this was in the days before DNA testing and so the the cops knew that this was the guy because he had strangled several of the prostitutes but they lived he he hadn't killed them so they they knew well you know this is the guy that's killing all these prostitutes but we can't prove it so they ended up getting him um on um rape charges and he got the maximum he got 20

[43:04] years the cops were so upset that he only got 20 years that when he got out after serving the full 20 uh they provoked him into violating parole and then when they went into his house to search they found a weapons cache which made it a federal crime and he got another 20 years so even though he was never found guilty of the murders per se he ended up with 40 years in prison when I first got there I was warned to stay away from him he was extremely volatile and very violent I mean he

[43:35] would just turn his cellmates into a bloody pulp if they Disturbed him while he was napping or if they turned the lights on when he wanted the lights off he was he was insane and violent but for whatever reason Rob this guy actively sought my approval so every once in a while in the TV room he would come and sit next to me and he would say oh he was in the CIA and it was all nonsense he was just making it up just to try to win my approval and I was very careful I kept

[44:07] him at arms length well there was another guy also in our unit who was a rat and who was doing 20 years on a murder for higher charge I did not like this guy from the get-go not just because he was a rat but I was repulsed by his crime he he murdered his best friend after taking out $100,000 life insurance policy on him because he owed the mafia $100,000 in gambling debts so I was just repulsed by this guy so the

[44:38] guy didn't like me because I would not allow him to move into my room I said I don't like you I don't like your crime and I don't like that you're a rat which you you get to say who moves in with you oh yeah because otherwise somebody's going to get killed okay so um I was sitting in the TV room one day and the the murder For Hire guy didn't see that I'm sitting 5et away from him and he says to another prisoner standing next to him you know that kiraku he got called down to the

[45:10] Lieutenant's office today which was true I'd been called down to ask if I wanted to do an NPR interview there there was a request from NPR they called him down because he's a rat and he's ratting us out and I'm sitting next to the serial killer who we called truck I'm just sitting there and truck says to me did you just hear that mfer he just called you a rat and I thought to myself here's my chance and so very calmly I said to him two hours ago I heard him call you a

[45:40] child molester and so truck without saying a word got up walked over there and beat this guy to within an inch of his life so he was charged with assault they added several years onto his sentence they moved him up to a medium security prison and the murder For Hire guy spent six months first in the hospital and then in solitary confinement for his own

[46:14] safety so I got rid of these guys with one off-handed comment this was a very tough and nasty and cynical thing to do but it got got rid of two people who were legitimate threats to my safety and so I did it wow you are not somebody to mess with no sir so you wrote while you were in

[46:44] prison you wrote a series of Articles letters from Loro yes how is that something that any prisoner can do yes that's a great question for for whatever reason most prisoners believe that once they've been convicted of a crime they somehow magically lose their constitutional rights and people were saying you're G to go to solitary man you're going to go to solitary if you keep provoking them like this and I would tell them guys I

[47:14] have a constitutional right to freedom of speech and I intend to exercise that right you guys are wrong you've not lost any rights you've lost your freedom but the Constitution still protects you just like it protects everybody else well these letters from Loretto were originally supposed to be just a very small closely held email uh right before I went to prison uh J I'm laughing because I read you've described what

[47:44] happened with them yeah yeah uh Jane Hampshire who at the time was the publisher of uh uh firedoglake.com said to me hey when you get to prison when you feel comfortable send us an email telling us how you're doing and I'll send it around to your supporters there were like 600 people who had expressed interest in receiving an update I said okay I waited about 10 weeks and I wrote the first letter from Loretto I was inspired by Martin Luther

[48:15] King's letter from Birmingham Jail and so to be inspired by you know he's just such a a giant and a and a a beacon in my life um and I'm not comparing myself to Martin Luther King I could never never shine Martin Luther King's shoes but but letter from Birmingham Jail was an inspiration for me so I wrote this letter and not even really thinking about it I blew the whistle on two

[48:46] crimes that had been committed against me one was um this aggressive harassment by a female guard and the other was two of the cops in the um in the special investigative service office tried to set me up to to beat or Worse to kill um an Arab prisoner uh and then they actually did the same thing to him to try to beat or to kill me but they're they were just so ham-handed about it I went up to him and I said hey

[49:17] did the did the cops say anything to you about me and he said yeah after we met and shook hands they told me that you called a number and Washington and they told you to kill me and I said well they told me that after we met you called a number in Pakistan and they told you to kill me so I wrote about this and I sent it to Jane Hampshire but I didn't know that Jane was good friends with Ariana Huffington and so she sent my email to Ariana and she said hey check this out

[49:49] John kiraku just sent this to me and Ariana put it with this Banner headline on The Huffington Post well I got more than a million hits from that first letter from Loretto and I thought my God I have I have a soap boox here I can reach people were there consequences though I mean I yeah i' I've been dealing with the indirectly uh Dan seelman the former Governor of Alabama the man's been horribly wronged he's been ter treated

[56:39] hope people enjoy it it's fascinating and funny too thank you very much I appreciate that it's the Rob call bottomup radio show been listening to my interview with John kiraku a former CIA spy and what are you doing now real quick in 30 seconds uh I've got a a column at reader supported news uh I write once a week I speak a lot at colleges and universities around the country and Oliver Stone and I have a have a show that's in development with the History Channel right now great

[57:11] thanks so much thank you so much for having me
